Technologies of the Human Corpse by John Troyer

Technologies of the Human Corpse by John Troyer

The relationship of the dead body with technology through history, from nineteenth-century embalming machines to the death-prevention technologies of today.

Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination--not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that is deployed, it seems, expressly to keep human bodies from dying, blurring the boundary between alive and dead. In this book, John Troyer examines the relationship of the dead body with technology, both material and conceptual: the physical machines, political concepts, and sovereign institutions that humans use to classify, organize, repurpose, and transform the human corpse. Doing so, he asks readers to think about death, dying, and dead bodies in radically different ways.

Troyer explains, for example, how technologies of the nineteenth century including embalming and photography, created our image of a dead body as quasi-atemporal, existing outside biological limits formerly enforced by decomposition. He describes the Happy Death Movement of the 1970s; the politics of HIV/AIDS corpse and the productive potential of the dead body; the provocations of the Body Worlds exhibits and their use of preserved dead bodies; the black market in human body parts; and the transformation of historic technologies of the human corpse into death prevention technologies. The consequences of total control over death and the dead body, Troyer argues, are not liberation but the abandonment of Homo sapiens as a concept and a species. In this unique work, Troyer forces us to consider the increasing overlap between politics, dying, and the dead body in both general and specifically personal terms.

Troyer, John: - John Troyer was born in Cairo, Nebraska, in 1950. He has traveled the USA, Canada, and Central and South America, helping in various churches and youth groups, as well as trades training with Trades4Life. He has Red Seal certification in both Auto and RV trades. He helped with the development of Canada's national training standards and testing requirements for the Recreational Vehicle Certification. John is a commercial pilot and loves the outdoors. He and his wife, Betsy, have been married 49 years and have 5 children, 18 grandchildren and one great granddaughter.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262043816
ISBN 10	0262043815
Title	Technologies of the Human Corpse
Author	John Troyer
Series	The Mit Press
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2020-04-14
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.