key concepts

Potential avenues of inquiry to travel
which may or may not merge further down the road

1. Languages of Loss
how do we communicate flux and loss with language?
how is the 'fixity' of language disrupted in narratives of death?
naming with euphemisms - the way our culture speaks of death (or doesn't)
unsaying - or speaking around something - suggestive language
language of desire - fragmentation and sequence - editing
the testimonial compulsion - personal narrative - function and form
speaking silence
breakdown and progress


2. The Death Mask
'facing' death through masquerade/identity play
the carnivalesque/burlesque/grotesque
methods towards identifying with the liminal
towards integrating/experience the 'knowledge' of death-of-self by being 'not-me'
history of ritual mask-and-dancing
halloween - danse macabre - dia de los muertos
the fashioning of death (skull n crossbones) as an american way of making absence present
Six Feet Under - embodying (giving form to) death/dying/etc through television (actors as masks)
goth commodification
wax works, automata, marionettes and the Uncanny


3. Eros and Thanatos
sex and death - the pleasure principle and the death drive
decadence, debauchery and decay
body modification - tattooing
externalization of pain
attraction - repulsion
jouissance
violence


4. Performing Mourning
grief tropes - the 'stages of grief'
putting the fun back in funeral
the memorial theatre
role-playing
ritualizing change
acceptable mourning - 'good grief' - vs unacceptable responses
discomfort and embarrassment
public grieving - community
inhibition and transgression