After Death Author(s): Jonathan Strauss Source: Diacritics, Vol. 30, No.

3, Post-Mortem: The State of Death as a Modern Construct (Autumn, 2000), pp. 90-104 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566345 Accessed: 11/12/2009 17:35
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AFTER

DEATH

JONATHAN STRAUSS

Accordingto PhilippeAries, the nineteenthcenturywas a turningpoint in the historyof death.On the one handthereemergeda new sense of the irreplaceability of individual preciousnessof a single life. On people, of the finality of death and the immeasurable the other hand death, that which followed one's demise, became conceptually more austere. For the first time since antiquity,perhapsever, the belief that death is pure negativity or nothingness asserted itself with enough success to become a generally acceptedculturalattitude.'This image of sheer nonexistence,this death strippeddown to its ontological minimum,is the most extremeform of mortalitythathas arisenin the historyof the West, the hardestperhapsto take, the most naked.In ways thatcould not have occurredbefore, these two developmentsin the historyof deathhave workedwith of subjectivity,a set of theorizaand againsteach other to create a new understanding tions abouthumanindividualitythat,for all theirdiversityof detail, are boundtogether Hegel's views on the relationbetweenmortalityand by a certainhistoricaldeterminacy. for like instance, Heidegger's or Blanchot's, have no precedent,but they subjectivity, do have endless repercussions.Whatevertheir causes, the newness and the effectiveness of these theories indicatethatduringthe nineteenthcenturya unique culturalformation arose in relationto mortality.The moment still has not passed, since the basic elements of the new deathcontinueto operateon contemporary imaginationsandtheorizations.Whatfollows is an attemptto drawthe portraitof the deaththatemergedfor the first time in the nineteenthcentury:to critically and analyticallyexamine formulations of the relationbetween deathand identityin orderto determinethe value of absolute mortalityas an individualizingprinciple.Often these formulationsaremost clearly articulatedby post-nineteenth-century thinkers,but they are the products,and indeed thatoccurredsometimeafterthe Revothe expressions,of thathistoricaltransformation we areaskingnot merely whetherthey lution.When we readthese texts andarguments, are valid as arguments,but about the value of the general attitudethey reflect-the value not only of a specific kind of death,but of a kind of subjectivitythatis uniqueto the last two hundredyears.And since that subjectivityis probablythe most significant productof those centuries,the most pervasiveandthe most intimatelyaffecting,we are also, intentionallyor not, asking aboutthe value of a whole period. To read this relation between mortalityand subjectivity,we must come to some aboutthe termsat issue, especially what deathis or is not when considunderstanding ered in its most extreme form as simple nothingness.It may seem odd that this is an issue at all, but nonexistence has proven a difficult concept to integrateinto theorizawhatis going on beforeour eyes. 1. See,for example, Aries: "Nowwe can understand infeelings.Berevolution or not,we haveall beentransformed by thegreatromantic Willingly andintolerable to us. seemsunthinkable tween us andothersit hascreated bonds whoserupture was thefirst to refuse death"[2: 293, cf. 181,291]. Ondeath So that generation first romantic thethesisthatdeath,in medicine .. . ralliedaround "Inthenineteenth andnothingness: century andnon-life. of thebodyandthesoul,a deformation itself,doesnotexist,thatit is theseparation thecharacterized, no longerhaveanymeaning Deathsimply became It would beyond negativity. andcatalogued illnessof whichit wasthefinal stage"[2: 70, see also52ff]. named,

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tions of humanlife. The first question to raise in this context is whetherdeath can be to a considereda state, a divisive propositionon which much hangs. In the introduction recent collection of essays on metaphysics and death, John MartinFischer baldly asserted that "being dead is a condition or a state" [4]. The philosopherPaul Edwards, as he puts it, of consideringdeathas however,has pointedto some of the "absurdities," an ontological condition.To imagine deathas a stateis, he argues,to attribute to it some sortof being, but death,understoodas the permanent loss of consciousness and experience, has no being andis simply absence.To imagineotherwiseleads to attempts(made by such existentialistphilosophersas FerraterMora [175-203] and Tillich) to understanddeath "fromthe inside"-that is, to imagine what it would be like to experience the absence of experience.2Edwards'sapproachdoes not deny the possibility or value of investigationsinto the psychological significance of that absoluteprivation(that is, the meaningof deathfor the living), but it does precludeany understanding of deathas such. This is, undoubtedly, partof the horrorof death:its terribleintellectualpoverty. Death in its extremeontologicalform, let us then say, is not a state,but now we are left with the question of how that nonbeing can intervenein life, as it so clearly does. Probablythe most influential theorizationof the relationbetween consciousness and deathof the last two centuriesis thatof Hegel, who addressesprecisely this questionof the interferenceof death in life, its effectiveness, indeed, its work. For Hegel, death is an active nonbeingthat affects life as a force of personaland historicalchange. Somewhat like the brutallycreative natureenvisioned by Sade's libertines,Hegel's Geist or humanSpiritrecreatesitself throughthe power of death,using the destructionof what was to make what is and will be, constantlymoving towardan ever richerunderstanding of and adequationto itself. This, he claims, is the terrifyingwork of subjectivity,to know itself throughan ongoing confrontationwith nonexistence:"thatan accident as such," he wrote in a famous passage from the Phenomenology of Spirit, apparently referringto an individualhumanbeing, "detachedfrom what circumscribesit, what is boundand is actualonly in its context with others,should attainan existence of its own and a separatefreedom-this is the tremendouspower of the negative; it is the energy of thought,of the pure 'I.' Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all thingsthe most dreadful,andto hold fast what is dead requiresthe greateststrength" [19]. This brief utteranceis one of the most intellectuallyfruitfulstatementsthat have been made aboutdeath,for, while unflinchinglyrecognizingthe nullityof nonexistence in itself, Hegel allows that nullity to intervenein-indeed, throughout-creative, human life. At this point, a rigorousthanatologyis possible that would open the doors to an endless field of humanresearch,for humanexistence in itself, insofaras it is inventive and intelligent,can be consideredto work with and againstdeath.Or as Alexandre Kojeve put it in the 1930s duringone of his historic series of seminarson the Phenomenology, "the humanbeing itself is none other than thatAction [of the negative]: it is deaththatlives a humanlife" [550].3 As powerfulas this model is, it does have certainsignificantlimitations.While the force of negativityin determiningsubjectivityis exhaustivelydescribedby Hegel, it is far from clear why we should accept his invitationto call that negativity death. The consciousnessthatdiscoversit is not, in truth,a simple here andnow, thatit is in fact the negation of the here and now (as Geist does in the first chapterof the Phenomenology), might,for example,be thoughtof as emergingfromthe deathof an earlierself; butthere is still a continuitybetween the two states, a continuityassuredby an underlyingsub2. "The is as obvious as it is startling: insomereallylimiting paradox cases,it ispossibleto die without Mora203]. ForEdwards's ceasingto be, or to ceaseto be without [Ferrater dying" see his "Existentialism andDeath"40-42. critique, 3. All translations mineunlessotherwise noted.

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ject. Now, whathappenswhen thatcontinuityof the subjectis lost, as occursin another sort of death, when there is no furtherconsciousness? Hegel acknowledgesthe existence of this other sort of negativity at the opening of his account of the master/slave dialectic, where he describes death as "an abstractnegation, not the negation coming from consciousness, which supersedesin such a way as to preserveand maintainwhat is superseded,and consequently survives its own supersession"[114-15]. There is a deaththatis survivedand anotherthatis not. The latter,which does not interestHegel, is whatmost people thinkof when they referto death.The formerthey usuallycall life. Hegel does not clearly articulatethe relationbetween the two deaths,which leaves the metaimpressionthathis first use of the termis loosely, and somewhatinappropriately, phorical, and for this reason I would argue that while he was treatedas a preeminent philosopherof death by Kojeve and his followers, Hegel really has little to say on the topic-he dismisses death as such ratherexpeditiously and withoutclearly explaining how it is reflected in determinate negation. Morerecenttheorizations of deathhave been more imaginativelyaustere,butcome closer, as a result,to directlyaddressingtheirtopic. JohnMartinFischerhas referredto deathas "thepermanentand irreversiblecessation of life" [6], a descriptionhe himself seems to have found too pitiless, since some pages laterhe nuances it as "a permanent and irreversiblecessation of the relevant aspects of life" [8], leaving "relevancy"an open question. Thomas Nagel proposes an almost identical definition: "deathis the unequivocal and permanentend of our existence" [61]. This approach,for all of its psychological question:if deathis not some elegant simplicity,does raise an important or sad sortof gloomy unbearably condition,if deathis not the terrifyinglyviolent work of the negative, and if it is insteadthe simple end of being, why do we fear it? If thereis no "in itself' to our nonexistence,how can it be describedor felt as anything,let alone Nagel's responseis thatdeathrobs us of whatwe love. somethingso powerfulas terror? It is privative."If we areto make sense of the view thatto die is bad,"he writes,"itmust be on the groundsthatlife is a good and deathis the corresponding deprivationor loss, bad not because of any positive featuresbut because of the desirabilityof what it removes" [64]. It is this definitionof deathas end andprivationthatseems to me the most extremeandrigorousthathas been offeredin the last two hundredyears,but in its rigor it moves emphasisaway from any contemplationof deathin itself to considerationsof the psychological and epistemologicaleffects of thatlimitationand impendingloss on the beings who must,becauseof the way they areput together,confrontthem.Now, this is not simply one more among others.It is, even within the rigorousterconfrontation consideredto be constitutiveof the minology of a privativelimitation,a confrontation humanindividual. Kojeve speaks of death as living a humanlife, a singularlife, and while it is not as determinatenegation-could clear from Hegel how death-except metaphorically, effect that individuation,it is characteristicof theories of subjectivityin the last two It is, centuriesto imagine thatdeathdoes somehow relateto and generateindividuality. or to a whether its unclear whether it is death that however, single life, gives uniqueness it is the singularityof that life that is reflected in the uniquenessof a person's death. Jankelevitch,for one, argues the latter view, asserting that "the ipseity of the disapof thatpersoncan itself just as the disappearance pearedpersonremainsirreplaceable, never be compensated"[6]; the individualis, as he puts it, a "hapax"[29], and it is for final. In this, he echoes the thatreasonthather death-anyone's death-is irredeemably Czech poet Rilke when, in his youth, he wrote: "O Lord, give to each one his own death/ The dying thatissues from thatlife / In which he had love, meaning,and want." For MauriceBlanchotthese lines representa sense of subjectiveidentitydeeply rooted a desireto "dieoneself of an individual in the end of the nineteenthcenturyandtranslate

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death, individualall the way to the end."4But if it is, for the young Rilke, in life that a person finds love, meaning, and distress, one suffers nonetheless from a fear that one might lose them-one's individuality-in the momentof death,thatdeathputs them all at stake again and casts doubt on all that had gone before: the moment of demise, it seems, can give or take a life. This idea thatthe value of an entireexistence hangs on one's deathwas alreadyold when Montaigneasserted"thatwe must not judge of our happinessuntil after death" varianton thatidea, the anxietythatdeathmightnot issue from [77-79], but a particular life-and that instead life, as individual and meaningful, might depend on and issue the twentieth fromdeath-pervades theoriesof individuality throughout century. Georges Bataille, for instance, in an analysis of Hegel that was deeply influenced by Kojeve's it as a simulacrum of the seminars,developed a theoryof ritualsacrificethatunderstood death of the self that is necessary to but otherwise impossible for individualself-consciousness [18-20]. John Macquarrie,drawing on Heidegger and Christiantheology, arguedthat death "becomes, we must say, creative of selfhood" [56]. The Christian existentialistPaul Tillich asked, "[i]f one is not able to die, is he really able to live?" [32], and HermanFeifel, as if in response, asserted,"the notion of the uniquenessand individualityof each one of us gathersfull meaningonly in realizingthatwe arefinite" was made in 1998 by the Australianphiloso[xiv]. Virtuallythe same pronouncement pherJeff Malpas:"to have a life, and this is not the same as merely to live, is indeed to be capableof death"[120]. Even GillianRose statesthat"if deathis nothing,then life is nothing, for the idea of death cannot confer the significance of its limit on life" [129]. As ubiquitousas this attitudemay be, it does have certainsubstantial problems,unless one reifies-and therebyindividualizes-death, since otherwise,deathin itself is absolutely impersonalfor the simple reason that there is no "deathin itself." Death, unless reified, does not have a personalityof its own nor, since by definitionit falls outside of existence (as Wittgensteinputs it, "deathis not an event in life) [?6.4311, 185], can it be effected or "individualized" by any life. And these objectionsconstitutea basic problem for theoriesthatpremisethe individuality of a personon the event of theirdeath.Malpas's for to turn in circles when he tries to explain how death is argument, instance, begins to To an be our lives as wholes, he individual,that is to "grasp" necessary personhood. we must have a of contends, grasp our mortality.But how are we to conceive of that mortality?How does one "grasp"one's death?How does one "grasp"one's nonexistence? The answerin Malpas'scase seems to be: by graspingone's life as a whole (and as death).And so, despitehis originalclaims to the contrary, it is viewing the remainder not deaththatgives definitionto life, but ratherthe otherway around[see Malpas 129]. Still, Malpas is engaging a necessary epistemological task when he attemptsto articulatehow death as an ending might impartlife-giving shape to the brute fact of an entireexistence. If nothliving, since it is not clear how such a limit could structure ing else, one does have the impressionthatdeath involves a person'slife in its totality, thatone does not die a little here, a little there,and muddleon. Jankelevitch,for one, is emphaticon this point, statingthat"self-deathis an instantaneous presentthatwill have no future,an absolutepresence,shuttight andburning,thatcoincides with the ipseity of the total I" [52]. The end of our existence is awesome to us, from this perspective,in its combinationof grandeurand minute, painstakingdetail, for the great lines of a life disappearalong with all of the most negligible specks of consciousness-a greatlove,

4. Blanchot 154. I have translatedRilke'sversion ("0O Herr,gieb jedem seinen eignen TodI Das Sterben,das ausjenem Leben geht / darin er Liebe hatte, Sinn undNot" [103]) rather than Blanchot's French version ("0 Seigneur,donne d chacun sa propre mort, I le mourir qui soit vraimentissu de cette vie, / oi il trouvaamour,sens et detresse" [154]).

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children, but also every blade of grass, a forgotten moment from childhood that returnedonce in a midlife memory and might have come again, the loose threadon our shirt, everything. And for this reason, death, even as a limit, is conceptually and ontologically seductive.As Blanchotputs it, "whoeverhas it at his dispositiondisposes extremely of himself, is bound to all that he is capable of doing, is altogetherpower" [107]. Death, and death alone, seems to know us more intimatelythan any parentor lover, more deeply thanwe know ourselves, and so, in some sense, it is in the mirrorof But a list of all our thatmomentthatwe can reflect ourselvesmost fully andprofoundly. life or a person.In itself an is a even exhaustive and one, hardly experiences thoughts, such an enumeration, even in chronologicalorder,could not give an idea of the meaning of its items or the sense of directionwith which they were imbuedfor the one who lived them. And in the face of this meaningless anonymity that death might be thoughtto to explainhow death, impartin its totalizingsummationof a life, people have attempted and significance. even as a barelimit, might give both structure Death, if it is a limit, is a relativelydistantone for the greatestpartof a life, so how could its effect be conductedto the rest of an existence? Or as Didier Maleuvreframes the issue: "deathbringsour life into a final shape ... yet this shapingof life borderson nothing at all." [22]. This is really the heartof the matterfor us, and we are going to existence into examine in some detail this questionof how nothingnessmight articulate personhood.Metaphorsaboundto accountfor this long-distancerelationshipbetween For Jankelevitchthe hour us and the putativeprincipleof our experientialorganization. of our death is not the still and momentarymirrorwe had suggested in the previous but a kind of illuminationcast back throughtime, in which "the ultimate paragraph, action over our present;the anticipafutureof all futuresexercises a sort of retrograde tion of the end of ends projectsa specific lighting on the continuationthatprecedesit" [92]. Is death then like a colored spot shone from offstage, lending a certain-a specific-pathos or importto an actor's gestures?What is, then, the color of death?Who are the lighting designer and the stagehand?In more sober, though perhapsless provocative terms,JamesVanEvraproposesthatwe borrowourmodels frommathematics and physics and imagine death as something like the concept of a thermal"absolute exists nowhere, and yet it grounds an entire comzero" [27-28]. Such a temperature the physiof that has proved greatconceptualvalue for understanding parativesystem zero can be located this Absolute in death there is a cal world.But way. problem treating can be marked at the end of a continuousscale from which regularlyspaceddegrees off, but since we do not know, as Maleuvre observes, the temporallocation of our death, how could it serve as the absolutereferencepoint for a system of continuousor regular Even if, with the advanceof an incurableillness or the infliction of a slowly gradation? fatal wound, we were able to calculate the precise moment of our demise, that could of all the momentsthatpreceded not, in VanEvra'sterms, explain the mortalstructure the illness or the injury. life from its beyond And because those models of deaththatimagine it to structure tend to conceive of our nonexistence as either an active force a la Jankelevitchor as a localizableposition a la VanEvra-and therebyreify it-there is an inclinationto avoid effect of deathemanatesfrom life itself. At this problemby thinkingthatthe structuring this point, we find ourselvesconfrontedwith biological metaphorsof ripeningand falling fruit (even Hegel himself cannot resist this image on the second page of the Phenomenology), of "energyprocesses" [Jung 4], and so on. Or, in a more specifically humanvein, we find examplesborrowedfromaestheticcreation,in which our imagination, as it were, works the line of nonbeing aroundourselves, crafting it ever more subtly, choosing what is really us and what is not and tending our actions ever more adequatelytowardthatideal, like a sculptorcarvingout the contoursof a statue.One of

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and treatslife in termsof narrative structure, the most forcefulversionsof this approach its force derives from the observationsthat stories, like life, occur over time and that they can impartan impressionof meaningfulclosurewhen they end. Malpasarguesthat of humanlives andthe humansignificanceof events, "whenit comes to an understanding is primarilyto be achieved, for only it is throughnarrativethat such understanding of elements over time be interconnection rich an can narrative appropriately through achieved"[127]. In a largely unconsciousway, this attitudeaboutthe relationbetween mortalityand individualcoherenceinformsour everydayassumptionsaboutself-identity, as is revealed in the currencyof an expression such as "life story."Of course, the question of what constitutes a narrativegoes unstatedand unansweredin our casual offers no explanaacceptancethata life can be a story,and Malpas,rathersurprisingly, structures. tion of narrative coherence,as if stories were unproblematic for understanding The definition of narrativeand its appropriateness subjective coherenceare,however,far from self-evident. Sartre,for one, rejectedthe use of narrative models to explain the relationbetween life and death. Unlike a storyteller,he argues, we cannot determinethe moment, the place, the gesture of our demise, and for thatreason it always comes arbitrarily-a forfeit ratherthana closure. In his words: if it is only chance which decides the character of our death and thereforeof our life, then even the death which most resemblesthe end of a melodycannot be waitedfor as such; luck by determiningitfor me removes from it any character as an harmoniousend.An end of a melodyin orderto confer its meaning on themelodymustemanate fromthemelodyitself.A deathlikethatof Sophocles will thereforeresemblea resolvedchordbut will not be one, just as the group of lettersformed by the falling of alphabet blocks will perhaps resemble a word but will not be one. Thus this perpetual appearance of chance at the as my possibility but, on the conheart of myprojects cannot be apprehended all nihilation as the my possibilities, a nihilation which itself is no of trary, of longer a part my possibilities. [536-37] Laterwe will discuss the vocabularyof possibility that runs throughthis passage and the Heideggerianconception of death to which Sartreis respondinghere, but for the momentlet us concentrateinsteadon the insistencethata person'sdemise, because it is aleatoric,does not have the force of an aestheticclosure.Therearemomentswhen from the sounds of trafficat my window therehave emergedaccidentalpassages of familiar music. Certainlythey were not intendedas such by anyone, and yet they were accepted as such-involuntarily it seemed-by the personlistening.Why,in expectation,could I could not "hear"death that way? Why could I not cast it as a resolution?Certainly Sartreis right in arguingthat the death which, in expectation,I hear closing the harmonic progressionof my life is not the deaththatreally comes. Usually, I suppose, we are stuckwith a Picardythirdor some unsatisfyinginversion,cut off while still waiting for the tonic we had been hearingin our minds;and even when the final cadence seems to come, all it takes is a faint diminishedfourthin the reeds to startus off again. This image of closure is only a fantasy of death and rarelycorrespondsto the events of my life or of my deathas a whole life or a totalizingdeath.Still, it does not reallymatterthat it is a fantasy,since deathnever appearsto me in its reality as my own. deathIf, however,we aregoing to explainthenecessityof death-even a "fantasy" by subjective organizationalong narrativelines, we are going to have to demonstrate that endings are necessary to narrative.Indeed, we will have to show that potentially or stories-do not have structure series-or chainsof interlinked narrative interminable meaning. Anyone who has gone to a James Bond movie is probablyaware that the

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greatestperil 007 ever faces is the refusal of a sequel but that he, like Scheherazade, seems capable of endlessly spinning stories that perpetuallydefer the moment of closure. Or as Gerardde Nerval, the self-proclaimedauthorof "unwritable books," contended, real stories in fact have no ending, since they are continuallyrewrittenor resumed by later writers.5And as Nerval seemed incapable of finishing his ending to Scarron'sunfinishedRoman comique, we as a culture seem unable to stop recasting in his mysteriousdeathat Colonus. (EdipusRex, an endlessnessthatis alreadyprefigured This is not to say that death, and endings, cannot be used as a narrativedevice; it is ratherto say thatdeathand endings are not the sine qua non of narrative. On this basis, it is difficultto see why absoluteandprivativedeath,of all fantasiesandrealities,should be the one privilegedto impartsubjectivity,as it is repeatedlyand vigorously arguedto do. The reasons for grantingdeath that privilege will be found, if anywhere, in the early works of MartinHeidegger, who is undoubtedlythe preeminentphilosopherof deathin the last two hundredyears.Attemptingto understand humanexistence in terms of pure ontology, in terms, that is, of being and not being, his approachrespects the nothingnessof deaththatinterestsus here, andby construingit in termsof possibilityhe is able to account for some of the ways in which nonbeing, especially that particular nonbeingthatfollows my demise, can intervenein the existence thatconstitutesmy life. Unlike Hegel, for example, Heideggersees the force of nonbeing as derivingnot from the negative itself, but from a congenital human attitudetowardnonbeing that is evidenced in the way we experiencepossibility.In his words, death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein's ownmost possibility-nonrelational, certainand as such indefinite,not to be outstripped. Death is, as Dasein's end, in the Being of this entitytowardsits end. Defining the existential structureof Being-towards-the-end helps us to work out a kind of Being of Dasein in which Dasein, as Dasein, can be a whole. [303] Dasein-which literally translates as something like "being-there"-is the term Heidegger uses to speak of individual human consciousness, and he argues that it is uniqueamong entities in thatit puts Being itself-not beings in the plural,but Beingin question. For Dasein alone, being and nonbeing are issues. Death, in turn,puts the whole of Dasein's own being at stake. In part,this is because deathis "nonrelational," which is to say that no one else can representme or stand in for me at my inevitable demise. While I might be able to get someone else to mow my lawn, trim my hair, or serenade the object of my love, dying is something that I must do for myself. I am thereforealone, Heideggercontends,in the face of my death, and that mortalisolation informsme of my separation from others,makes me awareof my finitudein relationto them. The formless masses of humanityin general,the indeterminate and unattributed They of "They say . .." goes on and on, but I do not. "Deathdoes not just 'belong' to one's own Dasein in an undifferentiated way," he writes, "deathlays claim to it as an individualDasein. The non-relational character of death,as understoodin anticipation, individualizesDasein down to itself' [308]. Death,by separating me off as finite, makes 5. Nervalrefersto "livres in theprefaceto Les filles du feu [450], wherea infaisaibles" tofinish Scarron's workcan also befound[451-58]. At the endof description of his attempts he characterizes [535-36], fromthesamecollection, literary filiationas a seriesof "Angelique" imitations that in thewanderings Fora discussion findtheiroriginal of Odysseus. of themodel of narrative thatemerges 121-26. fromthesepassages,see Strauss open-endedness

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me capable of being a whole to myself, and I actually do become whole to myself throughmy attitudetowardthatdeath. Heideggerattemptsto explain how it is thata privativelimit can structure experience into subjectivityand existence into a life.6One's relationto deathis eitherauthentic or inauthentic,he contends.In the lattercase a persontries to forget thathe is finite andmust die by imaginingthathe is the same as the indeterminate They. One's attitude towarddeathis authentic,on the otherhand,when one resolutelyanticipatesit, bearing it in mind in its full and awful significance.As Heidegger puts it: "Anticipationturns out to be the possibility of understanding one's ownmostanduttermostpotentiality-foris to of the authentic existence. The ontological constituBeing-that say, possibility tion of such existence must be made visible by setting forth the concrete structureof of our relationto deathmakes our authentic anticipationof death"[307]. The structure individualexistence apparentto us as a whole, and it is, consequently,throughanticipatingdeaththat we authenticallyexist as whole individuals.This occurs primarilyfor two convergentreasons. First, since it is nonrelational,my death is "ownmost";it is what is most my own. Second, this "owning"createsits owner,since it puts the totality of finite Dasein at issue. I am an owner insofaras death"lays claim"to me, insofaras I am owned, in turn,by my death:it is only mine, but I only am, as a totality,throughthe fact thatit, as my death,puts my personaltotalityat stake. "Death,"in otherwords, "is Dasein's ownmost possibility. Being towards this possibility discloses to Dasein its in which its very Being is the issue" [307]. ownmostpotentiality-for-Being, Death reveals the structureof my authenticexistence throughmy anticipatingit. This anticipationis conceived by Heidegger in terms of "possibility,"which has an interestingontologicalstatusof its own since, by its very nature,it raises the questionof of Dasein. The possible is thatwhich is not but Being andnonbeingthatis characteristic could be or thatwas not but could have been. For Heidegger,it is also, conversely,that which is but could not have been, and Dasein, when it is authentic,treats its actual or cheat it, deathforces us to existence as a possibility.7Because we cannot "outstrip" face the possible as possible; or in other words, because it places a definite end to our existence, death forbids us from truthfullybelieving that we need not choose among possibilities. Every choice is a death, and throughthe anticipationof our nonexistence every choice is authenticallyrevealed as choice. Humanbeings, by always choosing and by living the question of Being and nonbeing throughour (perhapsvague or occulted) consciousness of thatchoosing, live in constantand pervasiverelationto death. Death, in this way, is the crux of our distinctivemode of being. WithHeideggerone has a rigorousdescriptionof the way in which mortalitystructuresindividualhumanexistence, but his approachpresentsmany problemsof the sort that often result from a clash between archaiccliches and the post-nineteenth-century conceptionof deathas sheer nonexistence.The idea thatdeathisolates, for instance,is scarcely new or unique to Heidegger.AlreadyPascal had written,"one will die alone. So one must act as if one were alone" [1181],8and he is echoed again and again across the following centuries down to Jankelevitch,who exclaims: "Alas! The one who is going to die dies alone, confrontsalone thatpersonaldeaththateach one must die on his own, cross that solitarystep thatno one can take in our place and that each one, when the moment comes, will take uniquelyfor himself' [28]. The idea that the proposition "one dies alone"can mean anythingmore than"one dies" has, however,been disputed, thatHeideggerdrawsfromthisputativeisolationornonrelationality andtheconsequences
6. Heidegger avoids the term "subjectivity," butI have argued elsewherethat in relation to death, at least, the distinctionbetweensubjectand Dasein is a false one [see Strauss63-71]. 7. For a more detailed discussion of thesepoints in Being and Time,see Strauss63-71. 8. Fragment351. In the Brunschvicgedition it is III,fr. 211.

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have been vigorously critiqued,especially in Sartre'sBeing and Nothingness.9 Arguing that there are innumerableother acts that are as nonrelationalas death-loving, saySartrecontends that the "mineness"of my death cannot be derived from that death itself, but is based in "that selfness which Heidegger expressly recognizes in every mode-when he declaresthat Dasein-whether it exists in the authenticor unauthentic 'Dasein ist je meines"' [534]. Indeed,if it is deaththatgroundsmy "mineness,"if death, as Heideggerputs it, "laysclaim"to me, andtherebyowns me morethanI own it-if, in of me is therootof my ownnessand"ownmostness"otherwords,my death'sownership it is hardto see how this can happenwithoutreifying death,since thatgroundingseems to suppose a preexisting individualdeath for each person, as if there were, lurkingin some ill-definedplace, a deathwith my name on it. If, on the otherhand,the ownness of myself and of my deathcome from a reciprocalgesture,in which both elements isolate like soundandsense in Saussure's themselvesthroughtheirinterrelation, model of primitive languageemergence [155-58], thereis no reasonwhy otheracts or events, such as hunger,pain, pleasure,love, or, as Levinas argues,the absoluteforeignnessof another's face, could not play the same individuatingrole. Death's nonrelationalityseems, in short,to do little betterthanits limit-functionin groundingthe wholeness of a person's life and identity. Still, Heidegger does throw invaluable light on post-nineteenth-centurysubject theory and its relationto mortality.Withouteven having to confrontthem, our deaths do, as he contends, pervade the innermost structuresof our identities, and in every choice, every gesturethe finality of deathis at play, makingof them choices ratherthan deferrals.We will not be here for Nietzsche's EternalReturn,so we cannot go back to past moments and try the endless paths thatlead from them. Every act carrieswith it a deathsentence:"thatand nothingelse." History-and ourpersonalhistories-are written in death,andeven those choices we do deferareonly pencilled in, tentativelyscheduled for a futurethatmight not reachus. But our relationsto thatfutureare more complex thanis generallyacknowledged,even by Heidegger.We do not, for instance,only suffer time, we use it and we play in it too. We harness time when we plant crops to avoid having to travelto wild growthsor when we arrangea meeting for tomorrowthat we could not hold today. We indulge in time when we take pleasure in watching our fulfillmentof theirpromplantingsgrow and when we experiencethe slow, frustrating ises-we can hurrythem only so much, and then we must submitto theirtime, but we takepleasurein that.Or when we reada storythatholds its end off untilthe last page we andthen abolitionof an ignoranceconcerningmattersthat toy with the slow articulation are of no practicalimportance to us or anyone.In most of ourpleasurewe play,one way or another,with time itself, reachingout beyond ourselvesto a self thatremainsfamiliar but unknown,an impendingI thatwe will not merely get to know, but who will take us over, who will ravish us. A self with whom we try to negotiate, making promises to ourselves or to othersthatwill bind her:to count calories, to make the car payments,to love faithfully,and so on. But there is always the risk thatthis outstandingself will not accept the termsof the promise.And then, hoveringover everythingwe do in view of a future, there is the certaintythat one day that self will not come at all-that all our games and commitmentsare held in doubtbecause we will, sooner or later,be jilted by ourselves.It is fromthisaspectof deaththatcertain detailsderivetheirexpressivestrength, like the unfinishedcup of coffee by a murdervictim's hand or all the interrupted gesturesof everydaylife thatgive Pompeii its ghostly quality.Everymoment,we place our trustin a futurethat we know one moment,faithfully,will deceive us. Like the images

9. For a critique of the proposition "one dies alone" see Edwards53-56.

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on a soap bubble, everythingwe do is writtenon the thinnestskin of a void that will, sooner or later,consume us. Death permeatesour lives both ontologically, by our very relation to possibility, and psychologically,throughour attitudestowardthatpossibility. But this is very differentfrom saying, as Heideggerdoes, that we should or must confrontdeathin a cerlimits the playfulnegotiationsthatpeople conductwith time and tainway. His argument theirown mortalityto a single modality,thatof an explicit andabsolutelyisolatingfear. Because of the way we are structured (in relationto Being), he contends,we must face our deaths in this way. But it is hardto tell if that"must"is an ontological necessity or an ideological imperative.To be ourselveswe must confrontdeath,he contends,but he allows for the possibility that we could be somethingelse, something inauthentic.So the "must"is more prescriptivethan descriptive. But if being authenticallyand conwe choose frontingdeatharechoices, whatarethe criteriafor choosing andwhy "must" is in itself an death?Heideggerdoes not explain, and so authenticity ideology with an motivation:we should be thus in an absolute,unjustifiedway. unarticulated To whom we owe this behavior-whether it is to Being itself, or to a sociopolitical premisedon a certainkind of individuatedsubject,or to somethingelseorganization is a matterfor speculation.And people have in fact speculatedon just this sort of question. Marcuse,for one, has arguedthatthe elevation of deathfrom a biological fact to a metaphysicalabsolute plays a key ideological role in all modem Europeancultures. Death,he contends,is not merely a subjectivizinglimit; it "is an institutionand a value: the cohesion of the social orderdepends to a considerableextent on the effectiveness with which individualscomply with death as more than a naturalnecessity" [74]. For Marcuse,the relationbetween actualpolitical events and this ideological mystification of death takes particularlyclear forms in the case of Heidegger, since this "tradition of humanexistence in termsof the anticicomes to a close in Heidegger'sinterpretation ideological exhortationto death,at pationof death-the latest and the most appropriate the very time when the political groundwas preparedfor the corresponding reality of death-the gas chambersandconcentration campsof Auschwitz,Buchenwald,Dachau, does not in factcome to a close withHeidegger. andBergen-Belsen" [69]. Butthetradition WilIt is still very much alive in the writingsof philosopherslike Malpasand Bernard liams and in the use of capital punishmentin the United States. The effects of that ideology also take less visible forms than the Shoah or the death chamber,and it is in these more subtle but more pervasive manifestationsthat the ideology of death has entered into the basic structuresof our social organization.The individual complies with death,as Marcuseputs it, but he does so mostly with his individualityitself. To be a person roundedoff and isolated by one's own mortality;to derive one's value or authenticityfrom that mortality;to fear death as absolutely the worst thing that can in happenbut to view it, at the same time, as the only thingthatallows one to participate a society of individualsidentifiedthroughthe isolationof thatdeath-these are some of the ways in which we are exhortedto comply with the ideology of death. There are, however, other ways of imaging the relation between death and individuality,and the very imaginingof them is in itself a blow againstthe coercive ideology of mortal self-identity.Heidegger,Malpas, and countless others have arguedthat living is not necessarilyliving a life and thatonly deathcan individualizeexistence. To conceive of thatdifferencebetween living and a life is in itself, however, to accept the facticity or inventednessof death-basedsubjectivity,to recognize the possibility of understandingdeath otherwise in its relationto individuality.To prescribea death-based subjectivityis to reject all other conceptionsor fantasies of existence as either imposfor humanbeings. In the case of Heidegger,those other options sible or inappropriate as Gerede,the endlessfrivolityof an unindividualized arereducedto a single formulation

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speech that changes only, like hemlines, in a constantillusion of newness or meaning. For Malpas, that other life is figured as an animal-his cat and a bird outside the window-since animals,he contends,have no sense of self or death.In assumingour individuality,we must, as he sees it, sacrifice that animal existence in ourselves, kill off a somnolent living without a life, an existence without death or self. This image of a naturalworldthatwe mustrejectto be human,thatwe mustrepudiatethroughan acceptance of our mortalityif we are to accede to our own humanity,is scarcely new; it was But alreadyformulatedin Hegel and then resurrectedby Kojeve and his followers.10 despite certain obvious problems in Malpas's conception of animal existence (he argues, for example, thathis cat has no sense of mineness and, consequently,no sense of seems to be one of the constantsof animalbehavior territoriality-whereas territoriality and would appearto reflect the bordersof a self), he does, like Heidegger,entertainthe ongoing fantasyof a conscious existence unlimitedby death,the possibility of a deathlessness. Although there is not space to do it here, I think it is worth ponderingwhy anyone would want to dismiss the vast field of possibilities offered by an immortal existence that at once surrounds us and constantlybeckons to us to join it. It is from this fantasyof a deathlessexistence, accordingto Blanchot,thatthe animals in Rilke's poetryderive theirmeaning.For Rilke, this limitlessness is deathitself, a living in death,and in this place where consciousness does not supersedemortalityin some Hegelian dialectical sense but simply gives it no thought,"'we look outside with a greatanimalgaze.' ... Oureyes turnback, andthis turningback is the otherside, and the other side is the fact of no longer living a detourbut living turnedback, introduced into the intimacy of conversion, not strippedof consciousness but, by consciousness, set up beyond consciousness, thrustinto the ecstasy of this movement"[Blanchot17374].1 Ecstatic,out of ourselves,throwninto a worldthatno longerreflectsus andwhich we no longer repudiate,the place of this living in a deaththatdoes not end us but opens us infinitely is, curiously, that most human of inventions-language, the poem. "To the visible into the invisible;it is to speak,"Blanchotwrites, "is essentiallyto transform enter a space that is not divisible, an intimacy that nonetheless exists outside itself' [184], and the poem itself is "the very space towardwhich 'all worlds rush as toward theirclosest and truestreality,'[the space] of the greatestcircle and incessantmetamorphosis, .... the space of the poem, the Orphicspace to which the poet undoubtedlyhas no access and where he penetratesonly to disappear" [184]. In the poem, one becomes other,others,indivisible andvast, like languageitself. One disappears,andin this sense one dies, but it is to death itself that one dies. In anothermetamorphosisof this space where individualityis lost but living goes on, Kristevaimagines a "transsubject" that level of language,in the distancebetweenspeakerswhere operateson some presemantic they arenot yet distinguishedas separatesubjects,a hiddenpast thatburstsout at times to disruptthe semanticsof a discourse, as in the poems of AntoninArtaud.'2 This is a stateof deaththateven the philosopherPaul Edwards,otherwiseso resoluteagainstthe of imaging death as a state, admits, although ontological and existential "absurdities" without so intending. He argues that propositionalgrammarinclines people to treat
10. See, for example,Kojeve: man "ispure nothingnessoutside the naturalWorld.Andyet he separateshimselffromthis Worldand sets himselfin oppositionto it" [546]. And: "'Thetrue being of man is his action,'says Hegel. Now, Action is the realizationof Negativity,which manifests itself on the 'phenomenal'level as death" [565]. 11. "'nousregardonsau-dehorsavec ungrandregardd'animal.'.. . [LLes yeux se retournent, et ce retournement, c'est l'autrecote, et l'autre cote, c'est lefait de vivrenonplus detourne,mais retourne,introduitdans l'intimite de la conversion, non pas prive de conscience, mais, par la conscience, etabli hors d'elle, jete'dans l'extase de ce mouvement."

12.See Kristeva's "Lesujeten proces" in Polylogue 55-106.

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deathas a way of being-albeit an exceptionallypassive one. Saying "a year from now A will be dead" [41] gives the impression that death has a subject and that it has a aboutA's real or potenpredicative"condition"-death. Unlike otherpronouncements tial moods and activities, however, the statement"a year from now A will be dead" cannotbe expandedinto "A will be alive one year from now but he will then be in the extremelypassive state of deadness."Edwardsis not talking aboutA as the-now inanimate-body thathad earlierfelt pain or performedin Don Giovanni;he is referring to the A capableof experience and consciousness, and he is arguingthat the subjectof death is not a subject. But one might observe that in his example there is in fact a subject-a purely grammaticalone-that is capable of being dead and about which ontologically true statementscan be made (for example,A is not coming out to dinner tonight. He is not washing his clothes. He does not intend to go to work tomorrow either.He is dead.).And in some sense, one "lives"as this subjectthatcan die, thatcan exist as the negation of all possible experiences, that does, in fact, so exist, since it an impersonal.I am not the a generalization, standsin relationto themas an abstraction, I, but I adopt it, and that I is alreadydead, innumerabletimes. It has never lived. The dead subject, the subject that never lived, does provide a pervasive structureto life, a first-person,discursive position, but insofar as one identifies with that abstractgrammaticalsubjectone is dead.In this sense, one can experiencea form of death-from the inside. The experience of the negationof one's experience. Blanchot and Kristevalook to an existence in language that lives death from the inside without being delimited by demise, without splitting off as an isolated subject. But languagedoes not only absolve us from our finitudeby negatingthe very limits of a self. It also gives us the possibility of death itself. In fiction we constructour deaths, and it is only in fiction thatwe can constructthem. Ourown deathsare not real to usas Wittgensteinobserved,they are not events in our lives-and for thatreasonthey are unrealitiesin respectto those they concernmost. And my deathis not a fiction thatwill come true one day, because for me that day never comes. I will not be there when it happens.And death is also fictional, because nothing can make us certainthat we die. Still we, at some point, choose to acceptor refuse thatfiction, believing thatwe will die or thatwe will not, thatour death,if it comes, will be absoluteor will be followed by an afterlife.Death is only a possibility and, as Jankelevitchobserves, the possible does not exist [68]. But we alreadylive constantlyin the nonexistent,not just in relationto our deaths and as the ideological subjects determinedas a function of them, but also as fictional creatureswho, for example, feel loved. Nothing can make us certainthat we arein fact loved, since we cannotlive in the minds of othersas they feel towardus. Like the belief in love, the belief in death is a fiction that we learnto trust,and in this sense our deathsand our mortalityarepremisedon our trust,on our ability to inhabitfictions as realities, on our faculty of intense and detailedunreality,on our capacity to exist in nonexistence.Death limits our fictions, but only because it is generatedby them. It is a aspectof ournature-our abilityto live whatis not.And productof a more fundamental we live thatwhich is not throughotherpeople. Fiction is shared. ForHeidegger,it is the fact thatwe cannotexperienceourown deaththatmakesthe deathof othersall the more impressive[281]. In a sense, deathis a blind spot in relation to ourselves, since otherscan witness it and see our absence from the world, our privation of the world, but we cannot. So death makes us vulnerableto others to the extent thatthey know more aboutus thanwe do, thatthey see us where we cannot.They come at us from behind in death, and that is an expression of our limits as a person, or our otherness in relation to others. They see what we are missing: the world without us, whatwe cannotsee. In this sense, deathis in fact a state,but our deathis a stateonly for others,and it is throughothersthatwe can imagine the state of our death,our absence,

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our nonbeing.We imagine it as our nonbeingfor others,for the world.And in this way it might seem that the state of death is disclosed to us throughoutour lives in the very independenceof others, in their othernessitself. And when, say, a lover leaves us, we have the terrifyingbut also thrillingglimpse of ourperishing.The otherturnsaway after knowing us and decides that we can live or die but that they will go on. There are her dooropen,"Musset wrote, "sheturned glances in which we cease to exist. "Hearing her head with a smile. 'Is thatyou?' she asked. She was going to a ball and was waiting for my rival, who was supposedto escorther.She recognizedme, tightenedher lips, and frowned" [84]. In the eyes of his unfaithfulmistress, the young man sees a world in which he no longer exists, in which he eruptsonly as a disagreeableintrusion.He sees his deathfrom beyond it. If the statement"we die alone"has any sense, it derives from this othernessof others,from the belief thatin dying we areleft out. The most important of the privationswe must endure is the privationof others. Life is only getting more interestingand our invitationhas expired. We will be escorted, perhapsmost politely and with genuine regret,to the door, but once it closes, the conversationswill resume and we will no longerbe amongthem, we, who literallyhave nothingelse to do. We die alone, but that statementonly makes sense, only has significance when we think of what not being alone is, and when we think of our aloneness throughour relationsto others. And because we can only imagine our death throughothers, death derives its meaningfromthem, fromtheirdifferencefromus. Deathis not foreshadowedin others; rather,deathmirrorstheir otherness. Death is a fiction thatpasses for a reality and pretendsto groundan aloneness that in fact comes to us from somewhere else. That somewhere else is others. But these othersarenot just the They of Heidegger'sBeing-toward-death; they are the othersthat reveal deathto us in the firstplace throughtheirvery differencefromus. We can choose the absolutenessof deathor not, but we cannotrefuse the othernessof others,except by killing them, eitherphysically or ethically.And so, I would argue,the whole greattraan ideological subterfuge jectory of a selfhood based on mortalityis a misconstruction, that distractsus from our relations to living people. It is to those others, to their creations and fictions, thatone should turnto reach some understanding of individualhuman experience, to know oneself.

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