Book Review: The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (1999)

Queen Elizabeth II’s death is a huge reminder to the world: dead bodies have political lives and these political lives affect individuals’ worlds of meaning. It seems a timely moment to review what anthropological inquiry into this topic has already revealed, specifically, Katherine Verdery’s (1999) book, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies.

Verdery, Katherine. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 184 pp.

Introduction

The study of socialism and post-socialism has been dominated by political scientists and economists. There is reason for that, as the major, tangible shifts associated with socialism and its collapse have been within the political and economic realm. The discourse is largely concerned with binaries — East v. West, Socialism v. Capitalism, Communism v. Democracy, etc. — and attempts to explain all of the tumultuous changes that have occurred in Eastern Europe after 1989, the side-effects of the transformation from the left side of the binary to the right, quite literally, i.e., from Socialism to Capitalism, from Communism to Democracy, etc. What is disregarded in these analyses are the actual transformations that occur within peoples’ daily lives and practices, as felt by those people. What is missing is the anthropological data on the cultural transformations that both create and are created by these political and economic shifts.

Katherine Verdery, one of the few anthropologists who has specialized in socialism and post-socialism, specifically in Romania, for over three decades, has attempted again and again to fill this cultural void in the academic discourse. Her 1999 book, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, is a successful attempt at, as she calls it, ‘animating’ the study of politics by adding that missing cultural dimension. Originally presented as a series of lectures (the W. Averell Harriman Lectures) at Columbia University (New York, USA), this book has now become a staple for the study of socialism and post-socialism, which reflects the author’s multi-disciplinary desired audience and efficient yet entertaining style of writing. There have been countless reviews of this book, and although there are things that most agree upon with regards to the lack of pure ethnographic material in the book, most also agree that this is an essential piece for anyone hoping to better understand post-socialist transformations and the importance of the cultural-symbolic approach to anthropology, specifically political and economic anthropology.

Verdery’s main goal throughout the book is to ‘enchant’ or animate the study of politics by using dead bodies (meaning statues, corpses, mass graves) as a focal point for examining its cultural dimension, specifically as it relates to Eastern Europe after the collapse of Socialism in 1989. Her broader goal is to give a theoretical model for dead body politics, and give the readers examples of how to analyze and interpret the use of dead bodies for political and cultural-symbolic purposes. The atypically short book is organized into an introduction followed by three chapters, each with its own focus, and, interestingly, each with its own organizational style. The introduction is in all sense an introduction to the study of ‘the transformation’, dead body politics, and her main goals for the book in general. Chapter one deals with her main point: how the study of dead bodies can ‘animate’ the study of politics. Chapters two and three zoom in on one aspect of this study: the politics surrounding one specific body (a bishop in Romania) and the dead body politics at play in the crisis of the former Yugoslavia. By the end of the book, Verdery has reiterated and explained her main points several times, and the reader is, overall, left satisfied.

Verdery herself makes comparisons between her own work and that of her influences, specifically Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. From Weber, she derives the role of the social analyst: understanding meaning as opposed to explaining causes. (25) She also takes from him the concept of modes of legitimation, but disagrees slightly, asserting that all authority has a ‘sacred’ component, even if in the guise of secular processes. (37) The influence of Durkheim is rather obvious throughout the book as well, with much talk of sacred/profane, kinship, and structures in society (as if they act on their own without individuals). She directly compares herself to him, explaining how they are both writing during tumultuous times and about political and moral renewal, but, “I part company with him in regard to the conscience collective; I look not for shared mentalities but for conflict among groups over social meanings.” (36) Dead bodies are a site where these conflicts over meanings take place. She also quotes Edmund Leach at length in her analysis of temporality in the last chapter. And, it is clear that she draws much inspiration from the works of Clifford Geertz (specifically his “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example,” 1973) and Victor Turner (specifically Forest of Symbols, 1967).

“Dead bodies have enjoyed political life the world over and since far back in time,” a provocative and effective first sentence. (1) The introduction gives the reader a broader conceptualization of dead body politics. It is filled with, as she puts it, “A Parade of Dead Bodies,” which shows just how relevant and common activity around dead bodies is, specifically in times of great change or major upheaval. These bodies are organized in two categories — named and famous dead and anonymous dead — and include the tearing down/building up of statues, corpses/bones that have been returned from abroad, and locals reburied. Not all dead bodies are used for political purposes, so she explicitly states that she is only interested in those corpses (and statues) that have become political symbols. Her cultural symbolic approach is obvious here, as she connects the use of dead-body-symbols to several themes, including death rituals and beliefs about ‘proper’ burials, ancestor worship, national genealogies and the rewriting of history, space-time conceptualizations and changes, the restitution of private property, religious worship, the creation of national identities, and much more.

Verdery also outlines her three major research questions: “Why has the postsocialist period been accompanied by so much activity around dead bodies?”, “What does the politics concerning them signify?”, and “How does this dead-body politics differ from examples in other times and places?” (3). She begins to answer these questions in the introduction itself. The first question is addressed by simply showing the penumbra of examples of dead body politics that have happened in the post-socialist period. The second, by showing example after example of the significance of the manipulation of dead bodies throughout history, thus confirming a corollary to her question (that the politics concerning dead bodies is indeed significant). By the end of the book, Verdery successfully answers the first two of these questions, and makes a valiant attempt to answer the third, but is not as successful here as with the first two, as will be discussed later in this review.

She concludes the introduction with an overview of her main point, “My overall argument underscores the role of dead bodies in animating postsocialist politics, as people struggle to come to terms with the profound changes in their environments and their universes of meaning that have ensued from the events of 1989.” (22) This is the perfect lead into her first chapter, which shows exactly how it is that “Dead Bodies Animate the Study of Politics.” In this chapter, Verdery presents her theoretical framework for analyzing this kind of material, which is essentially the cultural-symbolic approach. She begins by defining politics in both analytical and descriptive terms, and emphasizing its context and its role in struggles over meanings. (24) After, she briefly explains her theoretical interpretation of the ‘transition,’ which she qualifies as an incomplete massive shift in peoples’ “worlds of meanings.” This is her chosen term, as opposed to culture, which she argues is not just the common conception of cognition, but that culture is beliefs and ideas that have been materialized in action. (34) By choosing this term Verdery is able to reconceptualize and get the reader to as well. The ‘transition’ is much more than it seems, it is, “a problem of reorganization on a cosmic scale,” which, “involves the redefinition of virtually everything, including morality, social relations, and basic meanings.” (35) This point furthers her first research question, as she already established in her introduction that times of great political/economic/cultural upheaval tend to beget activity around dead bodies, and now she has established that the post-1989 transformation is one of those times.

Chapter one is mostly focused on how using dead bodies as loci can ‘animate’ the study of the politics in general. This is, in my opinion, the most important, innovative, and ingenious element of the book. Verdery successfully shows why dead bodies are essential to understanding cultural and political processes, and the reader is left convinced that more studies of this kind are necessary for the future. She presents four key roles that dead bodies play in politics (or realms that dead bodies play a role in): endowing authority with a ‘sacred’ dimension, promoting a specific moral order, restructuring space and time, and, crucially, determining identities, specifically national ones, and social relations. She states, “In each of these domains, dead bodies serve as sites for political conflict related to the process of reordering the meaningful universe.” (37) What is unique is her conception of dead bodies as a site, not as a simple event. Elites can partake in dead body politics for one, many, or all of the above purposes, but this is only one of many sites where these processes happen. And, as she explains, dead bodies are excellent sites for these processes for many reasons — representing a certain political order, not being able to talk back, evoking ‘cosmic’ concerns about life and death, and therefore accompanied by sacred and kinship/ancestor associations, ‘heavy’ affect, self-referentiality — but the crucial component that gives dead bodies their symbolic capital (which is especially relevant in times of political transformation) is their multivocality. “This, it seems to me, is the mark of a good political symbol: it has legitimating effects not because everyone agrees on its meaning but because it compels interest despite (because of?) divergent views of what it means.” (31)

What a crucial point in our current era.

All of these concepts and roles are returned to, emphasized, and further explained throughout the rest of the book.

As mentioned before, not only are the chapters focused on different topics related to her themes, but they are also organized differently, and Verdery makes it clear that this is intentional. Specifically, the last two chapters are meant to be organized in such a way as to emphasize the points that she’s making about temporality and how disorienting shifts in the structure of time can be. As the second chapter is organized essentially chronologically, this is meant to demonstrate a linear progressive temporality; the third chapter, sporadic yet repetitive and thematic, is more akin to a cyclical (recursive) temporality. This shift is indeed noticeable to the reader, even if she hadn’t elaborated on it at several points in the book. But, it is very subtle, which I would imagine is exactly the point she’s trying to make about the shifting nature of temporality in the post-Socialism period — people know something is off, but they don’t quite know what. And, more so, traditional analysis has not led to any answers on that, hence why anthropology is necessary to animate the study of politics.

Chapter 2, “The Restless Bones of Bishop Micu,” focuses on the politics surrounding the reburial of the eighteenth-century Transylvanian bishop, Inochentie Micu, who is more than just a Greek Catholic priest, but a Romanian National Hero. Her overall goal with this chapter is to show a model of analysis for the politics surrounding one specific dead body, and this model proves extremely effective based on this case, even if the case itself didn’t have world-reordering effects. In fact, she explains that the public essentially didn’t know that the reburial of this supposedly-beloved Romanian hero-saint was happening, and thus, also, doesn’t include any ‘true’ ethnographic data from either the reburial (which itself is only two paragraphs of the chapter) or the public reaction to it. Her lack of ethnography, as mentioned earlier, is one of Verdery’s most pervasive and redundant critiques, and she has made it clear that her motivation is to help understanding by presenting theoretical models to analyze data once it has been collected, not a methodological plan for how to collect said data. Her critical goal is to elaborate a case that can be analyzed in terms of both local and global processes and their interaction.

In a logical, mostly-chronologic order, Verdery elaborates the story(ies) of Bishop Micu. First, she explains the crucial points from his biography, outlining what makes his bones a multivocal symbol and capable of being interpreted in many ways. She then elaborates on the political and social context of Romania during the Communist period and after, up until his reburial in 1997. The focus here is on competition between politico-religious elites in the new-post-communist religious market, echoing Romanian history in general (as seen in Micu’s biography), specifically the competition of Orthodox versus Greek Catholic. Ultimately, as revealed at the end of the chapter, the Greek Catholics win the prize of being able to control the reburial of Bishop Micu. This prize is accompanied by many more important prizes, connecting with the concepts of chapter one. His body is a tangible symbol of the particular narrative of history that the Greek Catholics would like to be told — different than that narrative the Orthodox Church would have preferred, and different than that narrative that Verdery seems to have a small preference for that would be more unifying of the Romanian people in general — Bishop Micu was a Greek Catholic who, like Jesus, suffered for not only his nation but for his beliefs, just as Greek Catholics now are people who, like Micu, suffered not only for their nation but for their beliefs. The reason they won was explained by Verdery in terms of political and moral capital, which they had more of — despite the Orthodox having way more people and authority — because of, “their widely acknowledged role in producing Romanian national consciousness and emancipation, their moral claims to compensation for their suffering under the communists,” and, of course, “their ties with the Vatican.” (66–67) This moral (national consciousness, suffering) and political/economic capital (ties to the Vatican) got them control over Micu’s reburial, which in turn got them even more political capital, but crucially also, symbolic capital.

This chapter outlines the nuances of religious competition in general. Verdery makes an enlightening comparison between the three empires competing for control in Romania pre-independence and the three religions/religious leaders competing for control in Romania post-socialism. She also goes further, explaining how this ethereal, intangible competition over a new religious market was impacted by and had an impact on, the competition over private property in post-Socialist states. Verdery truly does enchant the study of this seemingly simple political/economic practice (restitution of private property) by elaborating on the culture of competition, blame, and morality that it entails. “By assuming that the macro is in the micro (and vice versa), I have found that a modest set of bones can open up the world.” (93) By using Micu’s reburial as a starting point, Verdery was able to discuss the processes of conflict over property, religious renewal, and national identity inherent in the post-socialist transformation.

Her model here could be applied to almost any ‘set of bones’ successfully, and could be a truly useful tool for the analysis of other transformations that have taken place in people’s ‘worlds of meaning.’ And her work in this chapter goes to further her main research questions, specifically why there has been so much activity around dead bodies in the post-socialist period (opening of both economic and religious markets, competition between religious groups, competition over the restitution of property and the moral claims of blame and compensation that accompany that, etc.) and what dead body politics can signify (a retelling of national narratives, reformation of national and religious identifications, etc.).

Verdery’s final chapter focuses more on the themes of kinship and space/time. Although Micu as a national ancestor is also discussed in the second chapter, Verdery’s ideas of nationalism as kinship and national heroes as the ‘new’ ancestors come to fruition in this chapter. She focuses on various examples from the former Yugoslavia to illustrate and emphasize, “the politics of national conflict, the creation of new states, and the concomitant reconfiguring of space and time (that is, on altering the significance of territory and rewriting history).” (96) Whereas the politics of named and famous corpses is more relevant to her argument that changing the narrative of history is literally changing the conception of time, the politics of anonymous dead, i.e., where they are buried, and how that changes spatial conception takes the focus here. Burying the dead is about space — earth — and consecrating ‘our’ soil by burying ‘our’ dead (kinship connection) in it.

Like in the second chapter, she begins with a brief introduction to the historical context, which is too brief. The conflict in former Yugoslavia is a highly complex and dense topic, and as her desired audience is a multi-disciplined group. By not explaining in enough detail and by asserting the importance of dead bodies in this conflict, Verdery seems to be saying that the reason for the mass slaughter that happened in the former Yugoslavia was because of the contestation (and devastation, in some cases) of the grave sites of World War II soldiers. The points about nationalism as a form of ancestor worship that she makes in the introduction and in chapter one are valid points that are clarified in this chapter, but to suggest that a brutal war was caused by grave-havoc is unnecessary.

The chapter is then divided into two large sections, one about the reconfiguration of space and the other about the reconfiguration of time. Nationalism (in this case, connected with ethnicity) is a form of kinship, as she and many other anthropologists argue. Where the ancestors are buried is one factor in deciding on boundary lines. It is also, crucially, about community: “Precisely because the human community includes both living and death, any manipulation of the dead automatically affects relations among the living…I suggest that postsocialist reburials include reconfiguring human communities according to new standards of inclusion and exclusion.” (108–109) These new standards of inclusion and exclusion within communities (i.e., which community can participate in the funeral, and who cannot; who has the right to visit/care for grave sites, and who cannot) contributed to (not led to, as she suggests) those same standards with regards to the national community, which, in turn, contributed to antagonism between national/ethnic communities. “Thus burying or reburying ancestors and kin sacralizes and nationalizes spaces as ‘ours,’ binding people to their national territories,” and, critically, the national communities (their timelines, narratives, heroes) within them. (110)

Lastly, her section on reconfiguring time is where the book becomes its most theoretical, and her anthropological influences (specifically, Leach) are most obvious here. She tries to answer her third research question, arguing that the socialist (forced) conception of time was truly unique, and thus the contest over what the post-socialist reconceptualization will be is, too, unique. But she provides no clear evidence to further this point. Despite this, what remains clear is that the competition over temporality that happened after the collapse of the Soviet ‘time’ was a profound shock to many ‘worlds of meanings.’

She explains that reconfiguring time means, “that several different things are potentially altered: the understanding of the temporal process that enables people to excise the socialist period [and any other period] in their revisions of history; the shapes of history (often unconscious) in terms of which people act; and the conception of time’s passage implicit in their actions.” (115) Her elaboration of the shapes of history is fascinating and does in fact illuminate the post-socialist period. Here, there is a complete removal of the socialist period (a linear/progressive yet compressed and short temporal understanding) and competition between many different conceptions of time, specifically linear nationalists (i.e., neo-liberals, but in general those more focussed on the economy) and cyclical nationalists (i.e., conservatives who tend to ally with the religious elites). (122–123) By examining the role of dead bodies in asserting these various temporalities, Verdery shows how essential the conception of time is for the creation of policy. It is here that she makes her sole recommendation of the book, “Therefore, Western policymakers seeking evidence that one political group or another is ‘progressive’ and ‘anticommunist’ should be careful of interpreting any and all excisions of the communist past as a sure sign of reformist intent.” (124) It feels somewhat misplaced in the larger context of the book.

In spite of a few minor critiques (not enough ethnography, a bit repetitive, some unnecessary points), I am full of praise for this ambitious work. Verdery not only shows why dead bodies animate the study of politics, but she also shows how other scholars can use them to animate their own studies. This book is essentially an homage to the cultural symbolic approach in anthropology and in the social sciences in general: dead bodies are a multivocal political symbol, and multivocal political symbols are of key importance to study in times of transformation or world re-ordering. “Symbols come with histories, but they are used in contexts that modify them,” thus, we should study symbols because they can connect the past with the present. Symbols are also felt. Meanings are both communal and personal; the macro creates and is created by the micro.

References:

Emirbayer, Mustafa. “Useful Durkheim.” Sociological Theory, vol. 14, no. 2, 1996, pp. 109–130. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/201902.

Geertz, Clifford. “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example.” American Anthropologist, vol. 59, no. 1, 1957, pp. 32–54. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/666528.

H. W. Scheffler, et al. “Ancestor Worship in Anthropology: or, Observations on Descent and Descent Groups [and Comments and Reply].” Current Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 5, 1966, pp. 541–551. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2740129.

Wolin, Sheldon S. “Max Weber: Legitimation, Method, and the Politics of Theory.” Political Theory, vol. 9, no. 3, 1981, pp. 401–424. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/191097.

Note: I wrote this book review in 2018 for a course in my Master’s program. The course was on the Anthropology of Socialism and Post-Socialism.