Even the Dead Rise Up, and the political becomes personal.
In McKee’s first novel, observations of séances, scientific advances, group education outings, Kurdish protests for the ‘disappeared’, become mixed with his own Tarot influenced visions: a haunting spirit appears; the relation between political resistance and Spiritualism is cast as an insurrectionary force and a millenarian energy, celebrating the ecstatic moment. Histories of isolated early Christians and twentieth century mystics affect the psyche, all of this documented through journal entries that move from Scottish islands to Puerto Rico. Influenced by forms of 1960s new journalism, McKee pushes language to match the raw material of the stories, which become more erratic, signalling the looming fate of the text and its author.
Francis McKee is an Irish writer and curator working in Glasgow. He is Director since 2006 of the CCA, Glasgow, and a lecturer and research fellow at Glasgow School of Art. Since 2011 he has been working as lead researcher on an AHRC research project – The Glasgow Miracle: Materials Towards Alternative Histories. He curated the Scottish participation at the Venice Biennale with Kay Pallister in 2003, and has written and co-published extensively on the work of artists linked to Glasgow. Previously, McKee worked as an historian of medicine for the Wellcome Trust.
Even the Dead Rise Up by Francis McKee is published by Book Works as part of Common Objectives, guest edited by Nina Power
150 pages, 11 x 17 cm
In stock
