‘Appropriate’ing grief: mothers, widows and the (un) grievability of military death

The article interrogates the grievability of military lives by studying female next kin as subjects post-colonial Pakistan and suggests that these non-masculine non-military bodies act a symbolic embodiment grief associated with soldier death, its material benefactor. A study their affective management, traces national local commemorative practices around death instituted Military during War on Terror. Female are conscripted in war effort, dependents whose destructive affect needs restraint channelling into appropriate grief, vital resources excessive can be harnessed to express productive support for unpopular policy. Drawing fieldwork villages, analysis commemorations, interviews officers kin, overwhelming sense loss refuses closure within militarised grieving rituals. It concludes surfeit public collective paradoxically renders deaths ungrievable.