Brittany Wallace, Politcal and Mystical Power

I came across this reading while researching for an anthropology class and found it interesting on a political and anthropological view point. The article how dead bodies animate the study of politics. While slightly morbid, t was still interesting nonetheless. Dead bodies are good vehicles in developing meaningful dimensions through complex symbolic processes. Political bodies help people to see past political transformations as something that’s not just a technical process. Dead bodies introduce less technical meanings with the instilment of feelings, ideas of morality and the non rational. All things dead, to include, bones and corpse, coffins and cremation urns are all material objects. Because dead bodies are material and not merely notions, such as patriotism or civil society, corpses can be moved displayed and strategically located in specific places. Dead bodies transcend time; they have the ability to make things past the present concern of many. Nonetheless it isn’t about the concreteness of dead bodies that make them so integral to politics but rather what makes them so effective is how people think about them. Dead bodies are meaningful through the way a specific dead person’s importance is construed. Manipulating bodies can offer symbol of political transformation (i.e. cutting off the head of the king). Dead bodies may be concrete but they embody more than one meaning and are open to many different interpretations. You can even rewrite history wth these symbols since they lack the ability of speech. I never considered the true symbolic power of a "dead body" in mystification of a group.