ABSTRACT
The theme of this chapter is the interconnection of reading, writing, and death. This hermeneutic discussion about what it means to be with the dead draws on ideas from Michel de Certeau, Hans Ruin, and related scholars. An explication of the performativity of living in a literary culture will be important in this chapter. Through examples from various contexts of earlier historical writing, my concern in this chapter is to critique prominent ideas that either objectify or romanticize the dead, in favor of what I would instead call a responsible commemoration, meaning that the dead in the grave are passed away real people whom subsequent generations have to find ways to responsibly respond to in the activity of reading and writing.
