Exquisite corpse: the dead and the problem of community in Elias’s Khwabnama

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the course of Khwabnama as one is treated to several roving apparitions, almost invariably those who died violent deaths, it occurs that the point of the ghostly dead is not direct involvement in human lives but simply making an appearance. I would go even further in saying that the thick descriptions of the moments of death and the resurfacing of the dead as ghosts or ghostly elements don’t have a behind of them, they don’t stand for anything other than for themselves and it is their appearance with which we have still to contend if we are to understand what is happening. it is precisely when the dead appear that we can inquire into their appearance to ask what sense they make in themselves, what is the ontology intrinsic to them? Toward this end, in this paper I attempt to focus on the lurid descriptions of the deaths of specific characters and their re-appearance as the dead to draw out how, rather than what, they are presenting. In this process of skewing our apperception of the novel, we stand to see how the novel may not aspire to absolute truth or historical significance, but rather be attempting to show the struggle over sense-making in our times, which is ultimately that over forging community.