Abstract:The deaths of Marcus and Noel—childhood friends of the author—is the point of departure for this essay. The author uses the concept of an autopsy—both the actual autopsies performed on her friends after their deaths and an autopsy as a metaphor for dismantling the author’s own memories of her two dead friends. The aim of the essay is to show rather than tell how self-identity and memory become reshaped through the experience of loss. It is empirically based on ethnographic interviews with friends and relatives… Show more
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