scholarly journals Heritage Ethics and Human Rights of the Dead

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Kelsey Perreault

Thomas Laqueur argues that the work of the dead is carried out through the living and through those who remember, honour, and mourn. Further, he maintains that the brutal or careless disposal of the corpse “is an attack of extreme violence”. To treat the dead body as if it does not matter or as if it were ordinary organic matter would be to deny its humanity. From Laqueur’s point of view, it is inferred that the dead are believed to have rights and dignities that are upheld through the rituals, practices, and beliefs of the living. The dead have always held a place in the space of the living, whether that space has been material and visible, or intangible and out of sight. This paper considers ossuaries as a key site for investigating the relationships between the living and dead. Holding the bones of hundreds or even thousands of bodies, ossuaries represent an important tradition in the cultural history of the dead. Ossuaries are culturally constituted and have taken many forms across the globe, although this research focuses predominantly on Western European ossuary practices and North American Indigenous ossuaries. This paper will examine two case studies, the Sedlec Ossuary (Kutna Hora, Czech Republic) and Taber Hill Ossuary (Toronto, ON, Canada), to think through the rights of the dead at heritage sites.

Author(s):  
Kelsey Perreault

In The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, Thomas Laqueur argues that the work of the dead is carried out through the living and through those who remember, honour, and mourn the dead. Further, he maintains that the brutal or careless disposal of the corpse “is an attack of extreme violence”. To treat the dead body as if it does not matter or as if it were ordinary organic matter would be to deny its humanity. From Laqueur’s point of view it is inferred that the dead are believed to have rights and dignities that are upheld through rituals, practices, and beliefs of the living. Drawing on dark tourism scholarship and cultural memory theory, this paper examines the display of human bones at Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic and the tourist culture that has built up around the site. Primarily, my writing calls into question the commoditization of burial places as a conceivable violation of the human rights of the dead. My research is driven by a number of questions: What is it that draws tourists to burial grounds and how do heritage sites negotiate visitor experiences? What are the ethical boundaries when a final resting place with bodies on display is also marketed as a tourist site? Do the dead have human rights and how are the living responsible for preserving those rights?


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Redacción CEIICH

<p class="p1">The third number of <span class="s1"><strong>INTER</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>disciplina </strong></span>underscores this generic reference of <em>Bodies </em>as an approach to a key issue in the understanding of social reality from a humanistic perspective, and to understand, from the social point of view, the contributions of the research in philosophy of the body, cultural history of the anatomy, as well as the approximations queer, feminist theories and the psychoanalytical, and literary studies.</p>


1777 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 608-613 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Dead ◽  

About two weeks before he died, he was taken with a fit of violent oppressive pain, just above the pit of the stomach, which made him feel as if he was very near dying. He was bled, and gradually recovered; yet so imperfectly, that any motion of his body, or any pressure upon that part with the point of a finger, instantly brought on such oppressive pain, that he was convinced the least addition to what he had several times felt, must have put an end to his life. He had an idea that there might be a collection of matter behind the sternum, which might be discharge by some chirurgical operation.


Author(s):  
Boris I. Pruzhinin ◽  
◽  
Aleksandr V. Antoshchenko ◽  
Tanya N. Galcheva ◽  
Inna V. Golubovich ◽  
...  

On August 26, 2021, with the support of “Voprosy filosofii” was held a “round table”, the participants of which considered it meaningful and relevant to address the legacy of experiencing and philosophical reflection of critical epochs by peo­ple who have fully endured the “breakdown” of being and an anthropological crisis – for comprehending the disturbing changes taking place in modern soci­ety. In this regard, the intellectual biographies of thinkers who felt a colossal shock in the 1920s and who tried to comprehend their local experience as a global are exceptional. In the authors’ focus are ideas and arguments of the philosophers of the Russian Abroad about the crisis of their contemporary culture (Fedotov – Weidle – Landau – Bicilli). The “round table” is an attempt to correlate their experience with the modern reality of the anthropological crisis. The studying intellectuals underlined the death of culture as the main threat to the life of the social organism. The salvation of culture, first of all, depends on the spiritual efforts of people. From this point of view, philosophy has to com­prehend the principles that make it possible to resist the processes of cultural de­struction. And in this regard, the personality of the philosopher is of exceptional importance, his willingness to live and work “as if history would never end, and at the same time, as if it ended today” (G.P. Fedotov). The philosophy of culture forms the ideal of personal choice as a free submission to universal human goals. The relevance of the intellectual and spiritual search of the “Russian Abroad” thinkers can't be overestimated since this crisis continues today, entering ever new, previously unpredictable phases. The struggle for culture continues. There­fore, the intellectual searches of the "Russian Abroad" thinkers are essential to­day. The core of the discussions was three actual topics in the context of their comprehension by the philosophers: 1. The crisis of religious consciousness; 2. The crisis of scientific rationality; 3. Crisis of cultural identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-249
Author(s):  
Candi K. Cann

The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains By T. W. Laqueur (2015) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 730pp.


2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-133
Author(s):  
Richard W. Bailey

In his preface, Knowles makes clear what his book is not. It is not a history of literary English, and it is not an account of changes in linguistic form; it is a “cultural history.” In the introductory chapter, he declares: “In view of the close connection between language and power, it is impossible to treat the history of the language without reference to politics” (9). Of course, books that purport to be histories of English have often “treated” the subject without apparent politics. Knowles is right in alleging that the politics of such books has often been implicit, since most of them provide information about the ascent of one variety of the language to the elevated status of a standard – as if that were an inevitable and desirable result of the spirit of goodness working itself out through speech.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-239
Author(s):  
Anne E. McLaren

In recent decades, historians of European history have produced many studies on the history of emotions. Based on the hypothesis that emotions are neither a biological essence nor a universal fixed attribute, they have sought to trace constructions of human emotionality as reflected in literary and other works in a particular society over time. This new sub-discipline, the study of what is often termed “sentimental culture”, has illuminated the interaction between the articulation of an emotional sensibility and significant social trends of the age, including the rise of humanitarian discourse, radical Protestantism, and a destabilizing of sexual norms. From the new perspective of the cultural history of emotion, the modern idea that emotions express individual inwardness and autonomy now appears to be contingent and culture bound. In the case of China, while there has been an abundance of studies of the cult of qing 情 (‘passion, desire’) in the late Ming, there are few works dealing specifically with the historical construction of emotion in pre-modern China, particularly from a linguistic point of view.


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