{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.034529451591062965, 'fraction_numerical': 0.002708192281651997, 'mean_word_length': 5.082304526748971, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Myth of Identity in Modern Drama by Jeremy Ekberg (review)

live representations of their corpses, and their recirculation within the economy of the image, cannot “decompose and disappear.” In other words, unlike the dead in the previous chapters, “we do not mourn them, because we must continue to consume them, and for us to consume them, they must remain continually productive” (88). Schwartz takes us carefully through the sensational and spectacular funerals for Princess Diana and Jackson, identifying the moves (coffin placement, strategic eulogizing) that purify, sanctify, and redeem public figures who, while living, generated anxiety around issues of identity. Is Dead Matter a pleasurable book to read? Absolutely. Schwartz’s spare efficient prose, packed with meaning, is dense but accessible and her nimble boiling down of theory to essences is illuminating. But the pleasure is not always comfortable or joyful. Her detailed close reading of Hazma al-Khateeb’s autopsy video, for instance, is terrible to assimilate but vital to her analysis. As self-aware a writer as she is, Schwartz stops short of identifying her own descriptions of dead bodies as further commodification of the dead, but, as with the family members of al-Khateeb, Emmett Till, and the other survivors to these victims of violent wrongdoing, her making-visible and making-legible of dead bodies as society tries to ritually expel them from view (81) is also a poignant call for justice.