Our Grateful Dead

Vinciane Despret is associate professor of philosophy at the University of LiÈge and the Free University of Brussels. The original French edition of Our Grateful Dead ( Au bonheur des morts) won the prestigious Prix des Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco. Her books include What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? and The Dance of the Arabian Babbler: Birth of an Ethological Theory, both from Minnesota. Stephen Muecke is professor of creative writing at Flinders University, South Australia. His many translations include works by Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray.

• ContentsTranslator’s NoteStephen MueckeOur Grateful Dead1. Taking Care of the Dead2. Allowing Yourself to Be Instructed3. The Ties That Keep the Living and the Dead Together4. Watching Over the Things That Matter5. Extending the Work: The Generosity of the Dead6. Uncertain Thoughts7. Putting Our Trust in Spirits: How to Call on Them8. Protecting VoicesAcknowledgmentsNotes

"Vinciane Despret studies reports of the dead interfering in people’s lives-to contest, direct, encourage, or console them. This important book will induce psychotherapists to reconsider Freud’s concept of the work of mourning and social scientists to understand in new ways the force of political and religious ancestors on society."-Alphonso Lingis"Our Grateful Dead is a stirring and insightful study of the active, metamorphic relations that the dead maintain with the living. With characteristic generosity and grace, Vinciane Despret curates stories from dreams and letters, novels and television, organ donations and home funerals and seances, paying sensitive and subtle attention to the modes of practice and perception most conducive to heeding the enigmatic missives of the dead-and making them real."-Matthew Chrulew, coeditor of Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations