American Afterlives
Ghosts in the Commodity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36898Keywords:
cremation, death, funerary practices, object agency, ontology, United StatesAbstract
In the United States, death practices have been undergoing a rapid transformation in the last 20 years. Moves towards creative, individualized observances are accompanied by new material practices. I deploy ethnographic examples of three entrepreneurs who make objects from cremated human remains. The entities discussed here cannot be comfortably called either human or non-human. They are both. And they are designed to facilitate on ongoing relationship with the dead. These new entities are not exactly commodities, although they may be produced through similar means. Embraced primarily by agnostics, they are not exactly religious relics, although they contain preserved parts of the human body. They come closest to being a personal fetish, or a radically material type of ghost.
Downloads
References
Appadurai, A. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582
Ariès, P. 1981. The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death over the Last One Thousand Years. trans. H. Weaver, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Bennett, J. 2009 Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv111jh6w
Cann, C.K. 2015. Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. University of Kentucky Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813145419.001.0001
Dawdy, S.L. 2016. Patina: A Profane Archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226351223.001.0001
de la Cadena, M. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smtkx
Fowles, S. 2011. “’Worlds Otherwise’: Archaeology, Anthropology and Ontological Difference.” Current Anthropology 52(6):896-912. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/662027
Freud, S. 2003 [1899]. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Books.
Geary, P. 1986. “Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics.” In Social Life of Things, edited by A. Appadurai, 169–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582.008
Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
González-Ruibal, A. 2006. “The Past Is Tomorrow. Towards an Archaeology of the Vanishing Present.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 39(2): 110-125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00293650601030073
Hagerty, A. 2014. “Speak Softly to the Dead: The Uses of Enchantment in American Home Funerals.” Social Anthropology, 22(4): 428-442. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12087
Hertz, R. 1960 [1907]. Death and the Right Hand. Aberdeen: The University Press.
Kohn, E. 2013. How Forests Think: Towards an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520276109.001.0001
Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. by L. Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press.
Laqueur, T. 2015. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77h3r
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
--- 2007. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lazzari, M. 2014. “Old and New Materialisms [response to Witmore].” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1(2): 236-238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1i2.26676
LifeGem website. http://www.lifegem.com/index.php (accessed 14 July 2018).
Mitford, J. 2000 [revised]. The American Way of Death Revisited. New York: Vintage Books.
Olsen, B. 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. Plymouth, UK: Altamira Press.
Pietz, W. 1985. “The Problem of the Fetish, I.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 9: 5–17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/RESv9n1ms20166719
Schwartz, M. 2015. Dead Matter: The Meaning of Iconic Corpses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816694334.001.0001
Taussig, M. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Venkatesan, S., ed., with M. Candea, M. Carrithers, M. Holbraad, and K. Sykes. 2010. “Ontology Is Just Another Word for Culture," Critique of Anthropology 30(2):152-200. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X09364070
Witmore, C. 2014. “Archaeology and the New Materialisms.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1(2): 203-246. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1i2.16661
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
