full name / name of organization: ECHO – Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication Languages, Cultures, Societies
Afterworlds
Communication and Representation of the Afterlife
Life after death is a fiction. It imagines a world other than our own […] Fiction is also a kind of life after death and, in contemporary culture, the afterlife finds its most pervasive and diverse manifestations in the forms of narrative fiction.
(Bennett 2012, p. 1)
Imagining, depicting, and contemplating otherworldly realms characterize the afterlife as a cross-cultural constant throughout world history, dating back to the inception of human imagination questioning the limits of existence and the potential for transcending its boundaries. However, in the last century, representations of life after death have undergone a profound transformation, intertwining ancient traditions with new perspectives, sparking a fertile and ongoing debate.
Recent reflections on death and its aftermath, encompassing interdisciplinary studies like Thanatology, have significantly expanded and revitalized the field of contemplation on the after-life. Departing from well-established narratives and supported by enduring cultural traditions, the exploration of the afterlife has expanded to encompass various 'other' and relational forms between pre- and post-death.
Literature and the arts have grappled with the challenge of narrating life after death, adopting schemes and conventions that often defy socio-cultural norms. Fictional narratives often go beyond the simplistic life/death binarism, expanding their semantic field to explore the ways and the worlds where ‘after’ and ‘before’ meet, proposing intricate relationships and spatial dimensions. While death is often considered unspeakable, attempting to translate it into narrative, images, and experiences is an anthropological constant, as “]death and dying are always culturally defined and embedded in a system of cultural beliefs and values" (Kalitzkus 2004, p. 142). It is no coincidence that the afterlife - like fiction itself (Lavocat 2016) - has often been thought of in terms of a 'territory', a real 'possible world' (Pavel 1986) with distinct nomenclatures (such as the Greco-Roman Hades, Norse Valhalla, the Bardo of Tibetan Buddhism, Christian Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise) and recognizable rules governing access and movements within its boundaries.
The imagery associated with afterworlds extends beyond physical spaces to encompass their inhabitants. Myths, religions, literary traditions, and popular folklore are interwoven with a myriad of figures—deities, revenants, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and more. These entities collectively challenge the conventional dichotomy between life and death, prompting a reconsideration of what common sense might suggest. Speculative inquiry into the afterlife not only witnesses the semantization and signification of life after death but also serves as a lens to study the cultural systems producing these narratives. Death, as a crucial anthropological experience, becomes a prism to interrogate the ideology, conventions, hopes, fears, and anxieties of an era.
Even the process of secularization, which has notably impacted the Western world since the modern age, has not hindered artistic representations of the afterlife. In a context of profound transformation, these representations have discovered novel modes of expression. Furthermore, the upheavals of the twentieth century and the post-modern era, accompanied by various changes, have influenced the depiction of the afterlife. This transformation often takes on a completely secular and immanent perspective.
In contrast to theorists like Philippe Ariès (1975), who suggested the isolation of death in heterotopic places, in a Foucauldian sense, numerous historical and artistic events, in decentralizing the subject, have uncovered and rediscovered narratives about death and the afterlife. These narratives transcend the life/death dualism, problematizing imaginative possibilities across different media, resulting in 'other' spaces narrating 'the other beyond life' in diverse ways. The afterlife is not merely an imagined space giving substance to human fears but is also symbolically linked to passage, borders, memory, and the hope for future survival.
The aim of this issue is to delve into the diverse meanings and narrative approaches employed in depicting afterworlds within contemporary literature and the arts. Submissions that examine representations of the afterlife from a comparative standpoint, spanning various national literatures or exploring inter-art relations, will be especially welcomed. The call encourages contributions that consider these themes both synchronically and diachronically, providing a comprehensive exploration of the evolving portrayals of afterworlds across different temporal and cultural contexts.
Deadlines:
Abstract (500 words): 17th March 2024
Notification of acceptance: 14th April 2024
Article submission: 23rd June 2024
Publication: 30th November 2024
Length of articles: max 7000 words
To submit an article, write to:
rivista.echo@uniba.it Potential research lines include but are not limited to:
- Narratives of Afterlife Spaces
- Narratives Beyond Life
- Narratives of the Afterlife Influencing Attitudes Towards Death
- Autotanatographic Narratives and Narrators who Tells after Death
- Digital and Virtual Afterlife
- Multicultural Perspectives on Afterlife Narratives
- Spaces and Border Crossing
- Figures of the Afterlife and the Return of the Repressed
- Mythical (and non-mythical) Figures in Afterworlds Narratives
- Cultural Memory and Narratives of the Afterlife
- Intertextuality in Representations of the Afterlife
- Temporal Aspects in Narrating Life Beyond Death
Essential Bibliography
Bassett, D. J. 2022, The Creation and Inheritance of Digital Afterlives: You Only Live Twice. Springer International Publishing, Berlin.
Bennett, A. 2012, Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Bernabè, A. 2015, “What is a Katábasis? The Descent to the Netherworld in Greece and the Ancient Near East”, in Les Études Classiques 83 (1-4), pp. 15-34.
Burden, D., Savin-Baden, M. 2019, Virtual Humans: Today and Tomorrow (1st ed.), Chapman and Hall/CRC, London.
Carroll, E., Romano, J. 2010, Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy?, Pearson Education, London.
Danese, R. M., Santucci, A., e Torino, A. 2020, Acheruntica: La discesa agli Inferi dall'antichità classica alla cultura contemporanea. Letteratura e antropologia. Argalía, Urbino.
Doležel, L. 1998, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Edmonds, R. G. 2009, Myths of the underworld journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the “Orphic” gold tablets, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Falconer, R. 2005, Hell in Contemporary Literature: Western Descent Narratives since 1945, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Frankel, R., Krebs, V. J. 2021, Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations, Routledge, London.
Foucault, M. 1966, “Les utopies réelles ou 'lieux et autres lieux', 07/12/1966”, disponibile su Radio France,
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nuits-de-france-culture/heure-de-culture-francaise-les-utopies-reelles-ou-lieux-et-autres-lieux-par-michel-foucault-1ere-diffusion-07-12-1966-2759883Gee, E. 2020, Mapping the Afterlife. From Homer to Dante, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Ghyselinck, Z., Fabietti, E. 2023 (eds.), Necrodialogues and Media: Communicating with the Dead in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century, De Gruyter, Berlin.
Hayes, E. T. 1994 (ed.), Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings in Western Literature, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2023, Catábasis: el viaje infernal en la Antigüedad, Alianza Editorial, Madrid.
Holtsmark, E.B. 2001, “The Katabasis theme in modern cinema”, in M. Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 23–50.
Kalitzkus, V. 2004, “Neither Dead-Nor-Alive Organ Donation and the Paradox of ‘Living Corpses’”, in A. Fagan, Making Sense Of Dying and Death, Rodopi, New York.
Klapcsik, S. 2012, Liminality in Fantastic Fiction: A Poststructuralist Approach. McFarland, Jefferson.
Lavocat, F. 2016, Fait et fiction. Pour une frontière, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
Linàres Sanchez, J.J. 2020, El tema del viaje al mundo de los muertos en la Odisea y su tradición en la literatura occidental, Universidad de Murcia.
Mbembe A. 2003, “Necropolitics”, in Public Culture, vol. 15, n. 1, Duke University Press, pp. 11-40.
Moreman, C. M. 2017, The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying, Routledge, London.
Pavel, T. G. 1986, Fictional Worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Puglia, E., M. Fusillo, S. Lazzarin, e A. M. Mangini 2018 (a cura di), Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e Teorie Della Spettralità Senza Fantasmi, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Savin-Baden, M. 2021, Digital Afterlife and the Spiritual Realm, Chapman and Hall/CRC, London.
Sisto, D. 2020, La morte si fa social. Immortalità, memoria e lutto nell'epoca della cultura digitale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.
Sisto, D. 2020, Ricordati di me: La rivoluzione digitale tra memoria e oblio, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.
Smith, E.L. 2001, The Descent to the Underworld in Literature, Painting, and Film, 1895-1950: The Modernist Nekyia, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston.
Sozzi, M. 2009, Reinventare la morte. Introduzione alla tanatologia, Laterza, Bari.
Tanaseanu-Döbler, I., Ryser, G., Lefteratou, A., and Stamatopoulos, K. 2016 (eds.), Reading the way to the netherworld: Education and the representations of the beyond in later Antiquity, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen.
Wagner, R. 2012, Godwired: Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality, Routledge, London.
Weinmann, F. 2018, “Je Suis Mort”: Essai Sur La Narration Autothanatographique, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
Wolf, M. J.P. 2012, Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, Routledge, London.
ECHO – Revue Interdisciplinaire de Communication. Langages, cultures, sociétés
CFP numéro 6/2024
Last updated February 21, 2024
This CFP has been viewed 366 times.
