Death: How to Speak About the Unspeakable

In her book The Remains of Love, Zeruya Shalev seeks to touch the language of the “remainder of life” – the moments at the end of life and the final disintegration of the body. The book traces the consciousness of Hemda, the daughter of kibbutz settlers, and the consciousnesses of her children, Dina and Avner, who are in their forties. The book opens with the process of Hemda’s dying. She tells of her life as the first child of the kibbutz, in the shadow of a dominant and threatening father and against the background of the story of the draining of the Hula Lake. In my article, I explore how it is possible to speak of death as something about which it is impossible to speak. I argue that the preoccupation with the issue of death and the disintegration of the body exists within a masculine system of identity as opposed to a feminine one. I employ two intertwined concepts: “the masculine language of disintegration” and “the feminine language of disintegration.” I examine how the masculine language of disintegration functions differently than the feminine language of disintegration in the province of death. I explore how these power systems occupy one another other and struggle with one another, and how successful female characters succeed in liberating themselves from the masculine language of disintegration and reformulate feminine language that contains within it the disintegration of the body, but also the hope of the continuation of life.