Prothesis and Ekphora: Aestheticization of the Dead and Social Death in Josef Winkler’s Graveyard of Bitter Oranges

Although death is a relentlessly iterated topos in Winkler’s oeuvre, Graveyard of Bitter Oranges (1990) explores both literal and metonymic qualities of death, including social death as material consequence of social injustice and structural violence prevalent in 1980s statist Catholic societies. This article explores the intersection between Winkler’s writing process and aestheticization of death and funerary rites, especially his portrayal of lying in state (prothesis) and funerary processions (ekphora), so prevalent in his earlier works. Because Winkler’s treatment of the death of disenfranchised persons and groups also implies the exclusion of unwanted individuals in the communities during their lifetime, his texts grant enduring discursive visibility to groups or individuals who would otherwise be considered socially dead, that is, excised from discourse of social normality and rendered invisible before their demise. By elevating death to an aesthetic/linguistic project, Winkler strives for a form of discursive immortality through criticism of structural authority and factors that give rise to both death and social death.