Limits of Intelligibility

This chapter examines reasons for why my-death is so difficult to think or talk about and also explores how we find our own death such an uneasy and, at times, disturbing topic. The discussion starts by exploring the idea of my-death as total annihilation but moves on to questioning even this formulation because conceptions of annihilation still draw on concepts of continuation that provide a backdrop for what is being annihilated. In its fullest sense, once my-death is separated from understandings derived from other-death, there is very little that can be thought or talked about.