The art of life and death : radical aesthetics and ethnographic practice / Andrew Irving.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Irving, Andrew, author.

Series:

Malinowski monographs series ; v. 2.

Malinowski monographs ; Volume 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death.

Terminally ill--Attitudes.

Terminally ill.

Near-death experiences.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois : Hau Books, 2017.

Summary:

The art of life and death" explores how the world appears to people who have an acute perspective on it: those who are close to death. Based on extensive ethnographic research, Andrew Irving brings to life the lived experiences, imaginative lifeworlds, and existential concerns of persons confronting their own mortality and non-being. Encompassing twenty years of working alongside persons living with HIV/AIDS in New York, Irving documents the radical but often unspoken and unvoiced transformations in perception, knowledge, and understanding that people experience in the face of death. By bringing an "experience-near" ethnographic focus to the streams of inner dialogue, imagination, and aesthetic expression that are central to the experience of illness and everyday life, this monograph offers a theoretical, ethnographic, and methodological contribution to the anthropology of time, finitude, and the human condition. With relevance well-beyond the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology, this book ultimately highlights the challenge of capturing the inner experience of human suffering and hope that affect us all of the trauma of the threat of death and the surprise of continued lif.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Beginnings - The limits of the world

Chapter two - Detours and puzzles in the land of the living

Chapter three - To live that life

chapter four - Rethinking anthropology from a pragmaticpoint of view

Chapter five - A disintegration of the senses

Chapter six - The eternal return

Endings - You only live twice

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781912808045

1912808048

OCLC:

1052566902