In-Between What Once Was and What Is Yet to Come: on the Phenomena of Bereavement and Grieving

Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-14-2016 12:00 AM In-Between What Once Was and What is Yet to Come: On the Phenomena of Bereavement and Grieving Rachel L B Bath The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Helen Fielding The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Rachel L B Bath 2016 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Bath, Rachel L B, "In-Between What Once Was and What is Yet to Come: On the Phenomena of Bereavement and Grieving" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4170. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4170 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract When a significant other dies, our lives can be shattered and our worlds upended. We may find that we no longer know how to make sense of our experiences or how to engage in our practical activities. Nothing can be as it was before because the world as we once knew it has ended, and we are no longer the same persons we once were. Nonetheless this ending opens up something new because the death of the other changes the possibilities of our lived world. A phenomenological analysis of the phenomena of grief and bereavement reveals that while bereavement undermines meaning as such, there is nonetheless something existentially meaningful about the experience in general. Insofar as bereavement is a disorienting, disruptive event, it opens us to our openness by asking us to respond differently, and responding differently can recuperate us from the event by transforming us and our worlds. Keywords Phenomenology, Bereavement, Grief, Death, the Event, Merleau-Ponty, Romano, Heidegger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Existential Transformation. i Acknowledgments The work of this thesis would have been absolutely impossible without the incredible amount of support I received from innumerable sources. First, I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as well as Western University and specifically the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism for the financial support offered. Thanks also to the Centre for supporting me during a difficult personal time and for providing a site for this project. In particular, thanks to Melanie Caldwell for always knowing everything, for your patience, and helping to make the space of the Centre a home. And of course, equal thanks to Directors Tilottama Rajan and Jan Plug for providing me as many allowances as you could so that I could continue my studies whilst also being called to attend to my inter-personal trials. I am also grateful to the Women’s Studies and Feminist Research department at Western for continuing to offer me a home even after I left the nest, for providing a touchstone of academic integrity, and for offering me the various intellectual, inter-personal, and professional opportunities that have bettered me as a scholar and as a person. In particular, thanks to Alicia McIntyre for countless laughs, for conversations ranging from the frivolous to the perplexing, for all that free food(!), and most of all for being my friend and for gracing my life with your warm and welcoming presence. Alicia, you set the level of that space. The nursing staff of the Oncology unit at London Health Sciences Centre, Victoria Hospital, are heroes who too often go unacknowledged. Thank you for making the worst of times bearable. Many thanks to the Merleau-Ponty reading group at Western for the stimulating and challenging conversations, the concrete suggestions for my work, the support, and the friendship. Thanks to the teacher who has asked the most of me, Dr. Stephen G. Lofts. I can never meet your standards, but I think that is the whole point. Your rigor, passion, determination, and meticulous yet thorough thinking continues to amaze me. You set a standard that asks me to ii do more, to try harder, and to be better. Thanks also to you and Agnieszka Chuchrowska for opening your home to me and breaking bread with me. To my supervisor, mentor, and supporter, Dr. Helen Fielding: I would not be here today without your patience and wisdom. Your style of engaging with students, with texts, with thinking, and with the world have shown me so much about how to be. The scholar, thinker, and person I have become is in large part thanks to having been shown new horizons by you. You’ve opened up so many opportunities for me and I am incredibly grateful. If I hadn’t taken your class on Feminist Phenomenology, who knows where I’d be right now! I hope that our relationship and our interactions have been a fraction as enriching for you as they have been for me. Thanks to Thomas Szwedska for, well, everything (but mostly for the Pizzzzaaaaaa?!). Also for arriving at the perfect time and transforming my world, for helping me to overcome myself by simply being yourself, for bringin’ back the silly and smeshing all the air, for all the walks, and for being so ready to open a shared world. And of course also for your keen readings of my work, your critical inquiries, for seeing beyond what I could see and for bringing me to the beyond with you. I can’t wait for our future projects. To all my friends who have supported me, loved me, challenged me, and who have most of all been themselves for me, I am incredibly thankful. Special thanks to Jess Kiley for your astute eye, your being-for-others, and the way your mouth runs when you get heated up. I’ll never forget queering all them heteronormative bulletin boards with you. Finally, to my family, who never understood what I was doing or why I was doing it, but who supported me anyways. Most particularly, to my mother, who brought me into this world and who was so much more to me than I will ever be able to grasp or express. Even in death you teach me how to live. Your presence is missed more than words can express, but I carry you with me in me, and I appreciate how even in death you’ve only opened doors for me. This thesis is both a testimony of my love for you and my grief work. In the end it is an ode for you that, in the very composing, allowed me to be transformed for the better. I know you would have wanted nothing more. iii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv 1 Introduction (“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”) .......................... 1 2 The Event of Bereavement and Existential Disorientation .......................................... 11 2.1 On Buffy ................................................................................................................ 13 2.2 When the world falls to pieces… .......................................................................... 19 2.3 “Mom? Mom? ... Mommy?”................................................................................. 24 2.4 “I don’t understand how all this happens.” ........................................................... 30 3 Responsiveness and Radical Openness ........................................................................ 35 3.1 Performing Hermeneutics by mis-responding ...................................................... 37 3.2 “It’s not her… it’s not her… she’s gone.” ............................................................ 49 3.3 Openness ............................................................................................................... 56 4 Existential Transformation through Recreating the World .......................................... 59 4.1 Bringing about the End to the World as We Once Knew It: Grieving as Relearning and Recreating .................................................................................... 61 4.2 “…an event itself makes a world”: The Event of the World’s Advent ................ 66 4.3 Bereavement as an Evential Phenomenon and Grieving as Recreating the World ............................................................................................................................... 73 4.4 “You must change your life”: The Possibility of Existential Transformation ..... 79 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 82 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 91 Curriculum Vitae .............................................................................................................. 97 iv 1 1 Introduction (“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”1) Throughout the course of our lives, there are events that we experience which irrevocably change its trajectory. These events radically upend the worlds we lived in and change us so fundamentally that we may no longer recognize ourselves or our place in the world. I call these profound lived experiences

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