Power Of Death Research Articles

Māori Sovereignty or Death

In her 1984 book ‘Māori Sovereignty’, Donna Awatere sustains a blistering polemic on ‘white culture’ that still retains its rhetorical force 40 years later. Her construction of a sharply delineated binary between a monolithic notion of ‘white culture’ as against ‘taha Māori’ can come at the cost of simplification. But this is not at all to say that Awatere is wrong when she says it is ‘Māori Sovereignty or death’. In this paper, we extend Awatere’s work by analysing relationships between colonialism and capital. We begin by situating Awatere’s work in its historical context, outlining major shifts in the global political economy, and drawing on Awatere’s analysis of Fascism to account for contemporary Far Right movements. Building from the inextricability of Fascism from the settler colonial/imperialist economy, we explore Awatere’s framing of whiteness as a system of racial exploitation and violence that enforces the state’s genocidal claims to sovereignty, defined through necropower – capitalism’s consumption of racialised death. We then consider the contradictions between capitalism and constitutional transformation. By scanning revolutionary movements elsewhere (in particular the Chilean movement for plurinationalism), we identify the need for extra-parliamentary, broad-based, popular power and constituent authority from below, as well as Indigenous solidarities and international alliances to circumvent anti-Māori populism and confront capital. In reflecting on the power of death, and the need for counter-hegemonic culture capable of securing the transition out of capitalism, we are drawn to the revolutionary essence of whakapapa as an Indigenous ontology that eternally resists necropower.

The COVID-19 Storytelling: Nurses, Patients and the Power of Death.

Personal stories accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic are of utmost relevance when considering policy adjustments and future improvements in the field of nursing. in order to gather data and offer a more detailed overview of the complexity of nurses' responsibilities in times of global health crisis, the method used is ethnographic research. The analisys demonstrates that the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, characterized by major uncertainties, has altered nurses' daily routines to the extent that they have been exposed to additional sets of duties, as well as to the higher levels of exhaustion and risks with potentially fatal consequences. This narratives provide a valuable input to the debate on nurses' own status, as well as on the state of healthcare. This paper extends the current knowledge and contributes to wider discussions about nursing and our society's ability to handle outbreaks of large-scale health crises.

The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O'Neill

“The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O'Neill,” performed by Alex Roe, is among the recent offerings from the Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse to feature lesser-known works by Eugene O'Neill and the Provincetown Players. This solo performance of a short prose piece embodies the imagined final thoughts and wishes of O'Neill's beloved dog, affectionately called “Blemie,” who passed of old age in 1940.Although O'Neill endows Blemie with the considerate and loving impulses of a canine family member, he crafts a character whose voice and preoccupations are unmistakably O'Neill's. Early in the performance, Blemie notes that he is burying his missive in his master's brain, although “he will not know it is there until after I am dead.” Blemie clearly knows his master well, and he predicts O'Neill's and his wife Carlotta's deep well of loneliness once he passes, even as he works to assuage that loss. The piece is both a mourner's rationalization of loss and a gift to those who love and mourn him. As in his great plays, O'Neill here contemplates the fact that humans live lives of gathering property and possessions, only to find that the most important things we can pass on are the things that dogs leave behind: love and faith.The parallel enactment of Blemie's “last will and testament” and O'Neill's exorcism of his sorrow is detailed, charming, and understated. Roe highlights this parallelism through visual cues, including a Beckettian close-up on his penetrating stare and a black-and-white aesthetic that focuses the viewer's gaze on the actor's face. His evocative vocal and physical choices include a deep sigh that emerges from his nose before he begins to speak and a pronounced clacking of his tongue—a sound no human normally makes but one typical of a dog. This work continues subtly throughout, with Roe's “paw” adjusting an errant ear and his darting sideward glance indicating that something has caught his eye.Blemie's tone is formal; he is well mannered, well bred, and had been distinguished and handsome in his prime. Roe's deep and resonant voice conjures all of these features and smoothly supports O'Neill as he utilizes Blemie's generosity of spirit to plead with Carlotta to adopt another dog. Blemie notes, “Dalmatians, naturally, as everyone knows, are best,” before bequeathing his made-to-order Hermès coat to his imagined successor.Finally, Roe's performance of Blemie evokes another of O'Neill's favorite themes: the contemplation of what lies beyond death. For Blemie, the vision of paradise involves a life of full bladders, with each blissful hour a mealtime. For O'Neill during his years with Blemie, however, this question was a constant source of inspiration. Blemie references his life “on the ranch,” indicating the O'Neills' beautiful Northern California property and residence, Tao House, now the home of the Eugene O'Neill Foundation and a National Historic Site. O'Neill wrote his final and most memorable plays at Tao House, where Blemie is buried. Visitors pause at the memorial and grave to appreciate O'Neill's deep love for his pet, which is beautifully expressed in the rare vision of hope and open adoration in the final lines of the “Last Will and Testament.” Blemie instructs O'Neill and Carlotta to think this as they look at his grave: “Here lies one who loved us, and whom we loved. No matter how deep my sleep, I shall hear you. And not all the power of death can keep my spirit from wagging a grateful tail.”

Pouvoir de mort et art de la Relation : une étude de Moi, Tituba sorcière… de Maryse Condé

Power of death and art of Relation: a study of Moi, Tituba sorcière… by Maryse Condé This study of the well-known novel Moi, Tituba sorcière… Noire de Salem (1986) by Maryse Condé will focus on the role of death in the narration. We will see how two different conceptions of death will here be in action: one, where death is nothing but a moment between two lives that still connect; the other, where death is used to enhance the power of white man. The aim is to see how Tituba reacts to the oppression by building a different approach to people, a path that is the “Relation” Edouard Glissant wrote about.

The Politics of Living Death in Nuruddin Farah's Sweet and Sour Milk

Abstract This article examines Nuruddin Farah's 1979 novel Sweet and Sour Milk, asking how we read representations of postcolonial mourning and living death in the context of global authoritarianism. The first novel in Farah's influential dictatorship trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk introduces us to “the General,” a fictionalized version of Siyad Barre, who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991. Like Barre's, the General's power exemplifies what Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics,” or “the contemporary subjugation of life to the power of death.” The General's necropower manifests, peculiarly, as a politics of substitution—that is, when he takes a life, he leaves something in its place. Rebels do not simply disappear; they are killed and then given sycophantic zombie afterlives in the General's propaganda. In response to this politics of substitution, Farah explores a politics of mourning, which insists upon the irreplaceability of lost love objects and thereby broadly reveals what truly can and cannot be substituted. The General insists on the uniqueness of his power, for example, but Farah reveals it to be a cliché, easily substituted by that of other dictators throughout history. Cliché becomes revolutionary in this way, suggesting that dictators share a common fate: they will be deposed or, eventually, die of old age. However, like a horde of the living dead, others like them will return. The article concludes with analysis of the apparent pessimism of this point and the global implications of Farah's ideas about both necropolitics and the limits of the novel form in the face of authoritarian power.

With the World at Heart: Studies in the Secular Today by Thomas A. Carlson

Reviewed by: With the World at Heart: Studies in the Secular Today by Thomas A. Carlson Douglas E. Christie, PhD (bio) With the World at Heart: Studies in the Secular Today. By Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. 256 pp. $30.00 pbk. In Book IV of the Confessions, Augustine describes an experience of loss that undid him completely: a dear childhood friend fell gravely ill, lay unconscious and close to death for a long time, then unexpectedly recovered. But not long afterwards the fever returned, and he died. Augustine says: "Grief darkened my heart. Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My hometown became a torture to me; my father's house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment. . . I thought that since death had consumed him, it was suddenly going to engulf all humanity." The power of death; the debilitating force of grief; and the question of whether love for someone destined to die can be trusted. Whether it will endure. The "lesson" of Book IV, situated within Augustine's sustained reflection on the nature of love and our capacity to know love, is that such love cannot be trusted and will not last: "the reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die. . . for wherever the human soul turns itself other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows." Everything less than God will, because of its impermanence and mutability, ultimately disappoint us. Only God is unchanging; only God, or that which is experienced in and through God, is ultimately worthy of our love. This Augustinian insight and its long afterlife figure centrally in Thomas A. Carlson's With the World at Heart, both as a question and as a foil. Like many readers of the Confessions before him, Carlson takes seriously Augustine's profound struggle with death and his effort to identify a love (and a way of loving) that will not ultimately fail us. But he also questions whether Augustine's radically transcendent understanding of love, and his insistence on the [End Page 338] circumscribed, limited, and ultimately unsatisfying character of love constrained by time and mortality can still serve us in the present moment. He examines whether the idea of "loving a person sure to die as if he would never die" is as illusory and ill-conceived as Augustine ultimately makes it out to be. And he considers whether there is a way of understanding love, including love bound to time and mortality, that can help us rethink our own deepest commitments in a secular age. This is an ambitious and even audacious book that aims to extend and deepen the arguments the author has pursued in two earlier books, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (1999), and The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human (2008), both of which draw upon pre-modern theological-mystical traditions and post-modern philosophy to reimagine the meaning of transcendence in the present moment. In the present work, Carlson examines the question of love—its very possibility, its extent, its durability—in light of ancient spiritual texts (principally Augustine's Confessions) and a formidable array of modern and postmodern writers. Beginning with a searching reading of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Carlson proceeds to investigate (often in dialogue with Augustine) the meaning and possibility of love—a transcendent reality nested within and shaped by the ordinary, concrete, mutable character of mortal existence—in the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Robert Pogue Harrison, Jean-Luc Nancy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Charles Taylor's The Secular Age also casts a long shadow over this work, especially given Carlson's intense interest in reimagining the secular. He acknowledges the importance of Taylor's work but resists Taylor's narrower and more pessimistic reading of the secular. Instead, he argues for a more generous and open understanding of how the ostensibly post-religious or non-religious currents...

Old-Age Justice and Black Feminist History

AbstractThis essay outlines Sojourner Truth’s and Harriet Tubman’s articulations of an intersectional black feminist agenda for old-age justice. The two most famous formerly enslaved women in the nineteenth-century United States, Truth and Tubman in their speeches, activism, and published Narratives revealed the mechanisms of domination through which enslavers and employers of domestic servants extracted productive and reproductive labor from black women, who in turn faced premature debility and immiseration at the end of life. Truth and Tubman linked what is now called necropolitics—“subjugation of life to the power of death,” in Achille Mbembe’s phrase—to the coercive organization of care work, what Evelyn Nakano Glenn refers to as being “forced to care.” They point to the importance of gendered and racialized labor to the history of old age in America.

“Beyond Death”: John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and Posthumous Influence

This essay argues that John Webster's 1611 drama, The Duchess of Malfi, attests to the power of death to shape selfhood and demonstrates the influence of textual monuments on the living. As Webster notes, posthumous fame is not based solely on its ability to console, but rather on “the dignity of a great example,” which is shown at the end of the play through the Duchess’ continuing influence on other characters. Reactions to both her dead body and the edifice constructed in her honor highlight the transformative power of the Duchess’ death and monumentalization. Specifically, The Duchess of Malfi offers audiences a gendered type of memorial, one based on the ability of a female character to posthumously influence the actions of others.

Statins for Primary Prevention in Older Adults—Moving Toward Evidence‐Based Decision‐Making

To determine the efficacy and safety of statins for primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) events in older adults, especially those aged 80 and older and with multimorbidity. The National Institute on Aging and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute convened A multidisciplinary expert panel from July 31 to August 1, 2017, to review existing evidence, identify knowledge gaps, and consider whether statin safety and efficacy data in persons aged 75 and older without ASCVD are sufficient; whether existing data can inform the feasibility, design, and implementation of future statin trials in older adults; and clinical trial options and designs to address knowledge gaps. This article summarizes the presentations and discussions at that workshop. There is insufficient evidence regarding the benefits and harms of statins in older adults, especially those with concomitant frailty, polypharmacy, comorbidities, and cognitive impairment; a lack of tools to assess ASCVD risk in those aged 80 and older; and a paucity of evidence of the effect of statins on outcomes of importance to older adults, such as statin-associated muscle symptoms, cognitive function, and incident diabetes mellitus. Prospective, traditional, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and pragmatic RCTs seem to be suitable options to address these critical knowledge gaps. Future trials have to consider greater representation of very old adults, women, underrepresented minorities, and individuals of differing health, cognitive, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds. Feasibility analyses from existing large healthcare networks confirm appropriate power for death and cardiovascular outcomes for future RCTs in this area. Existing data cannot address uncertainties about the benefits and harms of statins for primary ASCVD prevention in adults aged 75 and older, especially those with comorbidities, frailty, and cognitive impairment. Evidence from 1 or more RCTs could address these important knowledge gaps to inform person-centered decision-making. J Am Geriatr Soc 66:2188-2196, 2018.

Make and Let Die: Untimely Sovereignties by Kathleen Biddick

Reviewed by: Make and Let Die: Untimely Sovereignties by Kathleen Biddick Robert S. Sturges kathleen biddick, Make and Let Die: Untimely Sovereignties. New York: Punctum Books, 2016. Pp. ix, 234. isbn: 978–0–9882340–4–8. $21. Kathleen Biddick's new collection of essays (some previously published) summarizes its main concerns, for those who know their Foucault, in the title and subtitle. 'Untimely' in the subtitle refers to one of the central points to which the essays keep returning: whereas Foucault and some of those who have followed him in discussing modern biopower tend to emphasize the disjunction between pre-eighteenth-century and modern sovereignty, Biddick claims that they can do so only by erasing the medieval. Biddick rejects this disjunctive chronology and, by focusing on the medieval and early modern periods, finds greater historical continuity in ways of thinking about sovereign power. The main title, 'Make and Let Die,' thus reimagines these supposedly discontinuous modes of sovereignty. In a formula simplified—indeed perhaps oversimplified—from Foucault, traditional sovereign power was the power of death: the sovereign could 'make die and let live.' Modern sovereign power, on the other hand, diffused as it is through numerous disciplinary social institutions rather than located in a singular personage, 'makes live' that is, strictly determines how populations will live, and 'lets die,' abandoning those who do not conform. Foucault himself, in Society Must Be Defended, acknowledges that these two modes of sovereign power are imbricated in modernity, but he is clearly more interested in their differences and in attaching those differences to a pre-eighteenth century/modernity divide, so Biddick can be forgiven this simplification, especially since readers of this volume are assumed to be familiar with Foucault et al. already. Biddick's is a nimble mind playing over the fields of quantum theory, object-oriented ontologies, performance and performativity, theories of incarceration, visual arts, zombies, metallurgy, epidemiology, philology, cinema, the archive, and more. This playfulness—a hallmark of the publisher Punctum Books (which gives as its place of publication 'earth, milky way')—is not to be understood as a lack of scholarly seriousness, but actually enables a complex and convincing, progressive ethical stance toward politics and political philosophy. Rather than 'political philosophy,' in fact, one might more properly refer to 'political theology' as Biddick's topic: a touchstone is Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies and its afterlife in modern political thought. This ongoing presence of the 'make die' of medieval sovereignty, hidden in modern sovereignty, helps account for apparent anomalies such as the 'make die' of modern genocide. Biddick finds the [End Page 71] past of such 'necropolitics,' to use Achille Mbembe's term, particularly in the 'living death' of medieval Jews and Muslims. Readers of Arthuriana will be particularly interested in Chapter Three, 'Arthur's Two Bodies and the Bare Life of the Archives,' which argues that Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, read in light of contemporary archival practices, 'recounts what the neatly ruled membranes of the Pipe Rolls foreclosed and what the fictions of legal continuity the [Leges Edwardi Confessoris] suppresses—the violence of founding this sovereignty in and through archival continuity, and thus, the violence of founding the king's second body, the body that cannot die' (p. 71). Biddick concludes by demonstrating the ways in which this archival violence was directed specifically against the Jews. Other chapters take up related investigations: the relationship between the theology of the Real Presence and political realities in chapters on Lanfranc and on Shakespeare's Richard II; the relationship of Christian semiotics to the Hebrew scriptures; and sovereign 'undeadness' as represented in the Ruthwell and Cloisters Crosses. One might offer a few quibbles. It is surprising to find no mention of Mbembe's 'necropolitics,' especially as discussed in his essay of that name, which seems particularly relevant to Biddick's concerns. And the structure of this volume as a collection of essays rather than as a sustained argument makes for a certain repetitiousness: the chapter on Richard II, for example, rehashes much of what has already been discussed in the chapter on the afterlife of the doctrine of the Real Presence. But these are minor matters; Make and...

The racialized death-politics of urban resilience governance

ABSTRACTIn the essay, ‘Necropolitics’, Achille Mbembe attends to the contemporary subjugation of life to the power of death – exceptional violence that exceeds the biopolitical aim of fostering life – thus alluding to a state of emergency in which law is suspended and martial rule is brought into force. However, as several commentators have suggested, exceptional politics does not need to be legitimized by a declared state of emergency, such as in cases where governmental and non-governmental actors are vested with powers to take strong measures against specific urban sub-populations in the name of security or order maintenance. Still, even these reworked and expanded approaches to death-politics revolve around sovereign exceptionality and the accompanying fabrication of undesirable ‘others’. Somewhat counterintuitively, the present article advances an analysis of racialized security politics issuing from the breakdown of representational, topographical boundaries between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘us’ and ‘others’. Illustrated by a case from Malmö, Sweden, it urges greater attention to how necropolitics could operate entirely outside the trope of emergency as exception. The principal argument is that urban security politics, when operating within the frame of resilience governance, involves distinctly different configurations of necropolitics, which require a critical-theoretical vocabulary outside the traditional framework of securitization.

Esclavos y libres en la novela "Sab" de Gertrudis Gómez de

El tema de la esclavitud y la libertad expresadas en la novela Sab de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda ha sido ampliamente analizado desde el punto de vista socio-político. También existen estudios que subrayan la visión romántica generalizada acerca de la fuerza esclavizadora del amor y del poder liberatorio de la muerte. No obstante, este artículo pretende resaltar otra idea romántica, plasmada por la autora en los personajes principales de esta obra, pero poco estudiada por los críticos: que una persona puede ser esclava o libre no en base de su estatus social o las condiciones económico-políticas, sino en función de la fuerza y la sinceridad de su amor.

Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the Gospel through Church and Scripture by Matthew Levering

Reviewed by: Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the Gospel through Church and Scripture by Matthew Levering Roger W. Nutt Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the Gospel through Church and Scripture. By Matthew Levering. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2014. Pp. xi + 363. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8010-4924-8. In Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation, Matthew Levering breathes life into the body of topics that emerge from the doctrine of revelation. The eight chapters take as their starting point that God has spoken through the prophets and "by a Son." The book addresses the following question: "Where and in what ways does this mediation take place so that humans in all generations can receive the fullness of the gospel?" (1). The first three chapters engage the hierarchical-ecclesial nature of the mediation of revelation. Levering articulates the Church's role in the mediation of revelation in terms of Aquinas's theology of Trinitarian missions. "The Church's participation in divine revelation," he explains, "comes about through the missions of the Son and Spirit that enable us to believe, obey, and [End Page 138] imitate Christ's revelatory words and deeds" (42-43). "Absent the vibrant theology of the trinitarian missions that we find in Aquinas (and in Scripture)," he argues, "the theocentric character of revelation would seem to exclude the active role of the Church, lest mere humans be situated in the place of God or lest revelation be imagined as the Church's work over the centuries rather than as God's work in Christ and the Spirit" (55-56). Chapter 2 treats the role of the Eucharistic liturgy in the mediation of revelation. Levering begins his discussion of the mediating role of the liturgy with a lengthy presentation of the work of Anglican theologian John Webster. Webster raises questions about "liturgy-centered accounts of Scripture" because he worries that they lead to the view, in Levering's words, "that Scripture is 'Scripture' only when the Church is actively using the biblical texts in proclamation and worship" (61). Levering appreciates many of Webster's insights about the nature of Scripture but is not satisfied with all of his conclusions. In response, Levering offers a presentation of Scripture's own testimony about its mediating role in the liturgy. "When Scripture talks about Scripture," he observes, "it does so most frequently within liturgical and sanctifying contexts" (70). Levering turns his attention to the priesthood in chapter 3. Authors such as Calvin and Hobbes ask whether the priesthood, especially the papal office, "has failed to mediate divine revelation faithfully" (87). The evolution of the centralization of power in the priesthood and papacy gave rise, according to this view, to a "priestly rivalry" that destroyed the serenity of the early Church. Levering resists this narrative by pointing out that it is precisely by its priestly power that "the Church prevails against the power of death by liturgically mediating the gospel to the world—thereby revealing not the power of humans to be in charge, but the cruciform power of the merciful One" (111). In chapter 4, Levering relates the Church's mediation of revelation to the reality of the gospel. "If the gospel is Jesus Christ," he asks, "why does not Scripture's testimony to Jesus suffice for the mediation of divine revelation, especially after the end of the apostolic age?" (114). He considers and contrasts the gospel theologies of Scot McKnight and Thomas Aquinas to respond to this question. McKnight's theology of gospel culture "involves more than simply the call to repent and believe in Jesus Christ" (ibid.). At the core of gospel culture is a dynamic that "leads directly to who Jesus is" (120). Levering builds upon McKnight's treatment of the gospel by looking at Aquinas's commentaries on St. Paul. What makes the gospel good news, Aquinas explains, is "that it announces the news of man's union with God, which is man's good" (121). Aquinas and McKnight thus agree on the transformative nature of gospel culture and the centrality of Jesus Christ at the heart of the gospel message. Aquinas, however, "does not do away with...

Horror beyond Death: Geopolitics and the Pulverisation of the Human

Biopolitics often enters the sphere of geopolitics in the form of a series of necropolitical or thanatopolitical interventions.1 From territorial conquests or wars of attrition to the concentration camps or policies of control of displaced populations, the biopolitical capture of human life and bodies in configurations of (geo)political power has generally involved the putting to death of large swaths of populations, whether they are directly targeted or they happen to be 'in the way'. Michel Foucault argued that biopolitics emerges when the power of the sovereign shifts from a 'right to take life' to a capacity to 'let live'.2 Thus, political power, the power of the geopolitical sovereign (generally), becomes concerned with the management, control, and enhancement of people's lives, with the 'health' of a population/body politic, and with the efficient utilisation and incorporation of individual bodies into political preoccupations (including the concern with the survival of the state or sovereign). Yet, as Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe, among others, have also argued, while Foucault's recognition that biopolitical power is primarily concerned with the maintenance of life is crucial, this capacity to 'make live and let die' is never completely separate from the old modality of sovereign power and geopolitical force that was/is premised upon a right to put to death. Thus, as Mbembe puts it, biopolitics is also about the 'subjugation of life to the power of death'.3 Agamben adds that 'if there is a line in every modern state marking the point at which the decision on life becomes a decision on death, and biopolitics can turn into thanatopolitics, this line no longer appears today as a stable border dividing two clearly distinct zones'.4 The distinction between biopolitics and thanatopolitics/necropolitics can no longer be guaranteed. When biopolitics - the concern with the enhancement of human life/living - is the main object of geopolitical operations, what Mbembe calls 'the creation of death worlds' often becomes modern and late-modern geopolitics' primary objective (Necropolitics, p40).This essay, however, is not interested in reprising the many biopolitical arguments that have been advanced to demonstrate the close connections between biopolitics and necropolitics. It is clear and, in a way, it was so already for Foucault that, in order to maximise the life/living potentials of some populations and bodies, other populations or other bodies have to be sacrificed or must disappear (Society, pp254-258). Put differently, what brings geopolitics and biopolitics together is their devotion to making populations and bodies die (in other words, their attachment to necropolitics). This essay is also not concerned with the many necropolitical dimensions of latemodern geopolitics (whether we are looking at World War II and the camps, for example, or, more recently, at techniques of exclusion of bodies and disappearance of life in the long era of the global war on terror). Again, many studies have targeted this late modern condition of (geo)political life.5 Instead, my goal in this essay is to push further the biopolitical/necropolitical argument by showing that, in key contemporary instances of geopolitical violence and destruction, the life and/or death of populations and individual bodies is not a primary concern. What is of concern, rather, in some contemporary geopolitical configurations is what I have called the pulverisation of the human,6 or, to borrow Adriana Cavarero's language, a radical violence that, 'not content merely to kill because killing would be too little, aims to destroy the uniqueness of the body'.7 What is at stake in some geopolitical scenarios is 'not the end of human life, but the human condition itself' (Horrorism, p8). With Cavarero's help, I have called this targeting of the human condition, of the fact of the human, or of humanity itself a matter of horror.8 Horror's aim, when it enters the domain of geopolitical violence and destruction, may appear to be to put bodies to death. …

Luther Refracted. The Reformer’s Ecumenical Legacy ed. by Piotr J. Małysz, Derek R. Nelson

Reviewed by: Luther Refracted. The Reformer’s Ecumenical Legacy ed. by Piotr J. Małysz, Derek R. Nelson Mark D. Tranvik Luther Refracted. The Reformer’s Ecumenical Legacy. Edited by Piotr J. Małysz and Derek R. Nelson. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. 338pp. I have to confess. Normally when I see the word “ecumenical” in a book title my first impulse is to leave the text unopened. Participants in ecumenical dialogues frequently lament the lack of interest in their work (297) but this is often the fault of overly technical language, turgid prose, and a hierarchy out of touch with people in the pews. However, I am happy to report that this book is anything but dry and boring. Using the image of “refraction,” the editors challenged participants from a variety of Christian churches to think about what happens when Luther’s theology pierces (like a ray of light) their own traditions. The result is some surprising and insightful reflections about the Reformer and how he might still speak to Christians today. One of the best essays is by the retired University of Chicago theologian David Tracy. While not plowing any new ground, Tracy writes clearly and appreciatively of Luther’s theology of the cross and his understanding of the hiddenness of God. (A third section on the fashionable “theosis” theory is less persuasive.) Seldom have I seen Luther’s central theological concerns summarized so well and with such understanding. Tracy handles the paradoxes and tensions of these two subjects with sensitivity to the Reformer’s central concerns. In fact, I plan to use this article with my own students, particularly the ones interested in going deeper into Luther’s thought. Another helpful essay is by the Baptist theologian Brian C. Brewer. Brewer is highly critical of tendencies in his own church, especially what he calls the “hyper-individualism” that seems to infect the Southern Baptists. Let’s be honest—this is an affliction that hampers much of American Christianity, Lutherans included. Brewer sees Luther’s concept of the “priesthood of all believers” as a [End Page 438] valuable correction to the Baptist conception of “soul competency” and its narrow view of the Christian standing alone before God. Brewer understands the priesthood of all believers in a communal sense where Christians pray for one another, read and study Scripture together, and work with each other for a better world. Matthew Myer Boulton, a Disciples of Christ pastor, has a nice piece on the simul iustus et peccator. He sees this teaching as an important correction to the tendency of Christians to view themselves as holy and the outside world as sinful. While the idea of Christendom has largely been lost in Western culture, Boulton notes that individual Christian communities still fall prey to an “us–and–them” mentality. Luther’s notion of sin’s power to penetrate all of humanity resists the triumphalism that Christians often find tempting. Another writing that deserves to be highlighted is a highly personal reflection by Episcopalian Randall C. Zachman, who teaches Reformation theology at Notre Dame. Zachman describes how his own interest in Luther developed. He relates in detail his struggle within his own conscience with the power of death and how Luther’s Christocentric theology provided a way beyond the void that looms at the end of life. While it could be said that Zachman belabors his point, I found his account of his battle with what Luther called Anfechtungen to be moving and ultimately uplifting. It is rare for an academic to bare his or her soul in such a fashion. I might add that Zachman could have found consolation in his baptism as Luther often did. Unfortunately he does not reference the sacrament. Readers might be wondering about Lutheran voices in the mix. They are here as well. Both of the Lutheran editors as well as Paul Hinlicky, Ian McFarland, and Ted Peters provide reactions to the various perspectives offered in this volume. Their contributions are helpful and allow readers to listen to some Lutheran voices in the midst of this ecumenical conversation. Overall, editors Małysz and Nelson are to be applauded for their work in assembling this rich collection...

‘Living Water’ and Sanguinary Witness: John 19:34 and Martyrs of the Second and Early Third Century

In the Fourth Gospel the death of Jesus is an eschatological fulfilment of the hopes associated with the festivals of Tabernacles, Passover, Hanukkah, and daily worship (Tamid) at the temple. When the evangelist underscores the testimony of blood and water issuing from the body of the crucified Jesus he expresses a correlation with the water and wine libations that flow onto the temple altar during the festival of Tabernacles (water libation) and the offering of Tamid (wine libation). This testimony witnesses to the Johannine gospel: in Jesus’ sacrificial death (blood) the power of death is overcome and the life of the Holy Spirit (‘living water’) is present for anyone who believes in Jesus. A comparison of the Johannine understanding of Jesus’ death with that of the martyrs of Judaism in 4 Maccabees shows both traditions employing the same sacrificial images (purification, consecration, and propitiation through blood) which express the redemptive power of a martyr’s death. In the Fourth Gospel, ‘living water’ is an image for the life-giving and cleansing power of Jesus’ death as a sanguinary witness (martyrdom). The indwelling of his Spirit in a believer is linked to the image of the ‘living water’ of Jesus given in his sacrificial act of agape; and martyrdoms of the second and early third century (Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Sanctus of Lugdunum/Vienna, and Perpetua of Carthage) confirm this conclusion.

Book Review: The Power of Death: Contemporary Reflections on Death in Western Society

Book Review: The Power of Death: Contemporary Reflections on Death in Western Society

Home Blood Pressure Measurement in the Morning Related to Cancer in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: 10 Years-Term Results of a Longitudinal Study and Cancer

Previous longitudinal studies have demonstrated that blood pressure measurements at home (HBP) in the wakening- up display stronger predictive power for death, and vascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) than clinic blood pressure measurements (CBP). The leading cause of death was cancer. Patients with T2DM have associated with cancer, and high CBP is a risk factor for cancer. Therefore, this study investigated whether HBP or CBP is related to cancer event in patients with T2DM for 10 years. At baseline, 400 Japanese patients with T2DM were classified as hypertensive (HT) or normotensive (NT) based on HBP and CBP. Mean (± SD) duration was 95 ± 35 months. Primary and secondary endpoints were death and cancer, respectively. Differences in outcome between HT and NT were analyzed using survival curves from Kaplan-Meier analysis and log-rank testing. Associated risk factors were assessed using Cox proportional hazards. On basis of HBP, death and event of cancer were significantly higher in HT than in NT. The leading cause of death was cancer. On basis of CBP, there was no significant difference in the incidence of death and event of cancer between patients with HT and NT at baseline. Associated risk factor for cancer was T2DM. Home morning HT may be reflected more keenly state of cancer than clinic HT, which may be superior to clinic NT. When we meet with such patients, it is important that cancer may be one of many causes for morning HT in Japanese patients with T2DM.

The Power of Death: Hierarchy in the Representation of Death in Pre- and Post-Conquest Aztec Codices

Through an examination of Aztec death iconography in pre- and post-Conquest codices of the central valley of Mexico (Borgia, Mendoza, Florentine, and Telleriano-Remensis), this paper will explore how attitudes towards the Aztec afterlife were linked to questions of hierarchical structure, ritual performance and the preservation of Aztec cosmovision. Particular attention will be paid to the representation of mummy bundles, sacrificial debt-payment and god-impersonator (ixiptla) sacrificial rituals. The scholarship of Alfredo López-Austin on Aztec world preservation through sacrifice will serve as a framework in this analysis of Aztec iconography on death. The transformation of pre-Hispanic traditions of representing death will be traced from these pre- to post-Conquest Mexican codices, in light of processes of guided syncretism as defined by Hugo G. Nutini and Diana Taylor’s work on the performative role that codices play in re-activating the past. These practices will help to reflect on the creation of the modern-day Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos.

Usefulness of morning home blood pressure measurements in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: results of a 10-year, prospective, longitudinal study

Previous cross-sectional studies and 6-year longitudinal study have demonstrated that home blood pressure (HBP) measurements upon awakening have a stronger predictive power for death, micro- and macrovascular complications than clinic blood pressure (CBP) measurements in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). This study investigated which of these measurements offers stronger predictive power for outcomes over 10 years. At baseline, 400 Japanese patients with T2DM were classified as having hypertension (HT) or normotension (NT) based on HBP and CBP. The mean survey duration was 95 months. Primary and secondary end-points were death and new or worsened micro- and macrovascular complications, respectively. Differences in outcomes for each end-point between HT and NT patients were analyzed using Kaplan–Meier survival curves and log-rank testing. Associated risk factors were assessed using Cox proportional hazards analysis. Based on HBP, death and micro- and macrovascular complications were significantly higher in patients with HT than with NT at baseline and end-point. Based on CBP, there were no significant differences in incidence of death, micro- or macrovascular complications between patients with HT and NT at baseline and end-point, although a significant difference in incidence of death was observed between the HT and NT groups at end-point. However, the significance was significantly lower in CBP than in HBP. One risk factor associated with micro- and macrovascular complications in patients with HBP was therapy for HT. This 10-year longitudinal study of patients with T2DM demonstrated that elevated HBP upon awakening is predictive of death, and micro- and macrovascular complications.