Introduction to the Workshop-‐Series

Introduction to the Workshop-Series Prof. Roland Deines (Co-Director CBET) The dead body is a hot topic. Not only in scholarship, as we will see, but also in the economy and in the media: TV crime dramas frequently provide graphic depic?ons of the dead, showing the naked body aer an autopsy with the incision marks clearly visible along the sternum;1 the “Bodyworlds” exhibi?ons by the infamous “Dr Death,” the anatomist and “inventor of plas?naon” Gunther von Hagens,2 aract a large public audience; the BBC recently aired a series called “The Beauty of Anatomy;”3 the list could go on. The exposure to the dead body seems to be something characteris?c of our ?me, comparable perhaps to the exponen?al increase in depic?ons of the naked body and sexual acts in various media. There remains, however, a marked discrepancy between public exposure to dead bodies in film, television and exhibi?ons and a general reluctance to discuss death and the appropriate treatment of the body with family 1 Tina Weber, Drop Dead Gorgeous: Representa1ons of Corpses in American TV Shows (Images of Death: Studies on the Social Transformaon of Death 6), Frankfurt: Campus, 2011; ead. and S. Moebius, “Die mediale Reprä- sentaon des Todes: Der Tod in den Kulturen der Moderne am Beispiel des Films,” in M. Schroer (ed.), Die Gesellscha> des Films, Konstanz: UVK, 2007, 264-308; D. Gross and J. Grande (eds.), Objekt Leiche: Technisie- rung, Ökonomisierung und Inszenierung toter Körper. Todesbilder: Studien zum gesellschalichen Umgang mit dem Tod 1. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. 2 hYp://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html 3 hYp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dq8j7 1 members and friends (the same can be said about sex: it is oAen ‘looked at’ but hardly ever talked about). Many shy away from touching the deceased or preparing the body of a loved one for burial; family gatherings around, and funeral services involving, open caskets, once widespread, are increasingly rare. Many young people have never encountered a dead body in reality. But whereas the disposal of the body is an oAen painful necessity for the surviving relaves, it has become a business commodity for others.4 There is an increasingly compe??ve market relang to the business of death: A variety of designer coffins (hKp:// colourfulcoffins.com; hKp://www.creavecoffins.com) are offered in an aempt to overcome the conven?onality of tradi?onal coffins. Equally diverse is the current market for cremaon urns, with personalised urns and cremaon jewellery5 on the rise. The latest development in this market is urns in the shape of the deceased’s head, using facial recogni?on soAware and 3D printers to produce a life-size bust.6 It looks a bit like a modern variant of anthropoid clay coffins or sarcophagi, aested at Late Bronze and Early Iron-age sites in Pales?ne,7 or one could see it as a less bloody form of mummificaon. The 21st century offers for the first ?me in human history an easy and relavely cheap effigy of the human body to preserve the ashes of the deceased. It is, if you want, the best of two worlds namely mummificaon and cremaon without the ‘bloody mess’ of the former. I assume the next step is not just a bust but a statue of the deceased. Funerals increasingly have the poten?al to become events, and funeral directors are becoming event managers with the remit to fulfil every costly wish in celebraon of a life.8 In Germany, newspapers offer mourning portals on their web-pages, where one can read through death no?ces: Rankings are available for those death no?ces with the most visits, virtual candles can be lit, condolences can be expressed, and suitable quotes and formulaons are supplied (hKp://trauer.sueddeutsche.de). Will there be a compe??on in the end for who gets the most virtual candles? These new op?ons when it comes to the funeral and the disposal of the body means not only more variety, and related to it more business opportuni?es, but also further 4 Cf. Dominik Gross (ed.), Die dienstbare Leiche: Der tote Körper als medizinische, soziokulturelle und ökonomische Ressource; Proceedings zum Kick-off Workshop des Aachener Kompetenzzentrums für Wissen- schasgeschichte der RWTH Aachen University (15.-16. Januar 2009; Studien des Aachener Kompetenzzentrums für Wissenschasgeschichte 5), Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2009; K. Gernig (ed.), Wer nicht wirbt, s1rbt! Werbung in der Bestaùngsbranche, Düsseldorf: Fachverlag des deutschen Bestaungs- gewerbes, 2009. 5 See e.g. hYp://www.cremaonjewellery.org. This family business men;ons on their webpage that studies by The Crema1on Society of Great Britain show that since 1960 the number of cremaons have more than doubled, rising from around 35% in 1960 to more than 74% in 2012. For part of the ashes turned into synthe;c diamonds see hYp://www.cremaonsolu;ons.com/c4/Cremaon-Diamonds-Made-From-Ashes-c39.html. 6 Illustraons and descrip;ons can be found here: hYp://www.cremaonsolu;ons.com/c107/Personal- Cremaon-Urns-for-Ashes-c109.html. For a cri;cal evaluaon see Thomas Klie, “Der tote Körper als Zeichen: Prak;sch-theologische Erkundungen in spätmoderner Bestaungspraxis,” BThZ 29/2 (2012): 246-261 (248-253). 7 Cf. Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10.000-586 B.C.E. (ABRL), New York: Doubleday, 1992, 283-285 (Deir el-Balah, Beth-Shean, Lachish). 8 hYp://www.funeralinspiraons.co.uk/informaon/Professional-Event-Planners.html 2 psychological pressure in a ?me of suffering and emo?onal stress. Funerals are becoming the new weddings with their extensive preparaons and elaborate to do-lists.9 Nothing should be leA to chance but equally nothing should be done solely in the tradi?onal way. This means that for people in many modern western socie?es, what is oAen the most painful aspect of life, namely to get through funeral preparaons for a loved one, is no longer ameliorated by conven?ons, accepted tradi?ons and a shared religious outlook on the aerlife. Half a century ago hardly anybody had the need to think about what to do when somebody dies. Funeral customs and rites were fairly stable and oAen long established, with only minor variaons, for example across catholic or protestant lines within a country like Britain or Germany. Nowadays, in contrast, every death raises the ques?on of what to do: Interment (and if so, in which form: individual grave or anonymous burial 10), cremaon (and if so, what should be done with the ashes: burial; scaering in the open; cremaon jewellery; urns, their placement and form, etc.). Coffins have the poten?al to become a status symbols (cf. as example hp://www.crazy coffins.co.uk) and funeral apps and live coverage of funerals in social media promise help and support. The increasing commercialisaon of funerals combined with the social pressure they can induce is clearly a danger; the pressure on the bereaved will increase and appearance rather than substance will become more important. But there is not just a market for the disposal of the human remains, but also an increased expectaon, and associated pressure, to be useful beyond death. Moral and financial arguments are increasingly accumulated to encourage organ donaon or to allow the corpse to be used for medical research and the training of prospec?ve surgeons and other clinical personnel (that is, the body is turned into a cadaver). Human life from stem cells to the corpse becomes subdued to an en?re exploitaon chain (“VerwertungskeKe”) and the willingness to take part in this is oAen celebrated as altruis?c sacrifice. Conversely, those who reject the u?litarian subjec?on of the human body to the pretended higher good find themselves in the situaon of being seen as selfish naysayers to medical progress and neighbourly love for the sick.11 But despite all these described developments, whose possible benefits are not yet fully visible, there is a chance that the new interest in speaking about death and funerals can help 9 hYp://www.dyingmaers.org/page/my-funeral-wishes 10 On postmodern plurality in funerary culture see Norbert Fischer, “Miniaturlandschaen der Erinnerung: Über neue Sepulkralästhe;k und den Friedhof des 21. Jahrhunderts,” BThZ 29/2 (2012 [Bestaùngskultur in der Gegenwart]): 196-207; Reiner Sörries, “Urnenkirche und Kirchenwald: Die Kirche und die alternaven Bestat- tungsformen,” BThZ 29/2 (2012): 229-245. 11 Jones, D. Gareth, Speaking for the Dead: Cadavers in Biology and Medicine, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; Norman L. Cantor, A>er We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 2010. For an interdisciplinary approach including philosophical, theological, legal and cultural aspects in relaon to autopsies in medical contexts see Hubert Knoblauch, Andrea Esser, Dominik Groß, BrigiYe Tag, and Antje Kahl (eds.), Der Tod, der tote Körper und die klinische Sek1on. (Sozialwissenschaliche Abhandlungen der Görres-Gesellscha 28). Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2010; BrigiYe Tag and Dominik Groß (eds.), Der Umgang mit der Leiche: Sek1on und toter Körper in interna1onaler und interdisziplinärer Perspek1ve (Todesbilder: Studien zum gesellschalichen Umgang mit dem Tod 4), Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. 3 to overcome the deadly silence that is s?ll widely experienced when it comes to death.12 The NHS-launched project “Dying maers” (hKp://www.dyingmaers.org) is one way to overcome this, and the Church of England also offers resources on their homepage to help people to come to term with funerals and related ques?ons.13 The unwillingness to address death and to be confronted with a body can be seen, for example, in the way that nursing homes cover up the fact that people are dying in their care.

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