Vibrant Death: A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning (Theory in the New Humanities)

Travelling to the World of the Dead. 2 To the Waters, to the Waters. 3 Lacrimoso e Lamentoso (Crying and Lamenting). 4 Vibrato Bruscamente (Abruptly Vibrating). 5 Silenzio Appassionato (Passionate Silence). 6 Ardente e Ondeggiante (Burning and Undulating). 7 Milagrosa (Miraculous). 8 Glissando (Gliding between Pitches). 9 Con Abbandono e Devozione (With Self-Abandon and Devotion). 10 What if Every Critter's Death was Vibrant? ix A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS Th is book is dedicated, fi rst and foremost, to you, my forever beloved, Mette Bryld, to thank and honour you not only as my forever beloved, but also as the great feminist scholar, activist and writer you were. I wrote my books either to you or together with you. Cosmodolphins (Bryld and Lykke 2000) we wrote together. Vibrant Death is written to you, but also together with you. You live in me, and I live in the algae sand with which your ashes are now merged. Vibrant Death is also dedicated to you, Camila Marambio, my spiritualintellectual guide, amazing curator-artist, philosopher and activist, who has opened up my limited Western horizon to spiritual materialism, and to Abya Yala cosm-ontologies and philosophies. For the opening up of Abya Yala horizons to the Selk'nam people, I also warmly thank you, Hema'ny Molina Vargas, indigenous writer, activist and philosopher, president of the Corporacion Selk'nam Chile. My sincere gratitude goes to both of you, Camila and Hema'ny, who, as part of our joint work on Decolonising Mourning (Vargas, Marambio and Lykke 2020), taught me that writing letters to the dead makes sense for real, not only in a liminal world in-between 'real' and 'not-real' . My warmest thanks go also to you, my dear friends, fantastic colleagues and very constructive readers, Margrit Shildrick, Marietta Radomska, Madina Tlostanova, Camila Marambio and Katja Aglert, who gave me very useful comments and responses on diff erent parts of the manuscript. Th anks so very, very much to you, too, my dear, dear rainbow family, Uff e Bryld, Rikke Ø xner, Eigil Bryld, Naja Marie Aidt, Dorthe Staun ae s, Sverre Raff ns ø e, Asker Bryld Staun ae s, Matilde M ø rk, Sal Bryld Staun ae s, Sofus Bryld Staun ae s, Zakarias Bryld Aidt and Johan Heurlin Aidt. And also to you, Carl Emil Heurlin Aidt -we would so much have wanted to still have both you and Mette physically in our midst, though I am happy to know both of you now in spectral shapes. A very warm thanks to all of you for giving me free rein to include you in the autobiographical stories in the book, and in some cases to use your names explicitly. Th ese stories are yours as well, even though they are told exclusively from my perspective. Th anks so very much for the immense trust you have placed in me; I sincerely hope that I have not in any way betrayed this trust through the ways in which I told the stories. I also want to thank those of you who, along the road, read and commented on various parts of the poetry collection and autobiographical stories. Your comments were very important to me. Th anks so much to all of you for your strong, loving and continuing encouragement and support. Also a warm thanks to you, my dearest friends, who agreed to appear under your own names in some of the autobiographical parts of Vibrant Death : Lene x xi Acknowledgements J ø rgensen, Margrit Shildrick, Camila Marambio and Berit Starkman. I hope it comes through, in the parts where you appear, just how much your supportive friendship and interventions in my journey through mourning have meant to me. Th anks also to everyone who participated in the mourning circles. In addition to those whom I have already mentioned above, and therefore will not mention again, I would like to thank Bente "Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book's ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book's posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material). Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine "I", who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death's material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning "I"'s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject"-- Provided by publisher Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgements 11 Notes on Text and Photos 14 Overture: Travelling to the World of the Dead: A Triptych 16 1 Queering Death and Posthumanizing Mourning: Introduction 22 Interlude I: Lacrimoso e Lamentoso (Crying and Lamenting) 38 2 The Excessive Mourner 54 Interlude II: Vibrato Bruscamente (Abruptly Vibrating) 72 3 The Vibrant Corpse 86 Interlude III: Silenzio Appassionato (Passionate Silence) 106 4 Is The Wall of Silence Breachable? 120 Interlude IV: Ardente e Ondeggiante (Burning and Undulating) 146 5 Miraculous Co-Becomings? 158 Interlude V: Milagrosa (Miraculous) 176 6 Pluriversal Conversations on Immanent Miracles 182 Interlude VI: Glissando (Gliding between Pitches) 202 7 Doing Posthuman Autophenomenography, Poetics and Divinatory Figuring 214 Interlude VII: Con Abbandono e Devozione (With Self-Abandon and Devotion) 238 Coda: Between Love-Death and a Posthuman Ethics of Vibrant Death 250 Notes 270 References 284 Index 294