Exploring the Afterlife: Relational Spaces, Absent Presences, and Three Fictional Vignettes. (May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vanolo, Alberto
• Is Part Of: Space and culture. Volume 19:Number 2(2016:May)
• Page Start: 192
• Page End: 201
• Publication Date: 2016-05
• Subjects: Afterlife -- relational space -- virtual space -- absent presences -- postliving -- ethnography; Human geography -- Periodicals; Spatial behavior -- Periodicals; Space (Architecture) -- Periodicals; Personal space -- Periodicals; Human ecology -- Periodicals; Comportement spatial -- Périodiques; Espace (Architecture) -- Périodiques; Espace personnel -- Périodiques; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1177/1206331215621020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1552-8308

Abstract

Cultural understandings of the Afterlife are often embedded in spatial thinking and spatial metaphors. This article, first develops an understanding of the Afterlife as a relational virtual space populated by absent presences. Second, the article explores the possibility of investigating the Afterlife with ethnographical approaches. Exploring three fictional vignettes, the article discusses alternative spatialities of the Afterlife, in order to emphasize the pervasiveness of spatial thinking in conceptualizations of apparently nonspatial phenomena, and to challenge dichotomist spatial interpretations of presences/absences, the living and the postliving and life/Afterlife.