Death magic

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin's Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp.189- 289.

It was interesting how Taussing talked about the magic that surrounds death, especially that of the state execution. 

This is something that has given images of Saints in some religions such power for some people. Icon paintings in the Byzantium style of martyred saints show the power of these people’s myths that they leave behind after a state execution.  The person can become something more after death as if the state execution gives them a magic.

Thomas Laqueur designates the hanged body as “the magic body.” He cites James Boswell in 1776 describing the “superstition” he witnessed at a London hanging whereby “no less than four diseased persons had themselves rubbed with the sweaty hands of malefactors in the agonies of death, and believed this would cure them.”  (cited in Tuassig 124)

On the flip side there is paintings like Marcus Harvey’s Myra Hindley whom is related to killing. It shows the amount of energy that can be exerted when the image becomes a symbol unjustified killing. The image became the symbol for the whole story of the murders via the media fuelled aggression and image over exposure. Marcus Harvey states that “The whole point of the painting is the photograph. That photograph. The iconic power that has come to it as a result of years of obsessive media reproduction.” (Marcus Harvey, White Cube).

Perhaps it the death without eye for eye repercussion that like the knot of the hangman’s noose or the neck of a recently hung man that hasn’t allowed the public to heal.

Harvey, M. White Cube [accessed 18/5/11]  <www.whitecube.com/artists/harvey/>

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin's Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp.189- 289.