Death

Coming Home by Catherine Gorey

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published in the Feminism and Religion project

It speaks to me often when I am in the midst of interior conflict roused by change, growth, transition, disappointment... more It speaks to me often when I am in the midst of interior conflict roused by change, growth, transition, disappointment etc. Each personal encounter causes a shift in my interior landscape which in turn requires me to find my center again. Sometimes the homecoming takes longer, depending on the cause of the axis shifting.

March 15th, 2012 will mark the 3 year anniversary of my mother’s death. A day that caused me much turmoil within and a life event from which I continue to search for my center. I would never have thought that this life event would shake me to the core as it did, causing me to question everything I ever thought to have known about my mother.

A Feminist “Nutt” Point of View by Shannon Nutt

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on Feminism and Religion project

This is the first blog post I have written, so the concept of being a blogger is a little foreign to me.  But I... more This is the first blog post I have written, so the concept of being a blogger is a little foreign to me.  But I will just jump in!

I grew up in a religious house that became far more religious after my mother passed away from brain cancer when I was thirteen.  My single father became heavily involved in the Lutheran Church, thinking this was the best way to raise his two daughters.  I was happy to go to church and get the structure that the church provided.  I was also grateful that I went to a church that had a female pastor.  Lacking a mother, it was nice to have a strong female role model who was breaking into the “boys’ club” that was the church.  Having found a postitive, female role model, I was really upset when I heard very conservative members of other churches and my own family say that women have no business speaking or leading people in church.

Where do Cats Go?: Reflections on Death Post Patriarchal Christianity by Sara Frykenberg

by Feminism and Religion

Originally posted on the Feminism and Religion project.

The reason I am speaking about death today is two-fold.  First, I have been somewhat preoccupied with the concept... more The reason I am speaking about death today is two-fold.  First, I have been somewhat preoccupied with the concept of death since entering a new decade of my life.  I no longer believe in the evangelical vision of heaven I learned about in my youth; but as an uncomfortable “un”-Christian, I also have no satisfactory vision to replace it.  Or rather, there are many visions I find appealing, but none that I “believe in,” as I had believed in heaven.  My family is getting older, my parents have been sick in the last few years, and I often feel that I have more to lose now than I used to.

My second reason for considering death today is that last Wednesday, Mimi, our family cat of 24 years—yes, 24—passed away.  After spending all nine of her lives living, Mimi could no longer eat and was suffering.  My mother had her put down after we all said goodbye; we held a funeral for her and buried her among the lilies in our yard, her home.

Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis: 'A Problematic Proximity'

by Robert Trumbull

Derrida Today 5.1 (2012)

This essay explores Derrida’s work on repetition in psychoanalysis and what Freud, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle,... more This essay explores Derrida’s work on repetition in psychoanalysis and what Freud, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, called the ‘compulsion to repeat’. Revising the model of the psyche that had to that point dominated his theory, Freud began in 1920 to ascribe greater significance to experiences of trauma and unpleasure, and to their recurrence in the analytic treatment. This type of repeated repetition ultimately suggested to Freud the existence of a ‘death drive’ antithetical to life. I examine here how Derrida re-reads Beyond in The Post Card, analysing the way uncontrollable effects of repetition repeatedly undo Freud’s efforts to make any progress on what lies beyond the pleasure principle. Another ‘logic’ of repetition, other than the one Freud invokes, inhabits Freud’s text, threatening the fundamental opposition between the life drives and the death drive. But in reading Freud in this way, Derrida himself cannot quite ‘do justice to’ Freud, to the ambivalence at work in Freud’s text. At certain key moments in his reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, I show, Derrida seems to restrict an ambiguity in Freud’s thinking around the relation between life and death. What Derrida’s reading makes legible in part, then, is Derrida’s resistance to psychoanalysis, the tension inhabiting Derrida’s dealings with Freud in The Post Card and beyond.

Immortality of the Soul as an Intuitive Idea

by Vera Pereira

Co-authored with Luís Faísca and Rodrigo Sá-Saraiva
Published in Journal of Cognition and Culture

Chapple, R. M. 2011 'Irish National Strategic Research (INSTAR) Programme- Findings From the First Phase 2008-2011. Review' Blogspot post

by Robert M Chapple

Problems And Solutions For A Hypothetical Right Not To Exist

by Manolito Gallegos

In this paper I will describe and attempt to resolve one of the main problems of David Benatar’s text "Better... more In this paper I will describe and attempt to resolve one of the main problems of David Benatar’s text "Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence": whether it is possible for a right not to exist to be posited without there ever being a person in existence to hold such a right. I will conclude that this is indeed possible given an experience oriented view of personhood that I shall outline, and what other conclusions might be drawn from such a view.

Plasticization as Necrophilia: Death, Decomposition, and the Inorganic in Foucault

by Kelsey Borrowman

Presented various of the paper at the New York Society for Women in Philosophy, Radical Foucault Conference in East London, and the Foucault Circle Conference (2012). Upcoming presentation for the Foucault Society in New York City on April 12.

Throughout his work, Foucault wrestles with the notion of biopolitics, which can be defined broadly as the politics of... more Throughout his work, Foucault wrestles with the notion of biopolitics, which can be defined broadly as the politics of and over life. This essay investigates the politics of death within life, specifically concerning the concept of plasticization, in order to illuminate contemporary society’s desire for an inorganic ‘body.’ I root the discussion within The Birth of the Clinic and Foucault’s analysis of how a new concept of ‘death’ developed. Just as we understand life as permeable by death, I propose that decomposition is the life leftover in the dead body. The processes of the body dying and decomposing are really remnants of the living body, death permeated by life. By understanding decomposition this way, I articulate a distinction between the inorganic and the organic. Life is to the organic, mobile, and fluid as death is to the inorganic, static, and frozen. Then, I develop and expand the concept of plasticization as presented by Susan Bordo. I propose an understanding of plasticity as an obsession with the inorganic—with that which does not decompose (as this is a quality of life, not death). What I want to suggest is that plasticization is an obsession with the inorganic, the static, and, therefore, the dead. This understanding of the inorganic, this obsession with the non-decomposing, un-aging body is, by definition, necrophilia.

In the last section, the paper will address the implications of ‘plasticization as necrophilia’ for biopolitics and ask: should we view plasticization as part of a technology of governing bodies? I address these questions by returning to Foucault’s own work, specifically the last lecture in his lecture series Society Must Be Defended. First, I examine the sovereign’s ‘right’ to life and death and how, in the making invisible of the death, it became understood as a remaining region of freedom. Then, I analyze the way that plasticization entails both new techniques of power and makes already established techniques more prominent and invasive. From this point, I revisit Bordo in order to illustrate that this new understanding of plasticization illuminates that death as freedom is merely an illusion. In a very big way, Bordo illustrates amply that plasticity is the new norm, and the inability to be satisfied with ourselves and to desire change is seen as “due to our female nature, not to be taken seriously or made into a political question.”  In this paper, I therefore aim to illustrate exactly how plasticization is political by illuminating how our obsession with the ‘dead’ body has given the sovereign a new ‘right’ over life.

Doris Lessing’in "To Room Nineteen" ("19 Numaralı Oda’ya") Öyküsünde Öznel Bireyselliğin Ölümü

by Buket Akgun

Will be published.
Akgün, Buket. “Doris Lessing’in ‘To Room Nineteen’ (’19 Numaralı Oda’ya’) Öyküsünde Öznel Bireyselliğin Ölümü.” [Death of Subjective Individuality in Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen”] Litera “Ölüm” Özel Sayısı 23.1 (2010): 57-74.

Doris Lessing’in, A Man and Two Women (Bir Erkek ve İki Kadın) (1963) adlı öykü kitabında yer alan “To Room Nineteen”... more Doris Lessing’in, A Man and Two Women (Bir Erkek ve İki Kadın) (1963) adlı öykü kitabında yer alan “To Room Nineteen” (“19 Numaralı Oda’ya”) başlıklı öyküsünde, orta yaşlı, evli ve dört çocuk annesi Susan Rawlings, evliliğini ve evliliğine dair aldığı tüm kararları sorgulamaya başlayınca öznel bireyselliğini yitirdiğini farkeder. Öznel bireyselliğinin ölümüyle birlikte kendisine, kocasına ve çocuklarına yabancılaşması Susan’ı intihara kadar sürükler. Bu makalede, Susan’ın öznel bireyselliğini yitirişiyle ve onun peşi sıra gelen intiharıyla, hem mecazi hem de gerçek anlamda ölümünü ve onu bu duruma ve kaçınılmaz gibi görünen sona sürükleyen nedenleri irdeleyeceğim.


In Doris Lessing’s short story “To Room Nineteen” published in her collection of tales titled A Man and Two Women (1963), when Susan Rawlings, a middle-aged woman, married with four children, starts questioning her marriage and all the decisions she has made regarding her marriage, she realises that she has lost her subjective individuality. The death of her subjective individuality leads Susan to become estranged from herself, her husband and her children and ultimately to commit suicide. In this article, I scrutinise Susan’s death in both metaphorical and literal terms, that is, respectively, her loss of subjective individuality and her eventual suicide, and the reasons that pave the path to this seemingly inevitable end.

È la morte cerebrale realmente la morte?

by Elena Postigo Solana

redistributions du travail funéraire et transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional

by Joël Noret

forthcoming in Hervé Guy (ed.), Rencontre autour du cadavre, 2012.

Cet article entend montrer combien les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional... more Cet article entend montrer combien les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional s’avèrent révélatrices d’évolutions plus générales dans l’ordre de la prise en charge de la mort et, finalement, puisque les deux sont toujours peu ou prou liés, dans l’organisation des rapports sociaux. À cet égard, envisager le changement social, en prenant pour point de départ les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre, peut d’ailleurs s’avérer une entrée épistémologique féconde, car, si le corps est bien ce « premier lieu du social », pour reprendre l’heureuse formule de Gil Bartholeyns , le cadavre peut légitimement être considéré comme un double particulièrement éloquent de celui-ci, relevant, comme lui, à la fois pleinement du biologique et du social, et de leurs nouages complexes.
Plus spécifiquement, dans la sociologie historique du cadavre que je propose dans les pages qui suivent, je partirai de deux ressorts de la transformation de l’apprêt des corps, qui me sont apparus comme majeurs, au cours de mes enquêtes sur les funérailles dans le Bénin méridional. Ainsi, j’évoquerai, dans un premier temps, les effets du changement religieux sur le traitement des cadavres, dont une proportion croissante échappe désormais aux mains des spécialistes « traditionnels » de la gestion des corps. Dans un deuxième temps, je montrerai la place occupée dorénavant par les morgues dans la prise en charge de la mort et les déplacements significatifs que cette innovation technologique a contribué à diffuser dans la chaîne opératoire du cadavre.

DEATH OF A SELF: TRUE DIALOGUE AND AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE

by Seamus Mulryan

Paper presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. New College, Oxford University.

Media and Class-making: What lessons are learnt when a celebrity chav dies? Raisborough, J, Frith H and Klein O (forthcoming) Sociology

by Jayne Raisborough

forthcoming in Sociology

Class is often overlooked in sociological studies of death just as studies of class overlook death. The controversial... more Class is often overlooked in sociological studies of death just as studies of class overlook death. The controversial media coverage of the death of Jade Goody provides a useful focus for exploring contemporary class-making. Recent sociological analyses of class representations in popular culture have demonstrated how denigration and humiliation serve as mechanisms which position sections of the white, working class (chavs) as repositories of bad taste. We argue that these are not the only (or even the most prevalent) affective mechanisms for class-making. In this paper, we explore how cultural imperatives for ‘dying well’ intersect with what could be perceived as more positive or even affectionate representations of Jade to produce ‘good taste’ as a naturalised properties of the middle class. As such, we demonstrate that the circulation of inequalities through precarious and dynamic cultural representations involves more complex affective mechanisms in class boundary work than is often recognised.

Keywords: Celebrity. Chav. Class. Death. Jade Goody. Reality Television.

Fischer on Death and Unexperienced Evils

by Ben Bradley

Philosophical Studies (forthcoming). Part of a symposium on John Fischer's Our Stories, with David Velleman and Derk Pereboom.

Chapple, R. M. 2012 Workingman’s Dead: Notes on some 17th to 19th century memorials, from the graveyards of Killora and Killogilleen, Craughwell, Co. Galway, Ireland. Part I Blogspot post

by Robert M Chapple

Sankari on kuollut-eläköön sankari!: kuolintapa saagojen sankaruuden mittana

by Joonas Ahola

"The Hero is Dead - Long Live the Hero! The Manner of Dying as a Measure of Heroism in Saga Literature"
Published in Elore 1/2005.

Heroic narratives tell about past exemplary figures that were often warriors in a European context. Narratives about... more Heroic narratives tell about past exemplary figures that were often warriors in a European context. Narratives about warrior heroes served the interests of the highest strata of an aristocratic warrior society in which the narratives were created and preserved. The same applies to Icelandic Family Sagas, which derive from heroic poetry both by content and social function. Although saga heroes vary, they share characteristics such as bravery connected to fatalism and a strong sense of honour. Heroic characteristics are at their most extreme at the moment of death, of which there are numerous examples in the saga literature. However, sagas depend on genealogical and historical tradition and sometimes even the greatest of warriors die natural deaths, neutral in heroic terms. Grettis saga, the Saga of Grettir, is one of the latest Family Sagas. The death of Grettir represents a brave stand against fate, reaching the level of a myth, whereas the death of his brother Illugi represents the social aspects of heroism, significant in the Icelandic Commonwealth. Their deaths illustrate well different aspects of the form of heroism represented in the Sagas of the Icelanders.

How Bad is Death?

by Ben Bradley

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2007): 111-127.

When is Death Bad for the One Who Dies?

by Ben Bradley

Nous 38 (2004): 1-28.

Review of Luper, The Philosophy of Death (Ethics 2010)

by Ben Bradley

Ethics 120 (2010): 395-98. This is a longer review than the one that appeared in TLS.

Review of Steven Luper, The Philosophy of Death (Times Literary Supplement 2010)

by Ben Bradley

Times Literary Supplement, October 1, 2010, p. 29.