The Death and Work of Janez D.

Abstract

In accordance with the psychoanalytical triad of reality orders, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real, the paper will deconstruct death as a three-fold philosophical model which in cultural reality appears as a logical sequence of metaphysical, physical, and ritual events. This model aims to present the psychoanalytic counterpart to anthropological findings on death as the process of rites of passage, comprising separation, transition, and reincorporation phases. The paper asserts that any cultural ideation of death never really deals with death itself, but with the manner in which death is affirmed as “life with without-living”. The impossibility of thinking of a (Real) corpse without its reference to the Symbolic and Imaginary levels of existence is debunked when one has to deal with “life with without without-living” – the (Real) living existence, as if not supported by the Symbolic and Imaginary, which, we propose happened to former Slovene president Janez Drnovšek.