Posthumous disgrace can function as a ritual assassination of a name

Evidence

The turn that events took had all the look of some kind of ritual assassination. The killing not of a body – the body was already dead – but of a name. It was as if some kind of deal had been struck – you’ll get to live out your life with your reputation intact (or as intact as it could be), but a year after your death, it will all be destroyed. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will survive. Your headstone will be dismantled. The penthouse in which you lived will be demolished. Your name will become synonymous with evil. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 193

Categorization

• XREF: The destruction of Savile’s headstone and remains (‘medieval devil’) as punishment of a corpse echoes the midwife/house-stone logic in A Midwife’s Tale-era burial practices — posthumous reputation as a socially real object. — connects to: Male heirs are fated carriers of the father’s name who can never escape repetition — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 282; Even posthumous valorization as a good Muslim erases the real person — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 307

Broader Connections

• Even posthumous valorization as a good Muslim erases the real person #corroborates (0.78) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 307