A Note from the Editors
Fur, Fear, and Rabies: Will Love Tear Us Apart?
Ashwin Bhat
That Beneath the Tablecloth: The Precondition of Cruelty
Sarah Faulkner Davies
Urban Paranoia: On Bodily Ingestions and Excretions in Marginal Urban Flora
Mattia Natale
Red Pill/Blue Pill: Is Involuntary Celibacy a Culture or a Cult?
Meera Mohanraj
Masticative Bloodletting or: The Vampires In the Mirror
Luca Grieves
Warm, Bloody Flesh: The Foods of Humanity in A Song of Ice and Fire
Hugh Chapman-Brown
Swallow It
Sarah Clif
Macondo’s True Curse: The Genre that Swallowed a Continent
Belén Mujica
perspective:everymoment,everyencounter withloss,repeatsendlessly.Historydoesnot moveinastraightlinebutcyclesbackupon itself.Ifthisisthecase,thendeathisnot somethingweprocessonceandmovepast,itis somethingwemustfacerepeatedly,eachtime inanew form.
Presumingthatlossislargelybeyondour control,doestheknowledgeofimpending deathchangehow weabsorbit?Terminal illness,forinstance,forcesoneintoastateof anticipatoryswallowing,aprolongedprocessof internalizinganendthathasnotyetarrived. Someresistituntilthefinalmoment,keeping mortalityatbaythroughdenialordefiance. Otherstakesmall,deliberatesipsofit, processingitpiecebypiece.Butintheend,the bodywillswallow forus,whetherweacceptit ornot.Andifswallowingdeathisinevitable, doesresistanceexist?Therearemoments whengriefrefusestobeswallowed,when mourningbreaksintoaction,whenwhatwas meanttobedigestedremainsstuckinthe throat.Nevertheless,Derrida’squoteweshould allkeepwithusis:‘Tolive,bydefinition,isnot somethingonelearns.Notfrom oneself,nor from others,norfrom thedead.Tolive,itis alwaysnecessarytoliveon.’Thatiswhyitisin thestoriestoldafterafuneral,thesongswritten initswakewhenswallowingdeathdoesnot havetobethequietacceptanceofloss,northe dullacheofinevitability.Itcanbeasharpening, adeepening,afuriousinsistencethatwhathas beenconsumedcanbeturnedintosomething greaterbecausedeathdoesnotvanishonce ingested.Itchanges,adapts,remains.And perhaps,initsrefusaltobefullydigested,it remindsusthatswallowingisnotthesameas forgetting.Absorbingdemisepermeatesartistic expression,resurfacesinliterature,and galvanisesmovementsthatdefyerasure, insistingthatthedeadarenotforgotten.
