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Drawing on a wide range of sources-from Toni Morrison to Derrida to grassroots "death positive" movements-Beatrice Marovich critiques a political theology that pits life and death against each other in a state of endless war. Adapting the figure of "Sister Death" from Saint Francis, she calls for recognizing that life and death are family.
List of contents
List of Works
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Sister Death
1. Life, Death, and Lifedeath
2. The War with Death
3. The Human-Above-Death
4. Constellated Negatives
5. Sisterhood and Enmity
6. Natal Disturbance
Conclusion: Into the Dirt
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Beatrice Marovich is associate professor of theological studies at Hanover College.
Summary
Life and death are commonly seen as representing the starkest of binaries: Death is the ultimate adversary of all that lives. Beatrice Marovich argues that such understandings of mortality have been deeply influenced by a strain of Christian political theology that has left its mark on both religious and secular narratives. Adapting the figure of “Sister Death” from Saint Francis of Assisi, she calls for recognizing that life and death are family.
Drawing on a wide range of sources—from Toni Morrison to Jacques Derrida, psychoanalysis to grassroots “death positive” movements—Marovich critiques a racialized political theology that pits life and death against each other in a state of endless war. In a time of extinctions, it is necessary to disrupt this dominant story in order to apprehend death as a collective, multispecies event. Sister Death proposes an alternative view in which life and death are not mortal enemies destined for mutual destruction. Instead, they are engaged in a contested, tense, and sometimes mutually empowering form of connection—a sisterhood.
Eloquent and approachable, this book deftly integrates the insights of a number of disciplines to provide a profound reconsideration of the relations between life and death. Sister Death also features a series of original works by the artist Krista Dragomer that stage an ongoing conceptual conversation with the text.
