Corpses in Training: Blanchot and The International Necronautical Society’s Experimental Expeditions Beyond Life

Abstract

The commentary discusses Blanchodian theorization on death and its experimental application in the International Necronautical Society (1999–2010). Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas regarded life as suspended living overshadowed by one’s death that was unknowable. Challenging such utter unknowability, the INS took cues from twentieth-century avant-garde discourses (revolving around the mélange of life and art) where death imbued perceptions of temporal stasis, finality, and journeying into the unknown. Their experimentalism conceptualized death as a “space” to be explored through artistic means. The INS sought to unravel the unassailable binaries between life and the absoluteness of death through art.