Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 260: On Dying — with Beatrice Marovich
Speakers: Kathy Feng, Am Johal, Beatrice Marovich
[theme music]
Kathy Feng 00:04
Hello, listeners. I'm Kathy Feng with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Beatrice Marovich, Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Hanover College and author of Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying. Together they chat about the process of writing the book and the theoretical and philosophical concepts of death as a relationship of enmity and sisterhood. Enjoy the episode!
Am Johal 00:46
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest—Beatrice Maravich is with us today, the author of Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying. Welcome, Beatrice.
Beatrice Marovich 01:01
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Am Johal 01:03
Yeah, wondering if we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Beatrice Marovich 01:08
Yeah. I'm Beatrice Marovich. I have a PhD in theology, and I am on the faculty at Hanover College, which is a small, private liberal arts college in Southern Indiana. And I write about more than human worlds, both divine and natural.
Am Johal 01:27
And—I had a chance to read your book. It came across my desk through a recommendation, and really enjoyed reading the book about six months ago. And wondering if you can maybe just share a little bit you know, how you conceived of the book and what drew you to this topic of thinking through dying, I think both also with your theological and philosophical background. It's a really interesting discussion that you delve into in the book.
Beatrice Marovich 01:59
Yeah, I have always kind of been interested in thinking about death and talking about it with other people. One of the stories that I tell in the preface of the book is about being three years old and becoming obsessed with the question of where we go when we die. And so my mom tells me this story now about how I just kept pursuing the question, and I wasn't really satisfied by any of the answers that people were giving me. So I was just asking everyone that I knew. And I feel like I've just always kind of been interested in that question. I grew up in a non religious household, but I've always had curiosity about things related to, I think, what we often just colloquially refer to as "the spiritual life." And I think death is one of those things that, if we are interested in thinking about human spirituality, we end up contemplating and pondering. And so I've always been drawn to thinking about it, and to sort of thinking about how to think about it. So the book itself, though, is more specifically my first attempt at, like rewriting my dissertation. And when I was in graduate school, and I was working on my PhD, I was focused on this idea of creatureliness, this idea of a kind of multi-species mortality, or this kind of shared subjectivity that we have with other animals. And I realized, as I was working on that project, that I think part of what makes us resist thinking about our multi-species mortality, or the kind of mortality that we share with other animals, is that there is this really long and deep tradition, especially in theology, of thinking about humans as divine and beyond death in ways that other creatures are not. And so it seemed to me important to spend more time thinking specifically about our mortality and what that has to do with our relationships with the more than human world, especially other animals.
Am Johal 03:47
Now, in the title Sister Death, [there is] this notion of death as our sister. Could you speak a little bit more about that concept and where it comes from?
Beatrice Marovich 03:58
Yeah, so it's, it's an idea that comes from Francis of Assisi. It's a figure that comes from Francis of Assisi. And so he has a hymn that's attributed to him, where he's essentially exploring this idea that, you know, we have a kinship with all dimensions of the more than human world, all dimensions of creation. And he, you know, he expresses our kinship with the wind and with the sun, and he also expresses our kinship with death. And he calls death "our sister." And so that's always been really an interesting figure to me, this idea of "sister death,"and I also think that in some ways, Francis's position on death represents a kind of minority position on death in the Christian tradition. And I thought that Francis's ideas deserved more air time, so to speak. And I thought that it was a figure that more people might benefit from thinking about and exploring. But in the book, I actually, I'm, you know, I'm distinguishing my own position from Francis's to some extent, because he's thinking about death as "our sister." But as I write in the book, I'm not really sure what it would look like to think about death as "our sister," because death is, you know, something that I think of more as a power or a force. And so I'm really in the book, thinking a lot about what it might look like to think about life and death as sisters, or in a relationship of sisterhood, rather than in a relationship of enmity, or rather than life and death being enemies.
Am Johal 05:28
It's interesting, when you talk about the more than human as well. I remember Alain Badiou once saying that nature is the worst serial killer in a way; that we live in a world of death and dying in terms of the more than human. In a lot of ways, there seems to be a kind of repressive and dysfunctional relationship to death, particularly in Western culture. We have some programs here now around the death doula program and things like that at colleges and pieces like that. And I wonder if you could share a little bit about you know, in your reading and preparation for the book, and you discussed it within the book as well. Just there are so many different theological traditions in how they consider death and dying, and how to kind of parse through the different ways that people arrive at thinking it through.
Beatrice Marovich 06:19
Yeah, there's really, I mean, when you start to look more carefully at, you know, theological traditions, and, you know, with different religious traditions and how they think about and speak about and address death, there's just an incredible diversity of positions. And there's a lot of, I think, collective wisdom that you can find in religious traditions and theological traditions. But I do think that you know, to some extent, when you look at a lot of contemporary literature about death and mortality, there are a lot of people who, who can kind of recognize that, like in our contemporary moment, we have some pretty problematic ideas about death, and I think that a lot of people attribute this to modernity, and they attribute it to technology and to science. And they say, you know, it has to do with our contemporary American funeral industries, or it has to do with the fact that we now have this access to so much technology that can, you know, effectively render us less susceptible to death. And I think that all of those things are part of the story. But I think that sometimes there's this tendency to look at religion and theology and to say, "Oh, well, you know, let's just go back in history and back in time, and we'll be able to find in the collective wisdom of the past, like better perspectives or more helpful perspectives." And I think part of what my book is trying to add to that whole conversation about death and mortality is to say that actually, sometimes when we look back at religious traditions, there are also, like, the seeds of some really reprehensible ideas. You know, I mean, I think that there aren't any—in the Christian tradition, for one, like, there's not even just one position on death. There are lots of different kinds of positions, and some of them, I think, are more beautiful and wise than others. And, you know, I think that there are inheritances in modernity that pull from theological traditions in various ways. And so I think that, you know when, when we look into the past, and when we look at what religious traditions have kind of preserved in terms of the way they think about life and death, I think that we see both wisdom that we can use today, and then also, I think some ideas that we might want to grow out of.
Am Johal 08:23
Yeah, it's interesting when you think, like in the Christian tradition of original sin, or accounting for one's sins after, after death, like there's an aspect of guilt that's woven through living a life. I'm wondering, in the sort of continental philosophical tradition, of course, there's just as wide an array of approaches. In the book, you mentioned people like Donna Haraway, talking about learning to live and die with each other in the thick present; Ernest Becker, who briefly taught at Simon Fraser University here in Vancouver, there's still Becker conferences that happen around his book; you have Sartre and De Beauvoir in different traditions. But wondering if you can share a little bit how you approach, the kind of the philosophical approaches that you took in the book.
Beatrice Marovich 09:12
Yeah, I mean, I think that in especially continental philosophy, what we think of as continental philosophy, there's a lot of focus on, you know, major existential questions about, you know, life and death. And I think there's a lot of interest in, you know, 20th Century continental thought, especially in trying to explore with more courage and bravery, our mortal condition. And I think that there, there's been a lot of work in continental philosophy that I think has kind of held theological traditions to account in some ways, and kind of asked theological traditions to rethink some of their positions on life and death and to I think in some ways, also sort of draw out different ways of thinking, or maybe like quieter or more buried ways of thinking from within theological traditions. So that there can be a kind of rethinking or coming to account, in some ways.
Am Johal 10:08
I wanted to bring up the Apostle Paul you. You talk a little bit in the book that he had an antagonistic relationship to death. His work gets taken up by a number of philosophers over the years—Agamben, Badiou, and many others—and wondering if you can sort of speak a little bit to kind of his approach and thinking around around death.
Beatrice Marovich 10:29
Yeah, I think you know, we, we see Paul speaking, especially in his letter, the first letter to the Corinthians about life and death in a very profoundly and powerful and ultimately deeply impactful way. And this is where he says, famously, that the last enemy is death, and that in the end, God will triumph over death. And I think that you know, this is one of the phrases that I think has had a really powerful impact on what I think of as a more problematic heritage when it comes to thinking about the relationship between life and death, which is this kind of creation of a battle between life and death, this kind of weaponization of life against death, this idea that life and death are ultimately enemies. But I think it's also useful to think about the extent to which someone like Paul was an occasional thinker, right? So he's, you know, writing these letters to specific people in specific communities about specific issues that they're confronting, and he's trying to kind of help them grapple with certain questions. And I think that, you know, these letters and what he said in these letters have kind of been enshrined in some ways in the Christian theological tradition. And so everything that he's said there has been taken to be a kind of timeless pronouncement. And I think this is one of the reasons why I don't necessarily know what Paul would have even said had we asked him to sort of sit down and think a little bit more deeply about the relationship between life and death, or about how people should think about life and death. I mean, it's possible that he would have been a little bit more frank and honest about some of the maybe less antagonistic dimensions of death. I mean, maybe he would have recognized that death is part of the creation, part of the world that God created. And maybe he would have acknowledged that, you know, thinking about death as an enemy in all circumstances and instances, isn't particularly productive, intellectually or spiritually. So I, you know, I don't know that he would have even created a firm philosophical position to back up that lovely phrase that he used in that particular letter, but I do think that that particular phrase has come to mean a lot to a lot of people in Christian history. And so for my part, I think it's worth just asking questions about the extent to which that represents a kind of comforting, poetic evocation that he used in a particular letter to a particular group of people, versus, you know, a very firm and clear philosophical commitment that everyone should adhere to for all times.
Am Johal 13:06
In a part of the book, you talk about this question of how death can be a friend. I can't remember which thinker you're thinking through there, but I really was taken by the concept and this notion of building solidarity with others to die well, and this notion of that there is a discrepancy and inequality of how people die, perhaps. And it gets talked a little bit with other thinkers, [in] this notion of necropolitics that Achille Mbembe talks about in some of his works. Wondering if you can speak a little bit to this notion of death as a friend?
Beatrice Marovich 13:44
Yeah, well, there's a couple of—I hear, I hear sort of a couple of different questions there, or your question is making me think about a couple of different things. And I think, on the one hand, you know, I'm actually somewhat critical of the idea of death as a friend in the book, in part, because I think that to some extent, I think friendship often calls to mind a really, I think positive form of connection, and what I see in sisterhood. And one of the reasons why I sort of opt for the metaphor of sisterhood as a way of thinking about the relationship between life and death rather than friendship is in part because I think that there's a lot of antagonism between life and death, and I think that it's, you know, kind of impossible to take that antagonism completely out of the equation. So I do think that, like sisterhood, is a relationship that has room for both intimacy and agonism, and I think that's one of the reasons why I found it to be a productive metaphor for thinking about the relationship between life and death. But I do also hear you kind of asking about, what is—I mean, what is our obligation to kind of face the fact of death, and how does that shape the way that we relate to one another and think about one another? And I think that for one thing, you know, not, not everybody is as capable of ignoring the fact of death as others. And so I think that, you know, because of economics, because of race, because of class, because of global politics. I mean, I think that there are just some people who are much more confronted with the fact of death than others. And I think that to some extent, there is a little bit of an ethical obligation that we have to one another to face the fact of death, especially if it's something that we're relatively shielded from, something that we don't necessarily need to think about on a day to day level. It's not necessarily something that we get reminded of on a daily basis. I mean, I do think that to some extent itis, it's impossible for us to really think about what it means to be in community with other people, if we can't face the fact of death and acknowledge that death is so often for so many people, an issue on a daily level, or an outcome of many forces that they're kind of confronting and coping with. But I also think that there's a really, there's an important extent to which mourning is something that we do in community. Mourning is a public form of ritual. Mourning is something that we do in public, collectively. And I think that for all of those people who are feeling grief, they rely on the public to create spaces where mourning can happen and where mourning can occur. And I think that if we can't face the fact of death, if we can't talk about death, if we can't acknowledge that it's happening, then I think we don't end up creating those kinds of spaces where people who are grieving and are coping with grief, can have a space or a place to try and process and cope with this through morning rituals, which are communal and collective.
Am Johal 16:51
In part of the book, you speak a little bit about Derrida's writing on death, and also Carl Schmitt around this notion of the friend/enemy distinction, but also around enmity, the notion of enmity. The difference between—Schmidt writes about the difference between real enmity and absolute enmity. And how did this come up in your work and your consideration of it?
Beatrice Marovich 17:20
Yeah, for me, I think one of the really important messages that I'm getting from Derrida is he's very skeptical about the way that the Western philosophical and theological tradition has created this really easy split between life and death. And so he's very, he's interested in interrogating that easy division, and he wants to kind of challenge us to think about the many ways in which life and death are entangled or are related to one another in complex ways that aren't often accounted for. And, you know, I think he kind of challenges us to think more about the ways that death can sometimes be life giving, and the way that the rigorous pursuit of life and the protection of life can often be death dealing. And so that's one of the really important things that I'm getting from Derrida. And then I think, you know, my book is a project in Political Theology. And if you're working in Political Theology, it's pretty much impossible to avoid talking about Carl Schmitt, you know, he's sort of the figure who returned, you know, academics to conversations about Political Theology. And I, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about as I was reading his work, and especially his work on enmity and the friend/enemy distinction, I did kind of wonder how much his friend/enemy distinction was itself built on this idea that life and death are the ultimate oppositions essentially, right? This ultimate relationship of enmity.But I am a little, I mean, I think to some extent that that kind of clean distinction between friend and enemy is is not particularly helpful. But I just, I sort of wonder how much that is connected to some of these bifurcations, the bifurcation between life and death. For instance, that, that Derrida is kind of critiquing,
Am Johal 19:26
Yeah, there's that part where he talks about the distinction between real enmity and absolute enmity, that if real enmity isn't allowed to function within the political realm, it can lead to absolute enmity, which is this battle of life and death, and so it's definitely in there, in the very complicated, problematic visage of Carl Schmitt. I wanted to speak a little bit, and it wasn't necessarily your concern in the book, but you know, we have various policies and programs around medically assisted death and dying. And this notion that's discussed in the book around you know, to be alive is to, is to struggle. How do you sort of philosophically think through the notion of medically assisted dying?
Beatrice Marovich 20:14
Yeah, I mean, I think that—I think if we can't really think about death, we can't really have conversations with people about stuff like this. And I think often these are really complicated conversations that I think often get put on the back burner or, or we just kind of dismiss, or want to dismiss, because we don't necessarily want to have these kinds of conversations. But I mean, I think there's, there's obviously the policy level. I mean, you know, questions about this on a policy level. And I think that, I think if the more that we can have public conversations about death, I think the more open people would be to considering giving people access to medication, for instance, that might enable them to make choices about life and death. But I also think that on an interpersonal level, and just in our, you know, family contexts, in our just very mundane everyday life situations, I think all of us could probably be better at having conversations about this kind of stuff. And you know, there's just, I think that I've heard lots of people talk about the fact that sometimes, when you know, when people have chosen medically assisted death, they will sometimes also change their minds. And I think these are just very, very complicated decision making processes that I think the more we can open space up for conversations about it, the more we can help people work through some of these complexities. I mean, I'm, yeah, I haven't been in a situation personally where I've had to, where I've had to have these kinds of actual conversations with anyone in my own, my own life, but I can imagine that if I knew that someone in my own family, for instance, were dealing with some kind of a terminal diagnosis, and you know, they really wanted to have access to this medication because they felt that there might come a time when they would want to use it, I would really want to start very quickly opening up an ongoing and very frank and open set of conversations about this, because I would want to make sure that that person would always feel like it would be an option to come to me and just talk through anything they might be going through, right? I wouldn't want them to feel like, oh, I don't know. I mean, we've had the conversation one time, and, you know, now I'm not really sure how I feel about this or how I'm thinking about it, but, you know, I feel like it's a burden to have this conversation more than once. I mean, I would, I would just want us to be able to always talk about this. If this is something that they're coping with or dealing with. I would just want it to just be a very frank and open and ongoing conversation where we could we could sit with this stuff, we could make decisions. I could help them make decisions about this stuff. And I it's hard for me to imagine being able to be open to those kinds of conversations that I think are really necessary, especially in intimate circumstances. If I were just really afraid to talk about death or really uncomfortable thinking about the fact that we're all going to die at some point.
Am Johal 23:21
Beatrice, I also wanted to say it's a beautifully written book, and you mentioned that it was sort of adapted from your dissertation, but also taking philosophical and theological concepts and writing it in a way that you don't need to be a specialist in these areas to understand what you're what you're saying. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about the writing process, of how this came together, because I think it's in the way that it's written, it's a much broader audience than something that sits in the academy. I feel like it can really circulate in a much wider audience, in the public.
Beatrice Marovich 24:00
Thank you for saying that. I have, I've gotten a little bit of feedback from some people that it is too theoretical for them, and it is, you know, it is a book that gets deep into theoretical conversations. And I can kind of see how, if you're somebody who's interested in, you know, conversations about death and mortality, that there are, you know, aspects or dimensions of this book that are maybe a little more theory heavy than you're ready for. But, you know, I feel like I always try to keep my undergraduate students in mind as I think about my writing. I always want to sort of ask myself, like, if I handed this to my undergraduate students, do I think this is something that they would be able to absorb and understand? So I think that, you know, I've been working on a second book project, and I think that I've tried to keep them even more in mind than I think I did in this book. But that's always kind of been my aim. I think that, you know, on some levels, I do obviously want to to speak to my, my peers in the academy, and to have, you know, to be a part of conversations that are happening and playing out in the academy. But I have a background in journalism. I was a newspaper reporter before I went back to graduate school, so I feel like there is also that part of me that always does kind of want to communicate with readers who aren't in the academy. And, you know, I think about my students, I think about my mom, and think about whether or not they would be able to read this stuff and find it interesting and engaging. I've been practicing too a little bit like writing to different audiences. I have a Substack newsletter, and, you know, I publish stuff there every other week. And I'm always thinking about, you know, how accessible are these ideas? Are they gonna are they gonna have traffic outside of the more specialized conversations that that I'm a part of and that I appreciate, but that I also recognize are kind of the conversations that give me fuel and that help me think about things, but aren't necessarily the only conversations that I want to, to be a part of or engage in.
Am Johal 25:58
Now, Beatrice, you, you lived in Vancouver for a period of time where, of course, I'm I'm speaking to you from, but wondering if you can share a little bit about your your time in Vancouver.
Beatrice Marovich 26:09
Yeah, I moved to Vancouver in my 20s. Let's see, I think it was probably 2—like 2007 to 2009 that I lived in Vancouver, or maybe a little bit later. But I went to Vancouver for graduate school. I ended up moving from Maine out to Vancouver, and was a student at the Vancouver School of Theology, which was on the University of British Columbia campus. And so I had, you know, numerous friends at UBC, and lived in a basement apartment in Kitsilano for a while. And that was a great experience. I mean, Vancouver is beautiful, and, you know, I also feel like it was a place where I kind of discovered that I was interested in theology. I had come out of a job as a newspaper reporter, and I had gotten kind of interested in talking to people about religion, and at a conference for people who write about religion in the news, I had been convinced by, by someone that Theology degree might be more valuable than a Religious Studies degree, in part, because they said it would allow me to kind of understand how to speak the language of faith, as they put it. And I, you know, I don't know, thinking back how great that advice was because I wasn't also, I wasn't a particularly religious person, so I guess I wasn't entirely prepared for the religious world that I was about to enter into. And, you know, it's been something that I've bumped up against, you know, here and there. But I do feel like, actually, the Vancouver School of Theology was a really friendly space to be a theology student in and I worked with a couple of faculty there, Sallie McFague And Sharon Betcher, especially, who were very interested in eco theology and were very encouraging that I sort of go on and pursue the PhD, which I did end up doing. So I think of, you know, in some ways, I think of Vancouver as kind of the beginning of a lot of my journey into all of these questions.
Am Johal 28:02
Oh, that's that's great, wondering if you can share a little bit in taking on such an intense topic like this in the book, I guess you picked well, in the sense you stick with a topic that you know will take three, four or five years working on a dissertation, but also, in some ways, spending that type of time with the topic and going deep into philosophical and theoretical traditions, it must, in some way, change you in some kind of way. And I'm wondering how this project and its afterlife, in terms of, you know, when the book came out, more conversations you're having, how that's shaped you or transformed you in some way.
Beatrice Marovich 28:41
Yeah, I mean, I—it's funny that you use the term "afterlife." I mean, I do think that it has left me with a lot of, a lot of questions about how I want to find my own way of thinking and writing about life after death. I think one of the things that I really found as I was working through this project is I found myself over and over again just kind of thinking like, "Wow. I don't know that I have ever really thought through before this project the real, emotional, psychological, spiritual and intellectual value of having some form of thinking about life after death or the afterlife." And I, you know, I don't necessarily know that I have a very formulaic take on like what life after death might be, but I have definitely found myself more and more interested in these questions, and I found myself sort of more and more convinced by the value of being able to think about, express, discuss, create visions of the ongoingness of life in the face of and after death. Because I do think that there is a kind of an important shared social and political dimension to these ideas as well, just a value in being able to hold up some kind of sense of ongoingness for one another in the face of what can often feel like a pretty exhausting and terrible onslaught of death and violence. So that is just one of those questions that I've been kind of left stewing over after working on this book. And one of the book projects that I've been working on is a book project about underworlds. And for me, I think one of the things that's kind of interesting about the underworld is it's kind of, it's gone through this interesting, like reversion in modernity, where, you know, where I think previously it was this kind of horrific hell space. Now I think it's become a sort of more like compelling and intriguing and mysterious and interesting dimension of Earth space to many people. So I've been thinking a lot about underworlds, and I think to some extent, you know, part of that has been feeding my interest and curiosity and thinking about that sense of ongoingness after death.
Am Johal 30:54
When—I've worked on a project on friendship with a friend of mine, and recently had a chance to interview Michael Hardt on the political concept of love. So that's sort of where my question is coming from, is that, is there a way that we can think about death alongside notions of friendship, love, community, solidarity, or in the way that you talk about sister death or sisterhood there. I think, in a way, you've already talked about it and answered it, but I felt like I want to ask it again in a way of, how can we think about death as alongside these turns, [rather] than something antagonistic to it, per se?
Beatrice Marovich 31:35
Yeah, I mean, I, of course, when I think about love and death, there's always that famous, you know, biblical invocation of the "love stronger than death" that I always think of. And I think there's, there's like an interesting—I mean, in this idea that, you know, we might find or express or cultivate a love stronger than death, I think there is this potential to read that as like an image of, or invocation of, like an enmity between life and death, right? Like a love that can beat death or be stronger than death. But I don't think it has to be read that way either. I mean, I do think that one of the things that I say in the book is I'm kind of pushing back against this idea that either life or death is a form of the absolute, right? And I think that this is what I think causes a lot of anxiety, sometimes, philosophically speaking, for people, is this idea, well, you know, it's either life is the absolute and death is subjected to life, or death is the absolute and life is subjected to death. And I think part of what I'm trying to encourage is just more of a sense of uncertainty about, you know, the relationship between life and death. But, you know, I think it's completely like natural in some ways and maybe productive to think about what it is that we want to lift up and embrace and celebrate in our social world, that we do find stronger than death, or in some ways more ongoing than death. And I think love is a very appealing figure of something that can kind of outlast or be sustained in the face of death. And I think there's a sense in which, in some ways, love isn't possible without death. I think if we don't—if we aren't finite, and if we don't remember that we're finite, and if we don't remember that we're mortal, I think we often fail to appreciate anyone, let alone you know, some of the people who are closest to us, some of the people who you know we're not even directly connected with. But I think that when we can remember our finitude and our mutual mortality, I think we're much more likely to be able to feel that kind of gratitude that we need in order to, like, open ourselves up to one another. So I think that, like, in some regards, death is a kind of enabling power in love. But I also think that, like, there is something about love that is powerful in part because it can live beyond or be sustained beyond conditions of death. And I think that's, you know, one of the things that we feel very acutely when we continue our relationships with the people we love who have gone.
Am Johal 34:14
Beatrice, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit about your recent manuscript that you're working on.
Beatrice Marovich 34:21
Yeah, so I have just finished writing my second book project, and it's under review currently at Columbia University Press, and the title at this point, I don't know if this is going to change, but the title right now is: More than Human Power: On the Afterlives of Theology, and in that book, I'm kind of using my background in death studies to think a little bit about collective mortality and to think about the discipline that I'm a part of. And so part of what I'm suggesting in that book is that academic theology as a discipline is dying, and I'm encouraging my fellow scholars in the field to think a little bit about the mortality of the field, and to think about what kind of legacies we might try to leave behind, and to think about what what we might want to save or preserve from the field, if it is actually dying. And so one of the things that I'm arguing from my own position, and you know, because of my own interests and my own research, is that theology can offer us, whether we're religious or not, or whether we're thinking about this in a religious context or not, some various ways to think about more than human power.
Am Johal 35:31
Thank you for that. And the one piece that I forgot to ask about was the artwork in your book. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to that.
Beatrice Marovich 35:40
Yeah, so the artwork in the book is all by a good friend of mine, Krista Dragomer. And Krista and I actually met in Vancouver when we were both in graduate school there, and then we both moved to the New York area a couple of years after that, at the same time. And so we've had this long and ongoing friendship, and we've worked on a number of different collaborations together, and we've, I think, in a lot of ways, kind of helped one another form our intellectual sensibilities. We have a lot of shared—we have a lot of shared aesthetics and shared ideas. And so when I was putting the book together, I was looking for cover art, and I happened to be in New York, and Krista said, "Well, you can go ahead and look through my flat files in the studio," and, you know, she pulled out some images that she had created when we were both living in New York, and were, you know, actively talking about a lot of the same ideas. And so I ultimately was able to include, I think, 25 images of her work in the book itself, as well as an image from her on the cover. So I was really fortunate to be able to do that. And I think it's, it's, it's lent itself to some of the distinctiveness of the book.
Am Johal 36:53
Great Beatrice, is there anything you, you'd like to add?
Beatrice Marovich 36:57
I can't think of anything. I mean, other than just that I think I often describe my position as death positive, and I think that that is sometimes, I think misheard. I think sometimes people hear that as me saying that I'm happy about death, or that I think we should feel positive about death. And I maintain in the book, and you know, whenever I talk about these issues, that I'm not suggesting that death is something that anybody should be happy about, or even, you know, that we should feel positive about it, but I do think that there is, there's a kind of power, you know, a power that we can feel both in intimate relationships, and a kind of power that we can feel socially and politically in acknowledging the fact of death. And I think that's what I mean by death positive is just acknowledging that it's a part of our world, our social, political, biological, physical worlds, and that if we can't acknowledge that, and we can't talk about it, then I think we're missing out on some crucial dimensions of our life experiences, and I think we're also failing to connect with each other in ways that I think we could if we were more open.
Am Johal 38:06
Beatrice, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar for this beautiful book and a really important intervention. It's been so wonderful to read and to be in conversation with you, and for those of you listening out there, please do get this book. You won't regret it. Thank you so much, Beatrice.
Beatrice Marovich 38:25
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to chat with you.
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Kathy Feng 38:31
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Beatrice Marovich. If you'd like to learn more about her work, check out our show notes below. Stay up to date with our podcast releases by following our social media @sfu_voce. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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