The Corpse Not In Its Place, Silhouetting A Necroeconomy
August 2022, MA Thesis, Dutch Art Institute
Supervisor: Ghalya Saadawi
August 2022, MA Thesis, Dutch Art Institute
Supervisor: Ghalya Saadawi
The thesis sets off as a speculative parsing of an exemplary corpse
trading crime in contemporary China, which laid bare the improbable
self-sufficiency of the mortal order as we know it. To silhouette a
necroeconomy that stretches beyond the funeral industry and leaks
through the orifices of the post-secular Chinese society, I find the
necessity to attend to the not-yet-extinguished cosmo(necro-)logical
infrastructure that predicates the economic relation between the
realm of yang, i.e., the realm of the living, and the realm of yin, i.e.,
the realm of the (un)dead.
The thesis takes anthropological,
etymological, and archaeological accounts as sites for ominous
reading—a method of reading that attends to the hauntological
structure of non-linear causality rather than the linear inference of
cause and effect. The thesis witnesses my attempts to suture a
corpse-ghost continuum and to formulate a particular necrotechnics
based on entombment. The aim is to situate the peculiar agency of
corpses as the locus of a necroeconomy whose paradigm is yet to be
defined.
The thesis takes anthropological, etymological, and archaeological accounts as sites for ominous reading—a method of reading that attends to the hauntological structure of non-linear causality rather than the linear inference of cause and effect. The thesis witnesses my attempts to suture a corpse-ghost continuum and to formulate a particular necrotechnics based on entombment. The aim is to situate the peculiar agency of corpses as the locus of a necroeconomy whose paradigm is yet to be defined.
| full text available upon request
| full text available upon request