Power
Death is a fact. While it is an experience we will share, it is never the same. I make no mistake in thinking that we are equals in death.
Who gets to carry our values along with us into the rituals of death?
Nothing can exist outside the realms of power. It permeates all things. It is constantly reinforced and resisted. Almost every issue or problem in our world can be explained by imbalance or abuse of power. Whenever I read the scandalous news about the downfall of a leader or institution, I am reminded of Jenny Holzer’s truism eloquently exclaiming,
“ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.”
In the cemetery, I look for where this power permeates after death. I wipe clear my glasses and look to read the signs screaming amidst the silence. I question the privilege and the situated knowledge that I drag with me. Feminist philosopher Donna Haraway asks me,
“With whose blood were my eyes crafted?”
Objectivity is a construction grounded in white capitalist patriarchy, limiting possibilities for embodiment. I enact a persistence of vision to illuminate what would be otherwise invisible to me. I find it on headstones where a woman’s name is only designated as wife or mother, attached below her husband. I discover it in potter’s fields and the cemeteries marked for demolition to make space for new building projects. I walk the pathways of each site noticing how they segregate groups of people by class, race, wealth, and religion.
If to be human is to decay, we have the agency to change the legacies the dead have left us. We have the power to create new futures for the yet-to-be-born. At its core, this is a humanist project as our bodies entangle with the non-human.
Death is a fact. While it is an experience we will share, it is never the same. I make no mistake in thinking that we are equals in death.
Who gets to carry our values along with us into the rituals of death?
Nothing can exist outside the realms of power. It permeates all things. It is constantly reinforced and resisted. Almost every issue or problem in our world can be explained by imbalance or abuse of power. Whenever I read the scandalous news about the downfall of a leader or institution, I am reminded of Jenny Holzer’s truism eloquently exclaiming,
“ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.”
In the cemetery, I look for where this power permeates after death. I wipe clear my glasses and look to read the signs screaming amidst the silence. I question the privilege and the situated knowledge that I drag with me. Feminist philosopher Donna Haraway asks me,
“With whose blood were my eyes crafted?”
Objectivity is a construction grounded in white capitalist patriarchy, limiting possibilities for embodiment. I enact a persistence of vision to illuminate what would be otherwise invisible to me. I find it on headstones where a woman’s name is only designated as wife or mother, attached below her husband. I discover it in potter’s fields and the cemeteries marked for demolition to make space for new building projects. I walk the pathways of each site noticing how they segregate groups of people by class, race, wealth, and religion.
If to be human is to decay, we have the agency to change the legacies the dead have left us. We have the power to create new futures for the yet-to-be-born. At its core, this is a humanist project as our bodies entangle with the non-human.
Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99.