Death and Representation

Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society

by Sarah Webster Goodwin (Editor/Contributor), Elisabeth Bronfen (Editor/Contributor), Ernst van Alphen (Contributor)

Death is a subject of increasing interest in virtually all academic disciplines, yet there is surprisingly little theoretical work on the representation of death in literary contexts. Death and Representation offers a unique collection of international and interdisciplinary essays, rich in cultural perspectives but sharing a relatively common vocabulary. It provides models for a number of interrelated approaches—including psychoanalytic, feminist, and historical—with essays by prominent and promising scholars. All the contirbutions combine theory with textual readings, whether of literature, paintings, historical sources, or—in one case—a passage from Freud. The essays in Death and Representation trace the multifarious ways in which death in both unknowable and repeatably constructed. In so doing, the colection shows how thematics—as an issue in scholarly research—can servce as a platform for interdisciplinary discussions. Essays are organized in three "REading Sign, Psyche, Text"; "Death and Gender"; and "History, Power, Ideology." Contributors are Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, Regina Barreca, Elisabeth Bronfen, Carol Christ, Sander Gilman, Sarah Webster Goodwin, Margaret Higonnet, Regina Janes, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Ronald Schleifer, Charles Segal, and Garrett Stewart.

Genres: Anthropology, Film, Death, Cultural

344 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1993

About the author

Sarah McKim Webster Goodwin (b. 1953) is an English professor at Skidmore University.

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like academic writing but most of this book was that hard to understand wank that I suspect hides lack of meaning (but maybe they are just a lot smarter than me...maybe....I used to think so). Some of it I struggled to understand, only to be disappointed by what it was saying, especially the "afterword".

One chapter I really did like was Rajan's chapter on representing sati. It was still written in a convoluted way which was initially hard to understand but as I read I sort of got into it and she was saying really important stuff about how white colonialism when it seems to be speaking out against native/subaltern sexism is actually just reinforcing a more exploitative type of sexism over the top of it. I feel like some of the thoughts in this chapter are useful also to explain in Australia just what is wrong with the NT intervention and whiteness attempts to "protect" Indigenous women and children.

There were a couple of other interesting ones, and some literature was discussed which now I have a desire to read. Overall I am not sorry I read it, but I still think much of it was wank and I am not sure I understand what the unifying idea is (apart from "death" as a very broad theme).