DEATH - The Ultimate Uncanny?
Forgive me this indulgence.............My father died one week ago.
I found (and am still finding, reflectively,) the experience of this to be sad beyond words,to be deeply disturbing and truly uncanny on a variety of levels.
I have never experienced a death like his; firstly to witness the death of the very same life force that gave life to me; to witness the death of a human being so closely related to me. We look alike, think alike, laugh alike. Am I still whole?
But also to touch, to feel, to see, to hear and to smell his death in an intimate and condensed physical experience. Death throes that took eight hours to conclude, all the while thinking that every laboured breath would be the last. Breaths that seemed to draw every last drop of energy from his very bones. And every sense in my own body immersed and overwhelmed. So strange and powerless to watch the life energy literally leave his body, to hear the final breath, that very moment, that very second, when all function ceases. Sat bolt upright, eyes wide open, mouth agape and lips bleeding, he squeezed my hand, noisy, laboured breath drawn-in so deeply it never came back out. Everything stopped. Then nothing, just nothing. Eyes still open, adopting the fixed expression that a face assumes in the instant of death, his hand still clutching mine. He felt warm to my touch for a long time after............
In a paper by Emanuel Alloa called, Bare Exteriority - Philosophy of the Image and the Image of Philosophy, the author discusses and compares theories put forward by Heidegger and Blanchot. Part of this discussion examines death and the uncanny. According to Alloa, Blanchot believes that seeing a corpse is an uncanny experience because literally, it is the suspension of the familiar. The dead person is there and at the same time neither down here nor up there, neither here nor anywhere else: Â The cadaveric presence establishes a relation between here and nowhere. While the sight of the corpse de-places the viewer, the corpse re-mains irrevocably here. Only grudgingly is the corpse moved somewhere else; the dead person monopolizes the space, and fills it with his absence. Although the corpse has approached the condition of a thing as much as possible it is spread out on the death bed, prepared and although the dead person has become pure passivity, he seems to have absolute free-dom of movement and the ability to paralyse the power of the living. At the site of death all everyday activities cease.
The corpse troubles the home, because to remain in the abode is no longer permitted. The corpse is uncanny since the dead has no place; the appearance of the dead is a visitation, and no here can be a home any longer. Blanchot writes: The cadaver may be peacefully laying in state, but it is still everywhere in the room and in the house.
In death, as in life there is placelessness.
I found (and am still finding, reflectively,) the experience of this to be sad beyond words,to be deeply disturbing and truly uncanny on a variety of levels.
I have never experienced a death like his; firstly to witness the death of the very same life force that gave life to me; to witness the death of a human being so closely related to me. We look alike, think alike, laugh alike. Am I still whole?
But also to touch, to feel, to see, to hear and to smell his death in an intimate and condensed physical experience. Death throes that took eight hours to conclude, all the while thinking that every laboured breath would be the last. Breaths that seemed to draw every last drop of energy from his very bones. And every sense in my own body immersed and overwhelmed. So strange and powerless to watch the life energy literally leave his body, to hear the final breath, that very moment, that very second, when all function ceases. Sat bolt upright, eyes wide open, mouth agape and lips bleeding, he squeezed my hand, noisy, laboured breath drawn-in so deeply it never came back out. Everything stopped. Then nothing, just nothing. Eyes still open, adopting the fixed expression that a face assumes in the instant of death, his hand still clutching mine. He felt warm to my touch for a long time after............
In a paper by Emanuel Alloa called, Bare Exteriority - Philosophy of the Image and the Image of Philosophy, the author discusses and compares theories put forward by Heidegger and Blanchot. Part of this discussion examines death and the uncanny. According to Alloa, Blanchot believes that seeing a corpse is an uncanny experience because literally, it is the suspension of the familiar. The dead person is there and at the same time neither down here nor up there, neither here nor anywhere else: Â The cadaveric presence establishes a relation between here and nowhere. While the sight of the corpse de-places the viewer, the corpse re-mains irrevocably here. Only grudgingly is the corpse moved somewhere else; the dead person monopolizes the space, and fills it with his absence. Although the corpse has approached the condition of a thing as much as possible it is spread out on the death bed, prepared and although the dead person has become pure passivity, he seems to have absolute free-dom of movement and the ability to paralyse the power of the living. At the site of death all everyday activities cease.
The corpse troubles the home, because to remain in the abode is no longer permitted. The corpse is uncanny since the dead has no place; the appearance of the dead is a visitation, and no here can be a home any longer. Blanchot writes: The cadaver may be peacefully laying in state, but it is still everywhere in the room and in the house.
In death, as in life there is placelessness.
posted by maria edney at 10:51 PM
3 Comments:
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I am reminded of something my grandmother used to say - that a dying person has a cold death sweat - that you sense death is near rather than see it. I have witnessed this myself.
I agree that death is the ultimate uncanny because it is completely unimaginable in the mind of someone living - to be nothing, even less than nothing.
x
I know what you mean. It makes Damien Hirst's work 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'suddenly seem very good indeed.
Mx
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