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Vibrant Death: A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning
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 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.
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 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.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published January 13, 2022
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72 people want to read
About the author
Nina Lykke
46 books1 followerNina Lykke (born 1949) is a Danish–Swedish gender studies scholar. She is noted for her work on feminist theory, and is distinguished professor of gender studies at Linköping University in Sweden.
Not to be confused with Norwegian author Nina Lykke
Not to be confused with Norwegian author Nina Lykke
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September 21, 2025What I thought was great:
1) I love how queer this is, and I think the reconfiguration of mourning through rethinking the harsh life/death distinction was fascinating; philosophically and poetically (and to some extent also politically: would have loved a more in-depth chapter on this apart from the coda.) I love this idea of creating a new relationship with a dead loved one not through the spectral, but through direct communication and immersion (in nature): and the idea of death as a vibrant happening not just gloomy or dark.
2) Politically, I do think it is important we rethink mourning, and how we tend to think of mourning as a process that has to come to an end at a certain point (where here I use ‘we’ to refer to white Western people): so here discussions of the mourning ‘I’ and her position in a broader social/political structure: intriguing. I have more caveats when it comes to her points on liminality; but will have to think a bit more about how to put this in to words.
3) Of course her point is more on the phenomenology and ontology side of philosophy and I have less to say about this as these are not my philosophical expertises and tbh I’m probably too dumb to properly engage with them. BUT I do think there’s a lot to say for how mourning changes your perception & experience of the world; in a way this book was a fantastic elaboration on Didion’s magical thinking (especially with the chapter on miracles.).
4) And of course any discussion of the weird inbetween state of the human corpse as both a corpse and a person? Yes pls. Her descriptions of the moment of dying were really beautiful and also challening to me and some of my own personal & professional assumptions and intuitions
5) I support her attempt to challenge knowledge production as purely an academic endeavor through her attempt to use poetry and storytelling next to her more dense academic writing.
What I thought was less great
1) Okay so firstly; the poetry was Downright bad. Sorry to say so. Just because you can write (academically), does not mean you can write poetry? It’s a skill in and of itself and this was just … no.
2) And it was made worse / more cringe by her explanations and analysis of her own poems which, for that matter, were, apart from the use of the word ‘rhizomatically’ downright easy to follow in the first place. Sorry but you don’t explain jokes and you don’t explain poetry; especially not your own? And it made me take her discussions of the importance of personal and poetic writing in academia a bit less serious tbh
3) On a more serious note, I missed a discussion, mention, note on classism/class. Like she engages with her position as a white western scholar (which is good!!), but she also has a certain financial and social position that allows her to mourn the way she does. There’s so many ways in which class influences your encounters with death and dying as well as the space, room and ways of mourning you are allowed: from financial struggle in attempting to arrange funerals, to a necessity of continuing to work etc. Then her description of her relationship with covid also fell flat to me because being in a position where you get the choice to self-isolate to this extend (while still dreaming about dying) already puts you in a certain position both health- and class wise (which are ofc related).
4) More on style I have to say it has been some time I read theory, and I found myself rolling my eyes when 16 pages deep into a chapter she was still explaining to me what she was going to answer, establish or explore, in the vaguest sense possible. ( A lot of 'opening up', 'figuring/refiguring', 'exploring' etc) Like I UNDERSTAND why academic writing is sometimes dense and full of jargon and I UNDERSTAND this is not necessarily my field and maybe it’s just me missing something, or being away from academia for too long, or not grasping the full depth, but I found myself thinking both get to your point AND I get the point a tad bit too often.
1) I love how queer this is, and I think the reconfiguration of mourning through rethinking the harsh life/death distinction was fascinating; philosophically and poetically (and to some extent also politically: would have loved a more in-depth chapter on this apart from the coda.) I love this idea of creating a new relationship with a dead loved one not through the spectral, but through direct communication and immersion (in nature): and the idea of death as a vibrant happening not just gloomy or dark.
2) Politically, I do think it is important we rethink mourning, and how we tend to think of mourning as a process that has to come to an end at a certain point (where here I use ‘we’ to refer to white Western people): so here discussions of the mourning ‘I’ and her position in a broader social/political structure: intriguing. I have more caveats when it comes to her points on liminality; but will have to think a bit more about how to put this in to words.
3) Of course her point is more on the phenomenology and ontology side of philosophy and I have less to say about this as these are not my philosophical expertises and tbh I’m probably too dumb to properly engage with them. BUT I do think there’s a lot to say for how mourning changes your perception & experience of the world; in a way this book was a fantastic elaboration on Didion’s magical thinking (especially with the chapter on miracles.).
4) And of course any discussion of the weird inbetween state of the human corpse as both a corpse and a person? Yes pls. Her descriptions of the moment of dying were really beautiful and also challening to me and some of my own personal & professional assumptions and intuitions
5) I support her attempt to challenge knowledge production as purely an academic endeavor through her attempt to use poetry and storytelling next to her more dense academic writing.
What I thought was less great
1) Okay so firstly; the poetry was Downright bad. Sorry to say so. Just because you can write (academically), does not mean you can write poetry? It’s a skill in and of itself and this was just … no.
2) And it was made worse / more cringe by her explanations and analysis of her own poems which, for that matter, were, apart from the use of the word ‘rhizomatically’ downright easy to follow in the first place. Sorry but you don’t explain jokes and you don’t explain poetry; especially not your own? And it made me take her discussions of the importance of personal and poetic writing in academia a bit less serious tbh
3) On a more serious note, I missed a discussion, mention, note on classism/class. Like she engages with her position as a white western scholar (which is good!!), but she also has a certain financial and social position that allows her to mourn the way she does. There’s so many ways in which class influences your encounters with death and dying as well as the space, room and ways of mourning you are allowed: from financial struggle in attempting to arrange funerals, to a necessity of continuing to work etc. Then her description of her relationship with covid also fell flat to me because being in a position where you get the choice to self-isolate to this extend (while still dreaming about dying) already puts you in a certain position both health- and class wise (which are ofc related).
4) More on style I have to say it has been some time I read theory, and I found myself rolling my eyes when 16 pages deep into a chapter she was still explaining to me what she was going to answer, establish or explore, in the vaguest sense possible. ( A lot of 'opening up', 'figuring/refiguring', 'exploring' etc) Like I UNDERSTAND why academic writing is sometimes dense and full of jargon and I UNDERSTAND this is not necessarily my field and maybe it’s just me missing something, or being away from academia for too long, or not grasping the full depth, but I found myself thinking both get to your point AND I get the point a tad bit too often.
May 11, 2025
It’s not every day that you come across a book that navigates poetry and personal narrative as swiftly and effectively as it does critical theory and philosophy. Learned a lot from this book and was also deeply, entirely moved, often to tears. Was planning on skimming for quotes for a paper and fully read this cover to cover. Easily the best thing I’ve read this year and I genuinely want to re-read it immediately!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews