![]() ![]() ![]() Someone intervenes, and death is suspended the afflicted appears stable. Even as Poe’s work represents an imaginative interrogation of the scientific enterprise, this nineteenth-century story holds a mirror to contemporary medical practice, inviting a reconsideration of the ethics, language, and power relations surrounding the fraught relationship between death and medical technology.Īn individual is seriously ill, to the point of imminent death. Such application of life-sustaining technology complicates the fundamental binary of life/death, allowing its subjects to resist textual closure. Poe’s literary performance of “undeath” therefore serves to caution real-life cases in which life support is used to sustain an individual reported to be brain-dead. Yet, their utterances “from beyond the grave” highlight the precarious nature of their position and the ethical concerns therein. The ability to transgress these boundaries bears a cost, however: both Valdemar and Jahi McMath lose the autonomy to direct their respective narratives. Through this juxtaposition, “Valdemar” comes to function as a modern fable, an uneasy herald of medical technology’s potential to create liminal states between life and death. ![]() Valdemar” and the real-life case of Jahi McMath, who was maintained on life support for over four years following a diagnosis of brain death. This paper examines the relationship between medical technology and liminal states of “undeath” as presented in “The Facts in the Case of M. ![]()
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