American Afterlives: Ghosts in the Commodity

IF 0.6 0 ARCHAEOLOGY

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology Pub Date : 2020-03-11 DOI:10.1558/jca.36898

S. Dawdy

引用次数: 1

Abstract

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.

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美国人的余生：商品中的幽灵

在过去的20年里，美国的死亡实践经历了快速的转变。创造性的、个性化的纪念活动伴随着新的材料实践。我举了三个企业家的例子，他们用火化的人类遗骸制作物品。这里讨论的实体不能轻松地称为人类或非人类。两者都是。它们的设计是为了促进与死者的持续关系。这些新的实体虽然可以通过类似的方式生产，但并不完全是商品。它们主要被不可知论者所接受，虽然它们包含了保存完好的人体部分，但它们并不是确切的宗教遗物。它们最接近个人恋物，或者是一种根本的物质类型的鬼魂。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology ARCHAEOLOGY-

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to explore archaeology’s specific contribution to understanding the present and recent past. It is concerned both with archaeologies of the contemporary world, defined temporally as belonging to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as with reflections on the socio-political implications of doing archaeology in the contemporary world. In addition to its focus on archaeology, JCA encourages articles from a range of adjacent disciplines which consider recent and contemporary material-cultural entanglements, including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, design studies, heritage studies, history, human geography, media studies, museum studies, psychology, science and technology studies and sociology. Acknowledging the key place which photography and digital media have come to occupy within this emerging subfield, JCA includes a regular photo essay feature and provides space for the publication of interactive, web-only content on its website.