Afterword: New immortalities?

The sociality of the body at death is a realm of both productive and problematic binaries operating as technologies of division and reintegration, distinctions that continue to be drawn as donors, families, caregivers, and biomedical staff struggle with the practice of donation within the cultural and rhetorical landscapes described in this collection. Unease arises when that which is given as a gift enters circulation patterns that resemble commodity chains. Medical students struggle as they negotiate the line between the training cadaver and the recently deceased person. The papers collected here show how such poles are produced and sustained, and how these oppositions operate as technologies of division and reintegration. Through our interest in how the intentionality of the living is extended beyond death, we find death configured by the demands placed on cadaveric tissues, for their therapeutic, educational, and research purposes. In this uneasy pull – between the intentions of the living and the demand upon their deceased remains – lie profound questions for enacting ethics and obligations.