Decorative Image of Capital Building, Book cover and Benjamin Ginsberg

MSU Press Author Spotlight – Benjamin Ginsberg

Political Life After Death

By Benjamin Ginsberg

I was raised in the City of Chicago where, according to rumor, the dead rose every election day to support the city’s political machine. Sometimes the dead had a great deal of influence. Chicago’s deceased voters reportedly helped then-senator John Kennedy carry Illinois and thereby win the presidency in 1960.

Death is the dark matter of politics; it pervades the political universe but is poorly understood. Most people fear death, their own as well as that of loved ones, and will do what they can to hide from the Grim Reaper. To some, the dead may seem inert, lifeless, lacking in potency. However, like those in Chicago’s history, the dead can possess a great deal of power. At one time, this power was metaphysical and spiritual. Today, however, the dead exercise secular power, sometimes even through the courts. At one time, moreover, fear of death strengthened religious institutions. Today, dread of the Dark Angel mainly bolsters the power of the state. Indeed, death binds rulers and ruled in a thanatotic contract which promises the ruled eternal life within the embrace of the nation while offering rulers the immortality of fame. At one time, immortality was a gift (or curse) from the gods. Today, life and death are secular matters. Immortality can now be a gift (or curse) from the state.

According to the Hebrew bible, the dead have neither an interest in nor power over the living. In Kohelet(Ecclesiastes), the narrator, often identified as King Solomon, avers: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, because the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their envy have already vanished, and they will never again have a share in all that is done under the sun.” Solomon may have deserved his reputation for wisdom, but on this point we might disagree. The dead can influence the world of the living in several ways. First, in addition to their testamentary rights, they may exercise considerable power through the act of dying itself. Second, the dead can exert posthumous influence through social and political institutions they built while still living. Third, the dead can exercise power through monuments, paintings, photos, films, written works, and videos they created or that were created by others to memorialize them. Historian Pierre Nora called such memorial statuary lieux de memoire, or places of memory. Through statues, tombs, and other memorial sites, the dead can, indeed, become so powerful that their living foes feel compelled to exorcize their spirits and seek to permanently silence them. Finally, the dead may exercise influence simply by leaving a gap in the world of the living.

— Benjamin Ginsberg

For the favored dead, the state offers a secular afterlife from which decedents exercise posthumous rights and influence in the world of the living. Some of the favored dead are accorded honors long after their demise—funeral ceremonies and splendid monuments.

Not all the dead, however, are seen as virtuous or worthy of regard. These disfavored dead include paupers, the inmates of prisons and psychiatric hospitals, and the enemy. The disfavored dead of an earlier era—sinners and heretics—were barred from the churchyard and from heaven.  Today’s disfavored dead are interred without ceremony in unmarked graves.

Decedents who are especially reviled may be unceremoniously consigned to oblivion. For example, the body of terrorist Osama Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks, was thrown into the sea from the deck of an American warship for fear that a marked grave would become a shrine for his followers.

Most individuals fear death and would do much to forestall their own demise. The promise of some form of immortality is a source of power for religions, political movements, and governments. Not only do states offer ersatz afterlives, but they deconstruct death and work to defeat it in detail. Some futurists say that death could be confronted more directly and, if not eliminated, at least delayed for centuries or even millennia.  These claims are, to be sure, speculative and depend upon the future development of technologies that do not yet exist in such fields as cybernetics and robotics. Immortality was once a gift or curse from the gods. But what of secular immortality? Even if possible, would a world without death be desirable?

Read more about Ginsberg’s book Big Brother and the Grim Reaper at Book Details – Michigan State University

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