All the Names

The first chapter of my thesis addresses the notion of the dead returning to collect on some sort of symbolic debt. Zizek writes that the dead often return if "something [goes] wrong with their obsequies” or there is “a disturbance in the symbolic rite” (Looking Awry 23).



I thought of this, and many other ideas, as I read this LA Times article about an increase in the number of bodies being unclaimed because of the down economy. The above image from the story evoked, for me, passages of Jose Saramago's excellent novel All the Names. I think the photo shows a real version of what Saramago was getting at metaphorically. There are a lot of ideas intermixing in this sad news story, among them: a notion of archive that is subverted because it is made up of actual human remains, the notion of the name of the person representing their essence, the idea of the physical remains representing the essence of the deceased, the symbolic relation between the living and the memory of the dead. In a way, this is my thesis...it's only missing the fictional element and is, therefore, much more tragic. I wish I could write more, but I need to get back to chapter 2.