Welcome to: Mapping Mortality

1
Welcome toMapping Mortality

• Session 1
• Introduction rhetoric and rituals

2
Introduction to the Module

• Module Handbook
• On being paperless
• Weekly sessions
• Suggested books
• Whats it all about?
• Rhetoric and rituals of death
• Death in different traditions

From google images
3
Deconstructing Death

• All constructs of death are culturally created
• Therefore, we can examine and isolate the way a
  society perceives of and represents death, the
  dead, and dying

From google images
4
Various Approaches

• Aries
• Development - historical
• Baumann
• Post-modern deconstruction post-modern
  sociology
• Bloch
• Ritual subverts death - sociologist
• Chidester
• Transcendence theological?
• Davies
• words against death theological/ humanistic?
• Briefly Cumpsty, Hertz, Davies, Frazer,
  Goldscmidt, Bowker, Becker

5
Death Denial

• Some scholars have seen religion as rooted in
  denial of death
• E.g. Ernest Becker (1925-1974) John Bowker
  (1935-)
• creation myths invert death
• control anxiety arises from extinction
  (personality/ interpersonal relations)
• (Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death, 1974
  Bowker, John. The Meanings of Death, 1991)
• Critique
• monolithic view of religion and its purpose/
  essence
• lacks nuanced view of purposes and types of death
  ritual

From google images
6
The Dead and Society

• Some scholars emphasize the relationship of body
  society
• James Frazer (1854-1941)
• Study of magic
• Like produces like
• Death produces death
• dead are contagious
• contain essence of death
• Robert Hertz (1882-1915)
• Society links all members
• Death ritual continues the link
• Living gt dead gt ancestor
• Bodies gt represent linkage (double burial wet
  dry)
• Makes death positive
• Very influential on later studies of rites, van
  Gennep, etc.
• Walter Goldschmidt (1913-)
• Bodies not important
• Warding off death not the dead Sebei tribe
• (Frazer, The Golden Bough Hertz, A Contribution
  to the Study of the Collective Representation of
  Death, in Rodney Needham and Claudia Needham
  (eds), Death and the Right Hand, 1960 (1st
  published 1905-1906) Goldschmidt, Freud,
  Durkhiem and death among the Sebei, in Kalish,
  Death and Dying Views from Many Cultures, 1980)
• Critique

The Tate
7
Theories of Death

• Some scholars make theories about types of death
• J. S. Cumpsty (????)
• Nature religion dead gt ancestors
• Withdrawal religion dead gt reincarnated
• Secular world affirming religion dead gt heaven
• Also moves away from religion as overcoming
  death to religion as belonging social
  network
• Vs. Becker Bowker
• (J.S. Cumpsty, Religion as Belonging A General
  Theory of Religion, 1991)
• Critique
• Simplistic overview of religion/ death
• One size fits all package

From google images
8
Which approaches are useful?

• Overview the previous views
• Becker/ Bowker death as origin of religion
• Frazer humans see death in dead via magic
• Hertz ritual represents way we relate to dead
• Goldschmidt no one really worried about dead
  but death
• Cumpsty different religions classify death by
  type
• 2 Questions
• Which approaches/ answers do you think are most
  insightful or useful or appealing? Why?
• Which approaches/ answers do you find least
  satisfactory? Why?

9
More detail

• Bloch ritual subverts/ transcends death
• Baumann all culture is hiding from death
• Aries historical development
• Chidester types of death
• Davies and Modern/ Post-modern Death

From google images
10
Zygmunt Baumann (1925-) (1)

• Death is so big it may swamp human will to live
• No ordinary social life possible if we dwell on
  it
• Death cannot be perceived still less visualized
  or 'represented (p. 2)
• Death is an absolute nothing and absolute
  nothing makes no sense (p. 2)

11
Baumann (2)

• Freud
• no one believes in his own death
• The unconscious behaves as if it were immortal
• From Thoughts for the Times of War and Death,
  pp. 77 85
• Language of death
• Passed on/ away
• Dead departed
• Asleep

12
Baumann (3) must control

• Lose motive to live if we dwell on for too long
• Hide death place it under control
• Death rites keep its impact to a minimum
• Branislow Maliowski religion helps give sense
  of hope not despair
• Funerary rites uplift (Durkheim)
• Culture (especially religion) hides death
• Supplement death instinct with life instinct
• thanatos and libido
• Religion
• Death ritual removes them from world of living

13
Baumann (4) methods of control

• Make dead cease to exist
• Exclude them
• Cemeteries
• Place in care of licensed professionals
• Like insane, ill, criminals
• Deny substance of death
• 1) human finitude does not count
• Death doesnt stop we continue Hindu
• Judaist covenant with God important
  personal death as nothing when measured against
  long conversation with God
• 2) insist against the odds in individual
  existence
• Combined
• Totalitarian/ Nationalist surrender individual
  life for lasting accomplishment

14
Maurice Bloch (1939-) (1)

• Death leads to higher life
• Contradicts natural order
• Death becomes life
• Many initiatory rituals symbolic death
• Hindu renouncer traditions
• (Early) Christian baptism
• Term (for ritual passage)
• Rebounding violence
• Rebounding conquest

15
Bloch (2)

• People are born, grow old and die
• Is this the only way to conceive of the natural
  order?
• Can we subvert/ transcend this?
• Extends sociological/anthropological theories
• Durkheim funeral reintegrates society
• Damage not just repaired subverted
• Malinowski bereaved need support
• Damage not just ignored subverted
• Van Gennep rites of passage mark progress
• Not just social markers power to leap beyond

16
Baumann vs. Bloch

• Questions
• What do you think of Baumann?
• What critique would you suggest?
• What do you think of Bloch?
• What critique would you suggest?
• Compare/ contrast Baumann Bloch
• Do they conflict which side is stronger?
• Can they complement each other how?

17
Phillipe Aries (1914-1984)

• Tame Death
• Early church to early medieval
• Death of the Self
• High Medieval
• Remote Death
• C 16th to C 18th
• Death of the Other
• Victorian
• Death Denied
• C 20th

From google images
18
Tame Death

• Attitudes to death
• Death near and constant
• Familiar
• Public
• Focus on community
• No surprise, calmly accepted
• Non-threatening opposite of wild force
• Burial and bodies
• Mass graves bones dug up to charnels - lessons
• Cemeteries near churches
• Cemeteries public squares
• Near martyrs basillicas
• Change from pre-Christian rites
• Religious/ Spiritual/ Symbolic Aspects
• Death sleep till 2nd coming

http//www.bibleplaces.com/thessalonica.htm
19
Death of the Self

• Attitudes to death
• Black Death made it uncontrollable
• Growing sense of individualism
• Focus on dying person
• Moment of death true self revealed
• Ars Moriendi
• Burial and bodies
• Rich in coffin with marked grave
• Sense of individual marked grave
• Poor in common grave
• New fascination with dead body revulsion
• Cover face of corpse hide body in shroud/coffin,
  even coffin with cloth (pall)
• Religious/ Spiritual/ Symbolic Aspects
• Model of death from 2nd Coming (C 11th) to Last
  Judgement (12th)
• To heaven or hell purgatory
• May involved suffering fear of personal
  salvation
• Patron saint and devil
• Final moment significant (Jew Shema Muslim
  divine name Pure Land Buddhist Namo Omitofo)

From google images
20
Remote/ Imminent Death

• Attitudes to death
• 2 great fears sex and death controls decayed
• Renaissance and Reformation death loosed
• Tame gt untamed, wild, invasive
• Rise of science and secularization remote
• Beginnings of medicalization of death
• Put it out of mind
• Natural, not supernatural
• Natural, but frightening
• Natural so face calmly seek beautiful/
  edifying death
• Ambivalence - Paradox
• Burial and bodies
• Cemeteries away from churches just burial
  grounds
• Fascination with cadaver dissection
  fashionable art
• Survivors keep some part (heart/ hair)
• Religious/ Spiritual/ Symbolic Aspects
• More unsure

From google images
21
Death of the Other

• Attitudes to death
• Shift of emphasis from self to other
• Grief and bereavement concern
• Death romanticized
• To be reunited with beloved new, but now taken
  for granted
• Hide death under mask of beauty
• Death untamed feelings almost out of control
  limit to few family members
• Burial and bodies
• Dead become pseudo-living
• Graveyards haunted and frightening
• Houses also haunted
• Romantic opposition to odours
• Opposition to burial in church makes it unclean
• Graveyards out of town civic control
• No mass graves next to each other, not on top
• Mark place of burial ownership
• Now centre of piety for dead
• Tombs places to visit and mourn
• Religious/ Spiritual/ Symbolic Aspects

22
Mount Auburn Cemetery, BostonSeptember 1831
23
Invisible Death Death Denied/ Forbidden

• Attitudes to death
• Privatized
• Natural understanding dominant
• Moment of death banished from view
• Focus on survivors (or bureaucrats?)
• Death is dirty and indecent
• Continuation of death of other emphasize our
  response
• If we are uncomfortable death may be removed
• Little time marked by society brief funeral
  stop but continues
• Mourning morbid, even pathological
• Refusal to share suffering of bereaved
• Not decent in public mourners to private sphere
  expressed in private
• Medicalization death banished from home
• Burial and bodies
• Coffins become caskets (cask)
• Attempt to make dead seem alive sleeping
• Cadaver no longer frightening or beautiful not
  dead
• Death in hands of hospital and undertakers
• 3 main aspects

From google images
24
Aries

• Major importance in death studies
• Modern death wild death
• Relation to modern/ post-modern understandings

25
Aries - summary

• Tame Death
• Death near and constant Divine Will Public
  Church
• Death of the Self
• Uncontrollable focus on self reminders direct
  eschatology
• Remote Death
• Control (sex and death) medicalize/ classify
  natural remove from society
• Death of the Other
• Romanticize reunite with beloved markers on
  graves afterlife
• Death Denied
• Privatized vanished dirty/ indecent failure
  mourning denied

26
David Chidester (1952-)

• 3 deaths
• Biological death
• Psychological death
• Sociological death
• 4 transcendences
• Ancestral transcendence
• Experiential transcendence
• Cultural transcendence
• Mythic transcendence

27
Biological death

• Various ways to measure
• Reduction of temperature
• Algor mortis
• Skin turns purple-red
• Livor mortis
• Body becomes rigid
• Rigor mortis

28
Psychological Death

• It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death
  and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive
  that we are in fact still present as spectators
  (Freud, 1915, p. 305)
• Freud 2 options acceptance or denial (p. 315)
• Recent analysis symbols of continuity can have
  therapeutic role, not just neurosis
• Like a human life, a human death is meaningful
  (Chidester, p. 8)

29
Sociological Death

• Disruptive effects of death restore social
  order
• Social death slavery slave death non-human
  death in some cultures banishment
  excommunication prison asylum hospital

30
Ancestral Transcendence

• Overcome biological death live on through
  family
• Ancestor worship clan totem shared i/d with
  first ancestor law giver
• Contact ancestors dreams, ritual, death
• Manifestations
• Abrahamic faiths
• Shraddha rituals
• China and Japan and filial piety

31
Experiential Transcendence

• Overcomes psychological death tranquillity
• Accept as extinction Epicurus (324-270 BCE) no
  pain therefore no fear gt Lucretius (99-55 BCE)
• Kubler-Ross denial gt acceptance promised an
  experiential transcendence of death
• Ecstatic versions shamans, die and reborn
  journey to world of dead
• Visionary journeys Tibetan Book of the Dead
  Dante signify a transcendence of death even in
  life

32
Cultural Transcendence

• Overcome social death
• From family gt society
• Ancestor worship vs. cult of the dead (Max
  Gluckman)
• Live in hearts, minds and memories
• Death in battle immortal Gilgamesh Reagan
• Immortality arts, sciences, heroic deeds,
  collective memories
• W. Lloyd Warner death rituals a visible symbol
  of the agreement among human beings that they
  will not let each other die (1959, p. 285)

33
Mythic Transcendence

• Imagined personal survival
• Some tribes dead to remote regions
• Under earth
• Sky Egypt 4,000 BCE
• Geography of afterlife Zoroastrianism 9 heavens,
  103 hells Buddhism, 14 heavens, 136 hells
  Islam, 7 heavens and 7 hells
• A) Continuity
• B) Survival
• Disembodied spirits
• Spiritual embodiment
• Reincarnation
• Resurrection
• C) Evidence
• Shamans
• NDEs

34
Aries vs. Chidester

• Questions
• What do you think of Aries?
• What critique would you suggest?
• What do you think of Chidester?
• What critique would you suggest?
• Compare/ contrast Baumann Bloch
• Which approach is more useful history or
  typology?
• Can they complement each other how?
• Is it useful to compare these two? Like with
  like or unlike with unlike?

35
Some common themes

• Hope
• Transcendence
• Life over death
• Douglas Davies (1947-)
• words against death
• Death rites and rituals are measures to ensure
  continuity and meaning
• They are, performative utterances ensuring that
  death can be coped with if it is not seen as
  senseless and meaningless. (p. 22)

36
Davies

• Words against death
• encapsulates a theory which views death rites as
  an adaptation to the fact of death words
  against death are expressed in books and
  lectures, they also pass into the public domain
  through the verbal form of prayer, blessing
  (p. 1)
• Funerals the ongoing and positive nature of
  human identity, and of society as the cradle of
  identity. (p. 7)
• Memorials the inscribed messages on memorials
  express not only a human past but also a hope for
  the future, showing that humanity is
  committed to life. (p. 111)

37
Back to Baumann

• Culture is about transcendence
• 1st survival
• Push back moment of death extend life-span
• 2nd immortality
• remembrance

38
Cultures

• Modern culture
• Deconstruct mortality
• Dissolve issue into endless battle with diseases
• Become healthcare issues
• Post-modern culture
• Deconstruct immortality
• Substitute notoriety for historical memory
  disappearance of death life unstoppable now,
  endless series of oppositions of transience vs.
  durable

39
Post-modern Readings

• Nomads pilgrims
• Continual recreation of self collage
• Immortality democratized
• Politics, pop songs, Olympics equal weight
• Equality of opportunity
• Hide death by crossing bridges
• Everything is reversible everyone may reappear
• Death is simply suspension
• Death hidden by fact of recycling last years
  goods this years antiques retro fallen stars
  and nostalgia

40
Different theories?

• Davies emphasize rites as hope
• Necessary for humanity
• To be human is to hope, to go beyond
• We can overcome terror of extinction
• Baumann emphasize rites as hiding
• Necessary for humanity
• Everything is hiding, too awful
• Must always be lying to ourselves
• Question Do they
• make sense of contemporary patterns of death
  and dying?
• contribute anything to understanding death?