Paper short abstract:

In what seems to express an ongoing appeal with bodyliness, materiality and spectrality, this paper refers to the indeterminate body of King Sebastian I and the legend of his return to access the relation between modernity and subjectivity, the problem of foundations and the work of mourning.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses some of the debates and theories generated around the death of King Sebastian I, who allegedly perished in the battle of Alcácerquivir of 1578 during a historical crusade against the Moors of Northern Morocco. A recurrent theme within Portuguese popular imagination, the myth of Sebastianism is now being reassessed in light of new evidence that reinstates that the corpse kept in the sarcophagus in the Monastery of Jerónimos really is that of the missing monarch. While this data has added new pressure to have the body of the young King examined by forensic anthropologists, it has also been eliciting new resistances towards, and anxieties about, the opening of the sarcophagus. The myth of Sebastianism -the idea that the King shall return on a "foggy morning" to rescue the nation from crisis and restore its glorious destiny- seems to reappear at a particularly critical juncture within Portuguese and global economies. In what seems to express an ongoing appeal with bodyliness and materiality on the one hand , and virtuality and spectrality on the other, this paper uses the indeterminate body of Sebastian so as to critically access larger questions on the relation between modernity and subjectivity, the problem of foundations and origins as well as the unstable boundary between life and death