Cybermourning: Grief in Flux From Object Loss to Collective Immortality

This essay examines features of cyberreality that are reconfiguring loss and mourning. In turn, it queries a transformation in the nature of object loss that is taking place on the Internet. As we move from a reality based on the acceptance of loss and limit to one of infinite access, concrete losses may be less necessary to mourning than forms of access that propel the object's capacity for collective re-use toward immortality. If we focus too intently on loss at the level of the individual and the group, we will surely overlook how cyberspace is transforming loss into a collective event. Clinical examples illustrate how the burden of loss is increasingly mitigated by mourning's sudden twin: cybermourning.