The essay collection focuses on morbid phenomena such as melancholy trauma illness and death
which engage with questions of cultural vitality and cultural mortality. The figurations and
representations of social pathologies not only display time in its existential drama but
furthermore show a paradox inherent to processes of decay: in passing lies a certain
accumulation of life. Thus the morbid indicates the presence of the living although it
intentionally prefigures death. The collection points to the complex interconnections of social
medical and cultural discourses and assumes the seemingly negative of the morbid presence to be
the constitutive element of the imagination and a catalyst for individual empowerment. As a
source of life and art the morbid then equally locates the point of intersection between
ethics and aesthetics.
