Historical examples of how corpses are handled

People who intentionally donated their bodies:

Jeremy Bentham

the head thing is super creepy.

• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/jeremy-bentham
• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/who/autoicon (with citations)
  • A. Lipsett, 'How to give a dead man a makeover: first freeze-dry the carpet beetles in his hair...', article in The Times Higher Education Supplement, 16 September 2005.
  • C.F.A. Marmoy, 'The "Auto-Icon" of Jeremy Bentham at University College London', Medical History, 2 (1958), 77-86.
  • R. Richardson, 'Bentham and Bodies for Dissection', The Bentham Newsletter, x (1986), 22-33.
  • R. Richardson and B. Hurwitz, 'Jeremy Bentham's self-image: an exemplary bequest for dissection', British Medical Journal, 295 (July- Dec. 1987).
  • P. Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2009)
  • E. Smallman, '181-year-old corpse of Jeremy Bentham attends UCL board meeting', article in The Metro, 12 July 2013.
• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project

Bodies as religious artifacts

(bodies and parts of bodies used by institutions to conduct the power (for positive or negative means) they have in society); your arrangements are in essence a vote for increasing the power of the receiving institution.

Memento Mori

• John Donne's statue at St Paul's http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/donne.htm
• Hugh Ashton's two artistic representations of his body at St John's College, Cambridge

http://deathlyponderings.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/death-in-cambridge-hugh-ashtons-tomb/

https://deathlyponderings.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/020.jpg

Relics

(science too)

People who unintentionally have had their bodies used by others

Funerary remains, and controversies with museums, academics, governments

• Samuel J.M.M. Alberti*, Piotr Bienkowski** and Malcolm J. Chapman. Should We Display the Dead? Museum and Society, Nov 2009 https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/alberti2.pdf
• Suicide Tourism controversies around the globe

Tupac

• Legal affordances for reanimation / holographic representation / etc.
• http://www.ipbrief.net/2012/04/19/tupac-hologram-rocks-coachella-and-ip-laws/
• Implications of Tupac Hologram on Copyright: http://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1427&context=student_scholarship

Victorian Post-mortem Photography

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography
• Valentina Lari, who did a photography show, The Deformity of Beauty at the Mutter Museum

Books made of Human Skin

• Autobiography reputedly bound in the skin of the author http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/boston-athenaeum

Notable Embalmed People

• Xin Zhui (d. 163 BCE) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xin_Zhui
• La Doncella http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco
• Vladimir Lenin: embalmed and on display at the Lenin Mausoleum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Mausoleum

• "A Photographic Guide to the world's embalmed leaders" (Washington Post)

Elmer McCurdy

people thought that his body was a mannequin

• http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/04/11/the_corpse_of_elmer_mccurdy_and_how_it_ended_up_in_a_long_beach_fun_park.html

People who have arranged for their works to live on in possibly modified states

We don't yet know how to classify

Phineas Gage

can be seen at the Warren Anatomical Museum on the Green Line

• Gage's Story

Examples in Pop Culture

• DKP systems
• Foundation series (example of someone's will over time reaching into the future, in tension with the will of people in a given time)
• The Ender Saga - Speaker for the Dead