Abstract

The philosopher Giorgio Agamben has argued that the ‘human/nonhuman distinction is the conceptual ground for any further ontological elaboration’, (Grieve-Carlson, 179) that humans must distinguish themselves from their environment and other beings before the work of culture can begin. However, objects frequently ‘problematize the boundaries of the human’ (Knutson, 273), never more so than when we encounter human remains in the process of transition from human subject to physical object. The philosopher Daniel Heller-Roazen notes ‘that a corpse is no human being seems obvious, yet it is equally certain that it is no ordinary thing…A human cadaver is neither a person nor not a person. It is a nonperson in a special sense, which requires commentary and elucidation’ (Heller-Roazen,159).

On Everest, the ambiguity of post-mortal personhood is exacerbated by the preservation of human remains in liminal states in the mountain cryosphere. Human remains on Everest enter new ontic states and new spatio-temporal regimes that render these corpses uncanny. They are encountered within the mountain cryosphere as both fixed features in a landscape and as mobile entities in glacial systems. Extreme environments at altitude reduce human agency and disrupt the normal cultural approaches to disposing of human remains. The persistence of these corpses in the cryosphere and their post-mortal (im)mobilities raises important questions about the ways in which fixity and prolongation of bodies in the cryosphere extends and alters the transition of human remains from subject to object.

In September 2024 the partial human remains of the Everest mountaineer Andrew Irvine were discovered on the Central Rongbuk Glacier in Tibet. Comprising of a boot, sock and skeletal human foot, this paper deploys archaeological assemblage theory to interpret these partial human remains as a complex, relational and emergent historical object, an assemblage that operates at multi-scalar levels which is not confined to one geographically delimited space. Critically, ‘an assemblage is a multiplicity, neither exclusively a part nor a whole’ that actively configures and reconfigures under historically contingent processes (Knutson 796-797). Irvine’s human remains form part of an extensive assemblage that includes narratives of mythologization and heroization that constitute his own enduring post-mortal personhood.