Spectacular death interdisciplinary perspectives on mortality and (un)representability

315 Pages·2011·2.567 MB·English

by  Connolly, Tristanne

Spectacular Death

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SpWehcyta Wcuel aMra Dkeea Athrt
at why it is taught
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
Mortality and (Un)representability
by Richard Hickman
edited by Tristanne Connolly
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First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect,
The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Front cover image: “Secunda musculorum tabula”, from Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis
fabrica (1543). Artist: Jan Stephen van Calcar. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University
of Toronto.
Cover design: Jenny Scott
Copy-editor: Jennifer Alluisi
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978–1–84150–322–6 / EISBN 978-1-84150-542-8
Culture, disease, and well-being (Print) ISSN 2042-177X
Culture, disease, and well-being (Online) ISSN 2042-1788
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
List of Figures ..................................................................................viii
Acknowledgments ..............................................................................ix
Introduction ........................................................................................1
Tristanne Connolly
Classical Death: Comedy and Tragedy
1. Life, Death, and the In-Between: The Duck-Rabbit/
The Face of the Clown .......................................................................21
Alan Blum
2. The Illness of Hope, the Cure of Truth and the Difference
of Principle: A Reflexive Analysis of Antigone’s and
Meursault’s Confrontations with Death ............................................43
Kieran Bonner
Enlightenment and Romanticism: Aestheticizing the Corpse
3. Reflexive Vectors: Art, Anatomy and Death in
Cowper and Gamelin .........................................................................59
Morgan Tunzelmann
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Spectacular Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and (Un)representability
4. “Mother of Unworthy Woe”: Infant Death and Sentimental
Maternity in British Romantic Women’s Poetry and
Midwifery Books ...............................................................................77
Tristanne Connolly
5. Speaking of Death: Remembrance and Lamentation .......................97
Jan Plecash
Memorialization and the City
6. Enjoyment’s Petrification: The Luxor Obelisk in
a Melancholic Century ....................................................................123
Michael Follert
7. Barcelona, In Memoriam: The Tension Between Urban
Renovation and the Past .................................................................139
Marta Marín-Dòmine
8. Jewish Victims and German Youth: Questions of
Pedagogy and Responsibility at the Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp ........................................................................151
Elke Grenzer
9. X Marks the Spot: New Orleans Under Erasure ..............................169
Kevin Dowler
10. Life and Death in New Orleans: Disaster Tours Imagined ..............183
Stephen Svenson and Cory Ruf
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Policy: Border Control Between Life and Death
11. Hope and Resignation in Medical Care: When Doctors Go
to Court to Terminate Patient Treatment .......................................201
Diego Llovet
12. Life-threatening (Anaphylactic) Food Allergies: School Life,
Health and Well-being .....................................................................217
Saeed Hydaralli
Live Deaths and Afterlives
13. Game Death: Fantasy and Mastery in Scenario Paintball ...............233
Ariane Hanemaayer
14. Delirious Exhibitionism: Negotiating Technologies in
Timothy Leary’s Live Death .............................................................249
Elizabeth C. Effinger
15. How the Dead Circulate (in Life) .....................................................261
Peter McHugh

Bibliography ....................................................................................271
Notes on Contributors .....................................................................299
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Spectacular Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and (Un)representability
List of Figures
Page 22 Fig. 1.1 Duck-Rabbit from Fliegende Blatter. (Wikimedia Commons
reproduction of public domain image)
Page 65 Fig. 3.1 Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates (1787). Courtesy
of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Page 68 Fig. 3.2 Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’osteologie et de myologie
(1779), p. 30. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine,
Washington, DC.
Page 72 Fig. 3.3 William Cowper. Myotomia reformata; or an anatomical
treatise on the muscles of the human body. London: R.
Knaplock, 1724. Courtesy of the Wellcome Trust, Wellcome
Library of Medicine, London, UK.
Page 125 Fig. 6.1 Gaspard Gobaux, Place Louis XV, 1850. Courtesy of
Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Page 129 Fig. 6.2 Unknown artist, Robespierre Guillotining the Executioner
After Having Guillotined All the French, ca. 1794. Courtesy
of Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Page 145 Fig. 7.1 “Más amor.” Photo credit: Marta Marín-Dòmine.
Page 193 Fig. 10.1 “Shame On YOU.” Photo credit: Rita Tourkova.
viii
Acknowledgments
As part of the series Culture, Disease and Well-Being: The Grey Zone of Health and Illness,
this volume represents the work of a multidisciplinary project in Medical Humanities.
We are grateful to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) whose funding
makes the project possible. The Grey Zone group’s base for research, workshops and
connection with the community is the Culture of Cities Centre in downtown Toronto.
Our sincere thanks to the Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo for supporting the
Centre.
Some of the work in this collection was, in an earlier, performative shape, presented
at the End Notes symposium held on the Ides of March 2008 at the Culture of Cities
Centre. End Notes was organized by Jan Plecash as part of the Centre’s Symptoms of the
City series of community events.
Thanks to Morgan Tunzelmann for invaluable help in preparing the manuscript, to
Steve Clark for incisive and constructive comments on the Introduction, to the Grey
Zone group for inspired insights on the character and focus of the volume, and to May
Yao at Intellect Books for her efforts on behalf of the Grey Zone series.
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