Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies

About this Book 1(11) Living with Death 12(39) Knowledge that cannot be believed The existential ambivalence of being Coping with ambivalence: a brief survey of expedients The mortal roots of culture's immortality The game of survival Yearning for face, fleeing from face The loneliness of terror Bidding for Immortality 51(37) Immortality, the great de-equalizer Private roads to immortality Immortal thoughts, immortal thinkers The loneliness of immortality Immortality as shelter The precarious survival of immortality Immortality into notoriety The Selfish Species 88(41) The cultural take-over Death suffered, death defied Powerassisted universality Selfish Societies Constructing the nation's immortality Survival as group privilege Immortality dressed as history Mortality collectivized Modernity, or Deconstructing Mortality 129(32) The Other of emancipation The stratifying magic Modern promises, modern fears Killing death Postmodernity, or Deconstructing Immortality 161(39) Eternity decomposed Now, wonderful now Making history in a world without history Death's disappearing act Games and spectacles Death daily rehearsed Beneficiaries and victims Postscript: ``To die for...', or Death and Morality 200