Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six My Struggle novels take a prominent place in the hallway bookshelves of our apartment. Set in order, they’re eye level as guests enter, sharing space with the output…
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Experimental books
Experiments in collective labor
July 3, 2024
Before The Abyss or Life Is Simple came to my attention, Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book 1 was a fixture on my “to read” list for several years. When deciding what to read…
July 3, 2024
Experimental books
Archaeology of a book/film
June 26, 2024
American Afterlives documents rapidly changing death practices in the United States while asking what this change tells us about American society today. Conceived as a kind of contemporary mortuary archaeology, it zeroes…
June 26, 2024
Experimental books
Encounters with death in contemporary America
June 26, 2024
Pieced-together scraps from the cutting room floor—that is how anthropologist and archaeologist Shannon Dawdy describes her book American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century. As a metaphor for all the anecdotes,…
June 26, 2024
Experimental books
A new American way of death
June 26, 2024
I can’t think of any scholarly projects, books or otherwise, that begin and end at the author’s grave. And certainly none that encourage the reader to get down in that dirt and…
June 26, 2024
Experimental books
Earth
June 26, 2024
American Afterlives concludes with the ritualized disinterment of the author’s decomposed corpse. An archaeologist is excavating a twenty-first century cemetery, nestled in a California oak savannah. She discovers some decayed cloth and…
June 26, 2024
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