An experimental grammar of relations with agentive dead

Abstract

The relationship between the living and the dead has been the subject of numerous studies, which show a wide variety of ways in which this relationship has developed over time and in different socio-cultural contexts. Whether through the materiality of the remains of the deceased or the entities they have become over time, such as spirits or other ghosts, these relationships are deployed in various directions depending on the purpose pursued by the living. This article looks at the agentive part of the dead that underlies these relationships and drives the living to act in one or other of these directions. To this end, it first examines the way in which the notion of agency is mobilized in certain theoretical and empirical approaches. It then sketches out an experimental grammar of relations between the living and the dead, a grammar that makes it possible to identify and situate the intervention of more or less specialized intermediaries, likely to make this agentive part of the dead effective.