Becoming persons, becoming ancestors. Personhood, memory and the corpse in Roman rituals of social remembrance

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma-Jayne Graham
Keyword(s):  
Social Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

AbstractThis article examines the role of social memory and the treatment of the corpse within the reconfiguration of personhood in the Roman world. Exploring the significance of ‘remembering and forgetting’, it emphasizes the importance of memory and the body as a context for the manipulation of post-mortem personhood and identity. An extraordinarily rich collection of archaeological and epigraphic evidence associated with the Augustan-period senator Marcus Nonius Balbus provides an almost unparalleled context in which to explore the significance of these observations. This particular example from Herculaneum demonstrates that the realignment of relationships during mortuary activities could produce a new sense of personhood for both the deceased and mourners that was constructed in the context of communal remembrance. Subsequent commemorative activities, focused on the material manifestation of these relationships and the ‘dividuality’ of the dead within the urban fabric, may consequently have acted to promote a new civic ancestor for the community of Herculaneum.

Life After Life: Bioarchaeology and Post-mortem Agency

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
The Body ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Anxious Group

In the alternative fairy tale The Princess Bride, as William Goldman's character Miracle Max reanimates the apparent corpse of the hero Westley, he tells the anxious group observing the procedure: ‘There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive’ (Goldman 2007, 313). Only a select group of the dead can be characterized as being ‘slightly alive’, in the post-mortem agency sense, however, and the case studies presented here explore the many ways in which this subcategory of mostly dead individuals have engaged with and continue to impact the living in the past as well as today. Several themes emerge as especially salient: the iteration in the death-scape of the dynamic tension between the individual and the social group, which can result in transgression as well as conformity in the disposition of the body and its effects on the living; the symbolic capital represented by some dead bodies and the ways in which their potency may be affected by various forms of contextual association; and the ways in which the manipulation of the dead for political purposes is subject to constraints specific to the cultural contexts in which these interactions take place.

Philosophy, Hagiology and the Early Byzantine Origins of Purgatory

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Dal Santo
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
The West ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Early Byzantine

On 8 June 1438, the Council of Ferrara-Florence began proceedings aimed at the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches. One of the first issues discussed was the Latin doctrine of purgatory. This article examines a particular moment in the divergence of eschatological doctrine between the Latin, Greek and Syriac Churches – indeed, representatives of the West Syrian ‘Jacobites’ and East Syrian ‘Nestorians’ were at Ferrara too. It argues that a debate concerning the post mortem activity of the saints proved crucial for the formation of various Christian eschatological orthodoxies. The catalyst for this debate was the sixth-century revival of Aristotelian philosophy, especially Aristotelian psychology which emphasized the soul’s dependence on the body. This threatened the cult of the saints and the Church’s sacramental ‘care of the dead’. Defenders of the hagiological and cultic status quo rejected Aristotle’s claims and asserted the full post mortem activity of the soul after separation from the body by developing a novel doctrine of immediate post mortem judgement. This led to the formulation of eschatological opinions which, if not normative in their day, came to be considered so by later generations. One of these ideas was post mortem purgation.

scholarly journals How to Undo Things with Codes: New Writing Mechanisms and the Un/archivable Dis/appearing text

2014 ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Athina Markopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Major Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Writing Tools ◽  
Book Of The Dead ◽  
The Relationship

The discourses of criticism are being transformed at the same time that our writing mechanisms are undergoing a major change. Reflecting on the relationship between our writing tools and our perceptions and taking programmability and interactivity as the main characteristics of new writing media, this essay attempts an approach to how that which is new in scriptural techniques, that is to say, programmability and interactivity, are undoing our perception of such notions as the archive and embodiment. The two works which are here commented contain the conditions of unwriting their written trace; the interactor who makes the text appear paradoxically also causes its disappearance by acts of destruction or dispersion. In the case of AGRIPPA (A Book of The Dead), William Gibson reserves for the reader the role of the destructor of the text through an extreme gesture of interaction which destines the work to erasure and calls for the retrieval of a text that contains the conditions of its own death. In the case of Garry Hill‘s Writing Corpora, the body‘s acts are created of, create and are turned against writing, they embody and disperse the writing traces, while the body experiences the shift from inscription to embodiment.

scholarly journals What the Polish Mother Does Not Say. Zbylut Grzywacz Against the Myth

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Dorota Kudelska
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Body ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Body Form ◽  
Polish Version ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne vol. 62, issue 4 (2014). The article presents the art of Zbylut Grzywacz in the context of his post-mortem exhibition in the Kraków National Museum in 2009. The subjects of the analysis are his paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, presenting women through a simple rough treatment of human body form, without an academic idealization. The destruction of the form conforms to the deconstruction of the myth of a Polish Mother. It is due to the change of a social position of the figures whom Grzywacz gives the roles of guardians of tradition, as well as due to their mental and moral degradation. The artist uses an irony in showing his knowledge of the tradition of showing a human body in an academic nude (what he denies), in a Flemish art of showing torn animal meat (with the Rembrandt’s reflection) and Holbein’s tradition of the post-mortem decay (The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb). One of the main themes in Grzywacz’s paintings is the loneliness, especially distinct in a representation of symbolically naked persons among insensible pedestrians. The Polish Mother—here she doesn’t belong to any society. The explicitness and the picturesque materiality covers a certain “crack” in the world presented inside the hard-to-comprehend present-day multitude of Grzywacz’s paintings. Behind the cover of the foreground tale, as one could think on the basis of the sketchbooks, there is a kind of an “unpresented world”, in which the author incessantly tells us about the pain of his existence with no anaesthetization by grotesque.

Practicalities around time of death

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D.W. Hain ◽  
Satbir Singh Jassal
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professional ◽  
Child Death ◽  
The Body ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Tissue Donation ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Correct Procedure

In helping children to have a ‘good death’, it is vitally important to understand the practical issues around death. Parents often have little or no understanding of this and will look to the health-care professional for guidance. When done well, the parents are left unaware of the complexities involved. However, when done badly, the parents can be left feeling very upset. Predicting the time of death for a child is notoriously difficult, and this issue is addressed by this chapter. A detailed overview of practicalities around the time of death is provided, with information on the correct procedure before death, certifying and registering a death, cremation, organ and tissue donation, and transporting and looking after the body. Further practicalities, including the post-mortem, the role of the coroner, and the role of the Child Death Overview Panel, are also covered.

Management of the dead during coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak: Practices and perceptions of forensic practitioners from India

2021 ◽  
pp. 002580242110258
Author(s):  
Vikas P Meshram ◽  
Tanuj Kanchan ◽  
Raghvendra S Shekhawat
Keyword(s):  
Infection Control ◽  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
The Body ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
Protective Equipment ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has mandated a response from administrative agencies and the health sector globally, however, the number of cases and deaths continue to rise. While management of the living is paramount, the management of the dead is also important. Guidelines for managing the dead have been issued and implemented by various local administrations, in accordance with national and international guidelines. This questionnaire-based research aims to develop an understanding of the knowledge, perceptions and practices of forensic practitioners from India as regards the management of the dead during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This Pan-India study included 278 forensic medicine experts (249 males and 29 females) working in various hospitals and medical institutions across the country. The questionnaire included various issues involving the management of dead bodies in cases involving coronavirus disease 2019, such as infection control practices, body screening, handling and autopsy, disposal practices, local administrative policies, and available infrastructure and resources. We found that guidelines are mostly being followed across India, barring disparity in issues relating to testing in the dead bodies, the role of local administration in the body disposal, and the use of personal protective equipment while handling bodies and during autopsies. Mortuaries now need to be upgraded, and general infrastructure requires improvement. Periodic training of all stakeholders and assessment of facilities are recommended.

scholarly journals The Dead Body as a 'Lieu De Mémoire'. The Body-Object and the Living Body in Caitlin Doughty’s Nonfiction

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Cristina-Mihaela Botîlcă
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Twenty First Century

Between Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur’s body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty’s nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora’s and Ricoeur’s interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty’s representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society.

Portraying the Dead

1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Ruby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Place Of Death ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Dead ◽  
As If ◽  
Mourning Process

This article explores the custom of post-mortem photography. In nineteenth century America, this was a socially acceptable, publicly acknowledged form of photography. Professional photographers accepted commissions, advertised the service, and held professional discussions in their journals about the practice. The images were publicly displayed in wall frames and albums. Initially, death pictures were portraits which attempted to deny death by displaying the body as if asleep, or even conscious. By the turn-of-the-century, the deceased were displayed in a casket with an increasing emphasis upon the funeral. Today, families make their own photos; circulating them in a private manner so that many people assume that the custom has been abandoned. Counselors working with the parents of children who have died provide evidence that these images can be useful in the mourning process. The findings of this study suggest that a more thorough examination of the place of death-related photographs in the management of grief would be of value.

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