Writing Death

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls... Eulogy: one of the many English words combining legein (to gather together) and logos (the word, the law). With eulogy though the speech-act itself is all important (eu-) and its impossibility evident in a written work. The site of the gathering together of words, of scattered sounds, disappears in the act of writing, itself scatter -- all too forcefully underlining the cause, the event of dispersion that creates the need for gathering together. Jeremy Fernandos eulogy, this particular eulogy, is called Writing Death, and it reminds us that eulogy in its impossibility may well be the primary genre of writing. Writing and death have always gone together, hence Platos suspicions of chirographic technologies. The author is absent, as is the subject. The text brooks no questions and gives no answers. Fernandos gathering of scatterings in the form of mini-meditations unfolds the weaving of textus that makes writing possible and makes death comprehensible in all of its paradoxical mystery and awe-ful presence. His is a book of catalysts: use them with care.
-- Ryan Bishop, Professor of Global Arts and Politics, the Winchester School of Art , the University of Southampton