Death, historiography, historicity: on the forms of power and imaginary

Abstract

In its first part, this article analyzes important studies on the subject of death and its links to different disciplines or different approaches. It emphasizes the greater or lesser relevance attributed to the problem of historicity and the relations between death, imagination and power. Based on the issues discussed in the first part, the second one is dedicated to analyzing three studies on death in ancient times, enabling reflections on ways of history representation. In such cases, the subject of death can be close to the modes of rationality and sensibility that characterize political imagination and become the center of reflections that permeate several disciplines such as History, Anthropology and Literary Theory. This kind of approach seems to suggest possibilities of dealing with the subject that go beyond the restrictive establishment of disciplinary boundaries.

keywords: death; power; historiography.