Lagoonscapes

The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities

Blue Death Studies: Theorising the Water-Corpse Interface

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Abstract

In this article, we theorise a Blue Death Studies approach to investigate deathly concerns and the people, places, and practices connected to them. Doing so highlights possibilities for rethinking death as watery and mobile rather than sedimentary and sedentary. To ground this theorisation, we explore how water impacts the ir/retrievability of the dead by analysing liquid (sea drownings and alkaline hydrolysis) and frozen deaths (cetacean samples, mountaineers, and cryopreservation). From this, we underscore how waters affect the ir/retrievability of matter and meaning in death and indicate future directions for a blue death studies.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: July 29, 2024 | Accepted: Oct. 24, 2024 | Published Dec. 6, 2024 | Language: en

Keywords Human and nonhuman animal corpse • Death Studies • Multispecies studies • Blue humanities • Water

Copyright © 2024 Jesse Peterson, Sarah Bezan, Kate Falconer. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/02/004