« From Zoo. To Bot. » : putréfaction de l’animal humain et transcendance écologique dans Being Dead de Jim Crace.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the novel Being Dead (1999) by British contemporary novelist Jim Crace. Examining more specifically the staging of the slow decomposition of its main characters’ corpses, it shows that death is described as a durative process that highlights the animality and corporality of the human subject. It then contends that the two protagonists’ embodiment and embeddedness appear as the condition of a paradoxical materialist and ecological transcendence. The novel is hence interpreted as an attempt to deliver a non-idealistic afterlife narrative that reverses the axiology according to which reduction to matter is akin to metaphysical humiliation. The paper finally argues that in doing so, Being Dead reads as a contemporary bio-ecological narrative of comfort that renews the ancient genre of consolatio.

Keywords

• Jim Crace
• corpse
• death
• transcendance
• ecology
• consolatio