The Primacy of Family Genealogy to Situate Burial, Spectrality, and Ancestrality: Adventures in the Land of the Dead

Abstract

Family genealogy is well-positioned to explore the significance of burial and death, particularly as it relates to one’s connection to ancestors. Doing genealogical research involves visiting the land of the dead, treasuring information, heirlooms, and documents providing evidence about the life of an ancestor, and often revealing a presence of and interaction with the ancestor. Burial is not only associated with the essence of humanity, and coeval with historical consciousness, but it is also essentially connected with genealogy. One may argue that historical consciousness is founded on awareness of and practices bearing on genealogical and ancestral relations. After briefly listing points related to burial and mortuary practices, the article discusses Western philosophers beginning with Plato to show the dual emphases of concern for personal mortality and death of the other. It focuses on death of the other as being able to explain funerary practices and as amenable to genealogy. Next, a brief examination of Freud’s uncanny and of Abraham and Torok’s transgenerational psychology constructed on evidence of the unconscious phantom lead to the spectral turn instituted by Derrida. The article is rounded out with a consideration of the metatextuality of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey epics. Both involve a visit by the living to the land of the dead. Both are textual, placing unwritten stress on the critical role of writing.

Keywords

• ancestrality
• burial
• death
• funeral
• <i>Gilgamesh</i>
• mortality