Book Review: Corpse Encounters: An Aesthetics of Death

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Bitlisli M. N.

MSGSÜ Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, no.30, pp.191-194, 2024 (TRDizin)

Abstract

Through emphasising corpses and their aesthetically reimagined versions, Jacqueline Elam and Chase Pielak, in their book Corpse Encounters: An Aesthetics of Death, strive to expound upon the encounters with death so as to discern not only the ways corpses are conceptualised within the limits of systems of meaning but also to untangle the relation between self and the other underlined in one’s own disposition towards death. Hence, the book incorporates a meticulous effort to establish a framework whose undertone calls for a reconsideration of the supposed demarcation between life and death in order to identify aesthetic figurations with which the possibility for an afflux that can distort as well as reaffirm images inscribed into dead bodies emerges.