Writing After Dying: Archive, Plasticity, Afterlife

Every archive is a posthumous device. To archive is to die a little bit, even when the archived author still lives. This seminar explores another function of archives, namely, that they go beyond the funereal and give rise to somatic permutations that challenge the division between living and dying, between an author's material end and the cessation of artistic production. We look beyond death to examine the creative and plastic afterlife, or what develops and survives independent of the author's living hand. To write again, the dead author relies on the prosthetic hands of others. The archive lies beyond life's closed circuit.