Abstract

What drives bodies together? What inclines them towards one another? What keeps these bodies inclined towards each other as the world around them continues to fall apart? In this article, I argue that the circulation of grief and anger produces a choral inclination, a relationality forged through our emotional responses to loss. Coming together through this choral inclination allows us to acknowledge loss, confront its conditions, and enact a collective response to it. I engage with feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s concept of inclination and its further development by political theorist Bonnie Honig to theorize the posture and politics of togetherness. Both thinkers turn to prefabricated relationships – between mother and child or sisters – and in proposing an alternative, I offer choral inclination to help theorize the dynamics that bring people together when neither these prefigured relationships nor access to care is readily available. I turn to grief and anger as emotions that circulate in the context of loss, and pluralize the affective responses through which our bodies incline and thus politicize one another. I develop these claims through a novel reading of Euripides’ Hecuba. In the final section, I briefly explore the motivations and leadership structure found within the Movement for Black Lives to link develop the implications for choral inclination for feminist and democratic politics. In contrast to commonplace frameworks that consider tragedy in primarily its historical context, I mobilize ancient tragedy to help theorize and enact feminist responses to the contemporary context.