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

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of Digital Media ,Massmedia College ,University of Thi-Qar,Nassiriya City -Iraq

Abstract

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.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 30, Issue 2
September 2025
Pages 369-395

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