Blue Death Studies: Theorising the Water-Corpse Interface

Abstract

In this article, we theorise a Blue Death Studies approach to investigate deathly concerns and the people, places, and practices connected to them. Doing so highlights possibilities for rethinking death as watery and mobile rather than sedimentary and sedentary. To ground this theorisation, we explore how water impacts the ir/retrievability of the dead by analysing liquid (sea drownings and alkaline hydrolysis) and frozen deaths (cetacean samples, mountaineers, and cryopreservation). From this, we underscore how waters affect the ir/retrievability of matter and meaning in death and indicate future directions for a blue death studies.

Keywords

• Blue humanities. Death Studies. Human and nonhuman animal corpse. Multispecies studies. Water