The dead body becomes just another object among the world’s forms

Evidence

Now I saw his lifeless state. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the table lamp beside him. For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 2557

Categorization

• XREF: This undoing of human distinctness connects to the earlier chapters’ treatment of the father’s corpse; also resonates with Knausgaard’s recurring theme of the self dissolving into the material world. — connects to: In African Vitalogy life and death are different modes of living; Understanding death is essential to understanding life. — Lynch, Thomas, The undertaking-life studies from the…, 128; Birth and death are immanent extensions of life itself. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 826 (+7 more)

Related

• Birth and death are immanent extensions of life itself. (similarity 0.84)
• In African Vitalogy life and death are different modes of living (similarity 0.83)
• Only the Other’s being, not the for-itself, contains death (similarity 0.81)
• The body’s substratum is only apprehended in the corpse (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Conceptualization inevitably imposes form on formless life #exemplifies (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 1018
• Life can only enter reality through forms that inherently contradict it #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 866
• In African Vitalogy life and death are different modes of living #contradicts (0.60)
• Understanding death is essential to understanding life. #expands (0.50) — Lynch, Thomas, The undertaking-life studies from the…, 128