Beyond-earthly dimensions: volumetric reverberations and the making of immaterial worlds of death in the infrasecular cemetery

Keywords: deathscapes; territory; volume; geopolitics
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 4

Abstract

Death, marking a transition from the realm of the living, is often understood as a fixed and static occurrence. Death indicates a moment of finitude – an end point. Whilst much work has considered the lively and lived engagements with volume, somewhat less is said of the body’s volumetric entanglements once it ceases to be living. In this paper, I explore how the emergence of an infrasecular geopolitics (Della Dorra, 2018) during the implementation of the Burial Acts (1852-1885) in England re-animated immaterial geographies of the dead body and worlds of death. Tracing the way everyday actors became engaged in (re)writing and pushing back on the intimate geopolitical arena of the cemetery, I explore how volumes of death, as sensed, controlled and placed (Hawkins, 2020) became formalised in the language of consecration and desecration. The practice of cemeteries housing persons of multiple denominations (following the abolition of the churchyard-rate) brought new affective and embodied capacities onto the dead body that sought to stress not just a material separation of the land, but in-fact a separation of worlds. I account for the ways volumetric imaginations are mobilised through language and ideology, and the way this constructs beyond-earthly volumes as bodies move between worlds and depths. I aim to engage overall with more pluriversal engagements of volume and dimension (Squire, 2021) by looking at how volumes of death are written, practiced, and made meaningful.