ABSTRACT This essay will offer a reflective analysis of the role of inanimate objects in a parent’s experience of sudden death of a child, and that death’s aftermath. Death, in which, it could be argued, subjects become objects, people become things, is a key moment for thinking through the manifold relationships between the living and the not-alive. The essay moves towards a taxonomy of ways in which death and grief might mobilise and enliven the inanimate. Everyday items—pillowcases, a mattress, a child’s shoe—can be investigated, not just by police and coroners, but by grieving family, as evidence of the mysterious thing that has happened here. Symbolic objects like photo albums heal through their invitation to activity, while death can make the grieving resent the ordinary objects that outlast the people we love. This essay engages with object-oriented ontologies and disability studies to open up and reflect on the ways in which objects might be animated and act as part of life-story telling around death and grief. Its essay form will allow an analysis of experiences of the socially awkward, banal or, in the case of the death of a disabled child, politically fraught, aspects to death and grief.

中文翻译：

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物体与死亡：暂定分类法

摘要 本文将对无生命物体在父母对孩子猝死的经历以及死亡后果的作用进行反思性分析。可以说，在死亡中，主体成为客体，人成为事物，是思考生者与死者之间多种关系的关键时刻。这篇文章转向了死亡和悲伤可能动员和激活无生命的方式的分类法。日常用品——枕套、床垫、童鞋——不仅可以由警察和验尸官调查，也可以由悲伤的家人调查，作为这里发生的神秘事件的证据。像相册这样的象征性物品通过他们的活动邀请来治愈，而死亡可以使悲伤的人对比我们所爱的人更长寿的普通物品产生怨恨。本文涉及面向对象的本体论和残疾研究，以开放和反思对象可能被动画化的方式，并作为围绕死亡和悲伤的生活故事讲述的一部分。它的论文形式将允许分析社会尴尬、平庸的经历，或者在残疾儿童死亡的情况下，政治上令人担忧的死亡和悲伤方面的经历。