Description
Book SynopsisVibrant 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
Trade Review
Lykke challenges the entrenched dualist, Christian, secular, and colonial understandings of death and mourning by allowing her excessive mourning to continue unbounded ... By opening the door to a new understanding of death and mourning, Lykke leaves the reader with a deep sense of love and connection to the world and has us join her in asking, “what if every critter’s death was vibrant?” * Journal of Lesbian Studies *
Composed of ashes, pearls, diatoms, longing and audacious thought, this book takes the reader beyond the life/death threshold, to an encounter with the posthuman that is both spectral and inexorably material. Nina Lykke takes posthumanist scholarship to a new place. * Maggie MacLure, Professor Emerita, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK *
Through an interweaving of dimensions such as photography, poetry, storytelling, opera, miraculous co-becomings and philosophical reflections, Vibrant Death invites us to a process of un-learning of death beyond the idea of static nothingness. This book is a radical, sensorial and transformative project * Katja Aglert, independent artist and Professor of Art, Linköping University, Sweden *
Vibrant Death is simply stunning across all registers: affective, methodological, theoretical and poetic. As a magical “travelogue”, its range and depth of inquiry around the issues of death and mourning are fearless and startlingly innovative. Lykke gives us a relentlessly posthuman, queerfeminist text that beautifully exemplifies an erotics of connection. * Margrit Shildrick, Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Stockholm University, Sweden *
Table of Contents
Overture: Travelling to the World of the Dead – A Triptych Chapter 1: Queering Death and Posthumanizing Mourning - Introduction Interlude I: Lacrimoso e Lamentoso (Crying and Lamenting) Chapter 2: The Excessive Mourner Interlude II: Vibrato Bruscamente (Abruptly Vibrating) Chapter 3. The Vibrant Corpse Interlude III: Silenzio Appasionato (Passionate Silence) Chapter 4: Is the Wall of Silence Breachable? Interlude IV: Ardente e Ondeggiante (Burning and Undulating) Chapter 5: Miraculous Co-Becomings? Interlude V: Milagrosa (Miraculous) Chapter 6: Pluriversal Conversations on Immanent Miracles Interlude VI: Glissando (Gliding Between Pitches) Chapter 7: Doing Posthuman Autophenomenography, Poetics, and Divinatory Figuring Interlude VII: Con Abbandono e Devozione (With Self-Abandon and Devotion) Coda - Between Love-Death and a Posthuman Ethics of Vibrant Death
