ABSTRACT
When do the dead truly die? Jacques Derrida cautions against the presumption that the dead can be put to rest: “Vigilance, therefore: the cadaver is perhaps not as dead, as simply dead as the conjuration tries to delude us into believing.” He proceeds to suggest that ghosts register long after their passing and to act despite their absence: “The one who has disappeared appears still to be there, and his apparition is not nothing. It does not do nothing. Assuming that the remains can be identifi ed, we know better than ever today that the dead must be able to work. And to cause to work, perhaps more than ever.”1 For readers of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Derrida’s words might call to mind the untimely passing of Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin (First Class), Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (BB x-xi).2 Despite his self-sacrifi cial death at the conclusion of Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore continues to function both textually and metatextually after his demise, most notably due to Rowling’s surprising announcement of his homosexuality. Dumbledore’s work throughout and beyond the Harry Potter series includes guiding Harry to heroic and heteronormative masculinity, and his ghostly model of queer masculinity provides a touchstone hermeneutic for understanding Rowling’s confl icted treatment of childhood innocence as a theme in her novels.
