iN THESE PLAGUE TIMES, The only possible way to mourn, is to be unable to do so

 As Derrida suggests, there is a sense in which “an aborted interiorisation is at the same time a respect for the other as other. Hence the possibility of an impossible bereavement, where the only possible way to mourn, is to be unable to do so.

Borrowing from post-Freudian theories of mourning, dERRIDA posits a difference between introjection, which is love for the other in me, and incorporation, which involves retaining the other as a pocket, or a foreign body within one’s own body. 

Derrida considers, successful mourning is primarily about the introjection of the other. The preservation of a discrete and separate other person inside the self (psychologically speaking), as is the case in incorporation, is considered to be where mourning ceases to be a ‘normal’ response and instead becomes pathological. 

Abraham and Torok’s so-called ‘normal’ mourning can be accused of interiorising the other person to such a degree that they have become assimilated and even metaphorically cannibalised. Derrida considers this introjection to be an infidelity to the other. 

the more the self “keeps the foreign element inside itself, the more it excludes it”

 iN an effort to refute the canonical interpretation of successful mourning, GOES,  If we refuse to engage with the dead other, we also exclude their foreignness from ourselves and hence prevent any transformative interaction with them

Derrida’s account is not so simple as to unreservedly valorise the incorporation of the other person, even if he emphasises this.  mourning is a  loss of exchange and of the transformational opportunities that the bereaved presented as you recall with affection the resistance they held to your views