Teju Cole's Unmournable Bodies Analysis

A glance into mainstream media would yield a particular type of ‘body’ that is represented far more than any other. Affluence, whiteness, skinniness, and western societies have flooded the media we view every day. Certainly, at a moral and fundamental level, all bodies matter. However, the lack of representation in media of marginalized groups of people reinforces the notion that they are less worthy of the attention. Unfortunately, there are many examples in today’s world that deem certain bodies not important, and a prime example is depicted in Teju Cole’s Unmournable Bodies. He compares the tragic, terroristic killings of dozens of beloved people in Paris to devastation around the world such as killings and abductions that happen almost daily in Mexico. The killings in Paris were mourned

This furthers the marginalization of these bodies and imposes an unmournable and invisible aspect upon them. Another example of bodies that have seemed to not matter over the past three centuries is the African American population. They were oppressed during slavery, the Jim Crow, and now mass incarceration and police brutality. These forms of subjugation all reveal the lack of care and importance placed on black lives. In a forum between George Yancy and Judith Butler, Butler discusses this lack of importance in regards to the “black lives matter” phrase, “So what we see is that some lives matter more than others…and that other lives matter less, or not at all” (Yancy and Butler 2). It is hard to imagine that the lives that Butler and Cole discuss feel that they matter as much as those who fit into normalized society. Thus, to answer the question do all bodies matter – intrinsically yes, but they are certainly not portrayed that way in the eyes of mainstream