The dominion of the dead

224 Pages·2003·4.05 MB·English

by  Harrison

t h e d o m i n i o n
o f t h e d e a d

t h e d o m i n i o n
o f t h e d e a d
Robert Pogue Harrison
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
Robert Pogue Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian
Literature and chairs the Department of French and Italian at Stanford
University. He is the author of The Body of Beatrice(Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1988); Forests: The Shadow of Civilization(University of Chicago Press,
1992); and Rome, la pluie: A quoi bon la literature?(Flammarion, 1994).
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2003by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 0-226-31791-9(cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harrison, Robert Pogue.
The dominion of the dead / Robert Pogue Harrison.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-226-31791-9(hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Death—Psychological aspects. 2. Death—Social aspects.
I. Title.
BF789.D4H375 2003
306.9—dc21
2003002158
(cid:2)(cid:2)The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
To a feast of friends and the giant family

Contents
Preface ix
Note on References xiii
1. The Earth and Its Dead 1
2. Hic Jacet 17
3. What Is a House? 37
4. The Voice of Grief 55
5. The Origin of Our Basic Words 72
6. Choosing Your Ancestor 90
7. Hic Non Est 106
8. The Names of the Dead 124
9. The Afterlife of the Image 142
Notes 161
Works Cited 183
Index 199

Preface
Whatever the rift that separates their regimes, nature and culture have
at least this much in common: both compel the living to serve the in-
terests of the unborn. Yet they differ in their strategies in one decisive
respect: culture perpetuates itself through the power of the dead, while
nature, as far as we know, makes no use of this resource except in a
strictly organic sense. In the human realm the dead and the unborn are
native allies, so much so that from their posthumous abode—wherever
it be—the former hound the living with guilt, dread, and a sense of re-
sponsibility, obliging us, by whatever means necessary, to take the un-
born into our care and to keep the story going, even if we never quite
figure out what the story is about, what our part in it is, the end toward
which it’s progressing, or the moral it contains. One day the science of
genetics may decode the secrets of this custodianship, but meanwhile
we may rest assured that there exists an allegiance between the dead
and the unborn of which we the living are merely the ligature.
Our basic human institutions—religion, matrimony, and burial, if
one goes along with Giambattista Vico, but also law, language, litera-
ture, and whatever else relies on the transmission of legacy—are au-
thored, always and from the very start, by those who came before. The
awareness of death that defines human nature is inseparable from—in-
deed, it arises from—our awareness that we are not self-authored, that
we follow in the footsteps of the dead. Everywhere one looks across the
spectrum of human cultures one finds the foundational authority of
the predecessor. Nonhuman species obey only the law of vitality, but hu-
manity in its distinctive features is through and through necrocratic.
Whether we are conscious of it or not we do the will of the ancestors:
our commandments come to us from their realm; their precedents are
our law; we submit to their dictates, even when we rebel against them.
Our diligence, hardihood, rectitude, and heroism, but also our folly,
ix