scholarly journals From Becoming-Woman to Becoming-Imperceptible: Self-Styled Death and Virtual Female Corpse in Digital Portraits of Cancer

2019 ◽  
pp. 86-106
Author(s):  
Katja Herges
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Death Studies

Contemporary textual and visual representations of cancer engage self-reflectively with death and dying, yet they often rely on normative notion of death as the end of an individual life. This article focuses on stylised cancer portraits of the young German Nana Stäcker which she took in collaboration with her mother and professional photographers during her chemotherapy and until her death. Intervening in the field of Queer Death Studies this article explores if and how these images allow us to rethink normative Western notions of death. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman theory of death and of female subjectivity, I argue that the photo shoots recast Nana’s illness and dying as a gendered and creative process of subject formation beyond individual death. Through creating aestheticised and eroticised camp images, Nana playfully performs und subverts a range of iconic Western femininities and styles both life and death as a constant becoming. Portraits of Nana as virtual female corpse further highlight this continuity of life and death by reinserting death into life. While these images resist a necropolitical engagement with cancer and dying, they suggest an impersonal and affirmative understanding of death that opens up bioethical questions about contemporary cultures of longevity and health. 

Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Rosenow
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Attitudes Toward Death ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
Working People ◽  
Grave Markers ◽  
People’S Attitudes

The post-Civil War Industrial Age brought fundamental changes to the economy and its workers, forcing Americans to reassess the meaning of life and death. This illuminating study of working-class rituals of dying and the politics of death explores how Americans struggled to understand the broader forces transforming their worlds. The book investigates working people's beliefs, rituals of death and dying, and the politics of death by honing in on three overarching questions: How did workers, their families, and their communities experience death? Did various identities of class, race, gender, and religion coalesce to form distinct cultures of death for working people? And how did people's attitudes toward death reflect notions of who mattered in U.S. society? Drawing from an eclectic array of sources ranging from Andrew Carnegie to grave markers in Chicago's potter's field, the book portrays the complex political, social, and cultural relationships that fueled the United States' industrial ascent. The result is an undertaking that adds emotional depth to existing history while challenging our understanding of modes of cultural transmission.

Altruism: Reflections on a Neglected Aspect in Death Studies

1984 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus P. Jankofsky ◽  
Uwe H. Stuecher
Keyword(s):  
Hospital Setting ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Clinical Experiences ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Death Studies ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Modern Hospital

Growing out of the authors' previous studies of death (Jankofsky's in literature and in historical documents primarily of the medieval period, and Stuecher's of clinical experiences with terminally ill children and adolescents), this cooperative interdisciplinary article identifies and discusses altruism as a basic trait of human character and behavior and explores its possible implications for the dying person. Altruism can be studied as a phenomenon which is like the “good death/bad death” topos of medieval chroniclers, thus permitting comparative evaluations over long periods of time and in different socioeconomic and political structures. As a trait observable in both the daily realities of a modern hospital setting and in the literary-aesthetic representation of human society and its values in medieval and modern literature, altruism is a part of the infinite variety of humanity's perceptions, activities, and experiences that make up the mosaic of life and death.

scholarly journals Exhibitions for Stalin’s anniversaries: peculiarities of structuring a biographical narrative

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Irina Rutsinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Visual Texts ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
Extensive Body

In 1939 and 1949 the museums and exhibit halls of the large and small Soviet cities held dozens of art exhibitions dedicated to the anniversaries of Stalin. Strictly aligned to the text of his canonized biography, they became an important element of jubilee celebrations, and simultaneously, a distinct culmination of visual representations of the chieftain, overcrowding the public space of every city of the country. The exhibitions resumed the results and outlined the future paths of development of the pictorial art of Staliniana. The article makes an attempt to review the common grounds the united the anniversary expositions, regardless their scale, presentability and venue. Special attention is given to correlation between verbal and visual texts, logics of structuring of a biographical narrative, methods of organization of dialogue with the audience, as well as forms of “dictate” over the creative process of Soviet artists. The source for this research became an extensive body of documents: brochures, catalogues, guides that accompanied such exhibitions and reflected their concept, logics, structure and communication objectives.  

scholarly journals 大乘中觀哲學的生死觀

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Ellen Y. ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Hospice Care ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Support ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Other World ◽  
General Desire

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.生死是任何哲學和宗教都不能迴避的問題，佛教更是如此。相比中國傳統的儒家思想，佛教對死亡，甚至如何去死具有更詳盡的梳理和論證。而佛教的生死觀又源於佛教的核心的教義以及其背後的哲學思考。根據佛教的教義，覺悟、解脫或涅槃意味著從根本上去除人生的煩惱，而佛教認為，人生最大的煩惱便是生死輪迴之煩惱。但大乘佛教的反對將覺悟與紅塵、涅槃與輪迴看作絕對的二元對立，因此強調在生死煩惱中體驗超越的時空和宇宙的真理。本文以大乘中觀學派為主，從其「緣起性空」的哲學脈絡和「相即不二」的辦證思維，審視大乘佛教的生死觀以及它對中國儒道傳統的補充與融合。最後，文章論述中觀學的生死觀在當代臨終關懷中的啟示意義。Death is one of the major issues for all religious traditions; it is especially so for Buddhism, as Buddhist teaching is centered upon death and the impermanence of life. This essay discusses death and dying from the framework of the philosophy of life and death, as outlined in the Māhayānic Buddhism of China. The discussion centers on early Madhyāmika Buddhism and its non-dualist approach to samsara and nirvana, this world and the other world, and life and death. The essay shows that the notions of reincarnation and karmic action offer an alternative perspective on the finitude of human existence and reflection upon life’s uncertainty pertaining to the experience of death. The author contends that the theory of interdependent origination explicated by Madhyāmika Buddhism helps Buddhists to develop adaptive qualities that enable a person to remain balanced in the maelstrom of change and impermanence. This realization of the impermanence of life and the emptiness of interdependent origination leads to the Buddhist ethical positions of no self and non-attachment.The essay also addresses the question of hospice care from the perspective of Buddhism as a religious support system. Although Buddhists understand that suffering is a part of life, there is a general desire to avoid suffering whenever possible. Hospice care is important in Buddhism not only because Buddhists recognize the weakness and fragility of the body and mind in the process of death and dying, but also because Buddhists see the connection between the patient’s end-of-life needs, both physical and spiritual, and the well-being of other people associated with the patient. The essay argues that a positive attitude toward life and death, as presented in Madhyāmika Buddhism, can help patients and their families to deal with the pain and anxiety of terminal illness.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 1527 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals Beautiful Deaths and Heard Gazes

Eikon / Imago ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 211-220
Author(s):  
David Staton
Keyword(s):  
Death And Dying ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Time Line ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Myths ◽  
Auditory Cue

Viewers frequently encounter “normative” prescriptions and perceptions through photographs of how images depicting death and dying should loo and, cognitively, how those images ought to be received. In such encounters, varying fundamental views or cultural myths surrounding death and dying, how it is envisioned, how it is, literally, pictured dictate a particular way of seeing and being. This article considers visual representations made of individuals who choose to enact Death With Dignity provisions to end their lives on their own terms and on their own time line. By an interrogation of a corpus of DWD images, the author investigates how such representations challenge a particular cultural logic. This reconsideration may lead to an awareness; a reasoning, creating a space in which reality is constructed beneath the viewer’s gaze. Such a reality, relies on an embodied or pragmatic aesthetic and is co-constituted by expressions of power that emanate from image and viewer. The author dubs this modality the heard gaze; a vision in which the past, present, and future are fused and subject becomes object or vessel of understanding by perceiving a visual, auditory “cue”.

scholarly journals When the Future is Not Bright: Social and Political Stakes in Discussing Childhood Cancer in Romanian Media

Children ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Teodorescu ◽  
Chiribucă
Keyword(s):  
Childhood Cancer ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Death Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Times ◽  
Cultural Constructions ◽  
Inherent Part

In contemporary societies’ perception of children, death plays an incredibly insignificant role. This role goes from being ornamental, a weak reminder that our civilisation has overcome the times of children’s high mortality rates, to being some other society’s concern. Despite both medical improvements and cultural constructions of the child as an immanent and social transcendence, children can and do die. Although an increasing number of recent studies disclose and legitimise children’s preoccupation with death and dying in the context of a popular culture fascinated with death, studies interested in the representations of death and dying in children are rather scant. In this article, we investigate the social and political stakes in discussing children’s cancer in today’s Romanian media, aiming to make visible how the illustrations of the connections between children, death and illness are never ethically neutral. We begin with the observation that, during recent years, there has been a growing media focus on childhood cancer in Romania. Adopting a qualitative approach and resorting to comparative analysis, we analyse what lies beneath the intentions of criticising troublesome socio-political or medical realities of childhood cancer, revealing the mechanisms through which childhood cancer is transformed into a social illness and the cultural implications for the acceptance of death as an inherent part of life both for children and the population as a whole.

Portrait of a “Real” Marero

Mortal Doubt ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 33-56
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Fontes
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Gang Member ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Memory Material ◽  
History Of

Through the life history of a young man named Andy—a gang member who became a protected witness in the prosecution of a spectacular quadruple murder—chapter 2 explores the confused entanglements between memory, material violence, and mara myths in stories of gang violence. In this account of Andy’s life and death, the complex play between truth and rumor—the facts of the matter and the inventions of the imagination—illuminate the possibilities and pitfalls of the search for order in the midst of chaos. This chapter serves as an entrance into how the “all-pervading unpredictability” of violence shapes individual life histories, as well as the manner in which such histories can be told.

Death in Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gary C. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Normal Development ◽  
Cellular Death ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life And Death

Everyone dies, and so we naturally associate death with the end of an individual life. However, life is much more complicated, and death is actually interwoven into biology at many levels. Normal development and life could not exist without the carefully regulated death of certain cells; that type of cellular death also serves as one defense against disease. Other cells wear out and die and must be replaced regularly. On a larger scale, death has influenced the direction of entire species. In fact, death has shaped all life through the cycle of life and death, both throughout time and in normal development. It affects our cells, our development, and our life.

Death and Dying

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-226
Author(s):  
Philip A. Mackowiak
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of

Chapter 9 (“Death and Dying”) concerns a number of issues related to the end of life: the age-old question of what happens to one after death, the litany of problems encountered in old age, the mixed benefits of defying death, and the long history of assisted dying. These weighty issues and others are addressed in a series of compelling works that celebrate dying in the presence of friends and family, both glorify and demonize death in battle, and question the value of ICU care that suspends patients in a web of tubes and wires simply to create a kind of purgatory between life and death.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document