Paper short abstract:

Based on interviews with families of women in Brazil who died of Covid-19-related causes during pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum, we reflect on the potential effects a protocolar biomedical question on how one got infected (aimed at contact tracing) could have on those grieving the dead.

Paper long abstract:

Our contribution relates to an ongoing project that brings together scholars and physicians working in academia, NGOs and hospitals. In 2021, our team collected almost thirty interviews in which we heard stories of women in Brazil who died of Covid-19-related causes during their pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum. The interviews were held remotely, during the pandemic, after families voluntarily contacted the researchers in response to an invitation posted on social media. Based on the interviews, we reflect on the potential echoes the question of how one got infected could have in the lives of those grieving pregnant and postpartum women who died from COVID‐19 in Brazil. In intrafamilial settings of mourning, we argue, a medical interrogation that aims at contact tracing – “how you got infected?” – can be re‐signified as “Who infected her?”, inadvertently instigating the idea that someone, within the family, could have averted the death of their mother, daughter, friend or partner.

Drawing on Judith Butler's work, we consider the “disorientation of grief”, and the ethical valence it holds in allowing new questions to arise and challenge current orders in search of a more just politics of life. Mourning, seen as the outcome of a disruptive event that calls for reorganization and resignification for the living, becomes political in this sense, rather than a state of mind or a feeling. And in such space of politics, we are invited to partake, by reviewing biomedical protocols that can leave a moral sequel on those seeking medical care.