پژوهش ادبیات معاصر جهان

پژوهش ادبیات معاصر جهان

Necropoetics and the Art of Death in Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی

نویسنده
Kotaba Saleh Fenjan
Department of Digital Media ,Massmedia College ,University of Thi-Qar,Nassiriya City -Iraq
10.22059/jor.2025.395118.2641
چکیده
In this essay, I use the new interpretive lens of necropoetics, the literary-critical discourse that intersects Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics (the power of the state to kill) with aesthetics, to interpret Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (2013). Written from the perspective of a painter who became a corpse washer, Antoon’s novel looks back at death, memory, and protest in post-invasion Iraq. While previous analyses of the novel draw on trauma studies, existentialist thought, and post-colonial theory, I argue that through necropoetics, we can read the political and narrative practice of aestheticizing death that structures Antoon’s text. Rather than representing the loss that the artist-profession of corpse washing would typically represent, this practice transforms the cleaning of the dead from an act of loss to an act of artistic protest, of preservation against the political and historical obliteration of Iraqi lives. I show how necropoetics captures how Antoon’s prose resists the commodity politics of war trauma and positions the act of death as an intimate, subversive, and transgressive force that rebels against the violence and amnesia of the state. Consequently, this narrative is not simply about loss but is itself a necropoetic act.
کلیدواژه‌ها
Necropoetics
Sinan Antoon
The Corpse Washer
war literature
Iraqi fiction
Achille Mbembe
death studies
موضوعات

عنوان مقاله English

Necropoetics and the Art of Death in Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer [English]

نویسنده English

Kotaba Saleh Fenjan
Department of Digital Media ,Massmedia College ,University of Thi-Qar,Nassiriya City -Iraq
چکیده English

In this essay, I use the new interpretive lens of necropoetics, the literary-critical discourse that intersects Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics (the power of the state to kill) with aesthetics, to interpret Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (2013). Written from the perspective of a painter who became a corpse washer, Antoon’s novel looks back at death, memory, and protest in post-invasion Iraq. While previous analyses of the novel draw on trauma studies, existentialist thought, and post-colonial theory, I argue that through necropoetics, we can read the political and narrative practice of aestheticizing death that structures Antoon’s text. Rather than representing the loss that the artist-profession of corpse washing would typically represent, this practice transforms the cleaning of the dead from an act of loss to an act of artistic protest, of preservation against the political and historical obliteration of Iraqi lives. I show how necropoetics captures how Antoon’s prose resists the commodity politics of war trauma and positions the act of death as an intimate, subversive, and transgressive force that rebels against the violence and amnesia of the state. Consequently, this narrative is not simply about loss but is itself a necropoetic act.

کلیدواژه‌ها English

Necropoetics
Sinan Antoon
The Corpse Washer
war literature
Iraqi fiction
Achille Mbembe
death studies
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پژوهش ادبیات معاصر جهان
دوره 30، شماره 2
مهر 1404
صفحه 369-395