My Corpse Inside

A provocative and meticulously structured exploration of identity, language, and the body, My Corpse Inside exposes the thin and increasingly blurry line between the physical and the digital, between the living and the dead. Wes Jamison contends with the complex and disturbing relationship of sexuality and violence through a torrent of virtual horrors--shock sites, hookup apps, beheading videos, and creepshots--as well as through Jamison’s own experiences of being surveilled and exploited online. Inspired by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s master horror film Kairo, which portrays ghosts overflowing into our reality through the internet, this fragmented book-length essay clarifies Julia Kristeva’s infamously esoteric theory of abjection and subjectivity and updates it for today’s constant virtuality. My Corpse Inside is a disquieting work that asks readers to confront the violence, fetish, horror, and loneliness inherent in our eternal connectivity.

WES JAMISON is an assistant professor of English at Del Mar College. They are the author of Carrion, which received the 2021 Quill Prose Award, and the chapbook and Melancholia, a winner of Essay Press’s Chapbook Contest. Their essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and mentioned as Notables in the Best American series. Their work also appears in DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, After the Art, and elsewhere. Born and raised in the Midwest, Jamison currently lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, with their partner and two cats.