To What Extent Is Death Socially Orchestrated - Essay Example

Introduction Orchestrating social event that includes the grief of loosing a loved one is a significant part of our society that is linked up with various factors. In the light of memories and rituals, these factors set up the funeral in communities where memorial construct highly differentiates social identities for the dead. From a social perspective, the deliberate destruction, burning or locking away of such objects that are related to the corpse can further embed them within memory, despite the desire to escape painful recollections. Therefore on such occasions it might become difficult to ‘control’ emotive objects. It is in the remembrance of a loved one that death event is organised and celebrated, though it is manifested into the colours of grief and sorrow. Rather than confiscation, an ‘invisibility’ of sorts sets in, items being dispersed or located within secular ‘non-death’ settings where their significance remains vital only for the bereaved. To what extent is death socially orchestrated? The social celebration of death depends upon the relationships death set up as a tool for memory and material culture. Death can be understood as a life crisis which is estimated by some conjuncture of changes where transformations of the physical body, social relations and cultural configurations are set up by the society. A dying experience, death and the response of the society towards death acts as a phase of transition involving loss and adjustment (Peveto & Hayslip, 2005, p. 1), therefore death is treated differently in every culture, religion and race. Examining the ways in which memory comes into play, death provides the opportunity to analyse various aspects of the process of dying, mourning and grief. Facing death, either of the self or of others, has come to entail ritualised social practices that mobilise domains of material objects, visual images and written texts. In the West death experience is counted towards attending a diverse range of materials, which are not only associated with death in historical and contemporary contexts but are also concerned with the issues of metaphor, temporality, and social space, all of which impinge upon and shape memory as a cultural process and a social experience. The process of recognising death develops anthropological and historical perspectives that we find in memories at work in visual images of death, in textual forms and in rituals which we trace as interconnected fields, related in their focus on the body, its structures, capacities and limits. We celebrate memory of our loved ones through the material objects that acquire meanings and resonances through embodied practice such as the wearing of mourning attire, or the ritualised writing of wills, together with the material objects that come to represent or form extensions of the body from funeral effigies to photographs (Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p. 1). This takes us into personalised interior spaces and domestic settings as emotional realms of dying, mourning and remembrance. Thus we analyse the ‘everyday’ contexts of memory making that have received comparatively less attention when we note the sociological and historical work devoted to large scale, public forms of memorial and commemoration. From contemporary perspectives, death-related objects surviving from earlier times offer the opportunity to reconstruct aspects of memory practices as they were perceived in the past as well as a means of tracing the play of historical reference and allusion in contemporary material cultures of death. Objects serving the practice of memory in the past are, in the context of the present, a resource for the reinterpretation of history. Contemporary social spaces, both public and private, retain a multiplicity of death-related objects that have accrued over time and are now enmeshed in the temporal conjuncture of the present; for example, the furniture, ornaments and crockery of previous generations can, through inheritance, remain in use in the households of surviving relatives. Some of these objects are distanced as temporally ‘other’ in their unfamiliar iconography or displaced symbolism, which would once have had powerful mnemonic effects. For example, the figure of death personified as a decaying corpse was once a commonly accepted social event, an object or image intended to remind viewers of their inevitable physical end. Now bereft of their association with memory processes, largely due to their dislocation from a framework of Christian spiritual belief, sculpted figures of Death tend to stand as ‘historical rarities’. Emotions towards Death Attitudes Although the feeling of loosing a loved one seem to open unspoken rules that govern our expression of feeling. Since early age when we learn to enact an ‘emotional role’ certain situations call for particular emotional expressions and we might feel morally inferior if expected emotions are not genuinely experienced (Fredman, 1997, p. 48). In this way we see that death is visualised and perceived through emotions that conforms to the societal values and involve the moral order as cultural practices and theories they are constructed in interaction with and with reference to the evaluation of others. A death is a social event that after alleviating a person biologically is headed by emotions commonly associated with death or bereavement includes numbness, shock, anger, guilt, sadness, and despair and is reflected in the normative theories of death and mourning. These emotions gives rise to normative theories of grief which are associated to love, enthusiasm, or creativity with the early stages of the grieving process is commonly considered inappropriate or even pathological or bizarre. Normative theories of grief allow professionals in hospitals to guide patients with their practice and have usually been constructed within the context of dominant cultural and religious beliefs. The normal emotions associated with grieving in these theories generally relate to a timely, anticipated death that occurs in usual circumstances. In our society, we seem less able now than in previous times to deal with death and other losses. As one writer put it: In our culture, death and other separations have come to be looked upon as unnatural events, perhaps even sins. In a system that can send people to the moon, why can’t we master disease, old age, and the final mystery of death? We’re embarrassed, but to pretend we’re not, we hide those who remind us, the ill and aged, in segregated facilities, hesitating to answer questions about them (Bernstein & Gullo, 1977, p. 15). Death brings ambiguous loss that can cause personal and family problems, not because of flaws in the psyches of those experiencing the loss, but because of situations beyond their control or outside constraints that block the coping and grieving processes (Boss, 2000, p. 7). Mourning According to Walter Benjamin mourning can be defined as those ways that are adopted in order to express the grief and to mourn the remains of the past. This mechanism establishes an active and open relationship with history which often calls as “historical materialism”. It serves as a process helpful in creating history for future significations as well as alternate empathies (Eng & Kazanjian, 2003, p. 1). Freud named the loss of death as intellectual and political genealogy of loss through melancholia. In one of his major works, Freud writes that mourning is nothing but a grief that allows a person to react to the death of his or her loved one. In the context of mourning Freud attempts to draw a clear distinction between the two mental states which occur due to a loss of loved one. Mourning is a psychic process in which libido is withdrawn from a lost object whereas in contrast with mourning, Freud describes melancholia as an enduring devotion on the part of the ego to the lost object. It is the material culture that helps us mediating our relationship with death and the dead; objects, images and practices, as well as places and spaces, call to mind or are made to remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. The society recalls the dead person through various psychological memorials and attributes which whether in the form of personal memento or public memorial material objects are embodied social practices which are associated with the dead. Death attitudes have been viewed from a variety of perspectives, which might be personal, social or political. The resultant is the highlighting of a diverse social values and cultural meanings that are attributed to mementoes and memorials, and examine the ways in which these are perceived to recall or represent death and the dead. These processes which are escorted by the funerals are often entail value judgements, for instance in the cultural politics that render certain persons or social groups memorable or publicly visible in dedicated monuments. While the deaths of royalty or political leaders are marked, others might be marginalised or forgotten. This presents before us a complete analysis of ‘ordinary’, ‘mundane’ deaths as well as material objects associated death and memory that have been overlooked. In examining these themes we explore the ways in which material objects evoke the dead and this leads us to consider methodological and analytical issues faced by anthropologists and cultural historians. Social experience of death The social experience of dying and death, together with the memory processes that are activated in relation to them are enmeshed in wider political, religious and intellectual factors. These influence or sustain solitary as well as collective remembering so that we need to attend to the individual body and its relation to the social body in the act of making memories. The conditions and meanings of either individual or mass deaths also inflect memory processes: while preparation for the ‘good death’ often makes way for the production of memories, violent or voluntary death (for example in the cases of accidents or suicides) creates different memory contexts. Mass deaths resulting from epidemic disease or war again resonate in different ways within social memory. Rowlands (1999) for example, notes the profound difficulties associated with memorials for Holocaust victims, deaths that, in his view, cannot be transformed into worthwhile sacrifices. In circumstances such as these the representation of personal and social loss, through a density of enmeshed words, texts, images and material objects, collective rituals and institutional sites, is often made to convey the weight of power just as it is forced to bear the tension of cultural conflict (Rowlands, 1999). The cross-cultural death attitudes and comparisons between Western and non-Western societies highlighted the diverse ways in which the bodies of the living and the dead have been aligned and related in the recall of the deceased. The work of anthropologists has been receptive to the various positioning of the body and its related materiality in non-Western death rituals, indicating their significance in the constitution of memories. Dimensions of embodiment, the material and sensual qualities of women’s practices in the broader field of death and memory, have been explored within what Hallam & Hockey (2001) defines as ritualised processes. The concept of ritualisation, which embraces death-related actions unfolding beyond the ‘confines’ of formalised ritual, is useful in the interpretation of women’s materialised memory-making practices in the contemporary West. Studies of modern memory forms have emphasised the termination of collective memory and the emergence of diversified, fragmented attempts to connect past death rituals with that of present. Through ethnographic studies of Western social practices surrounding death, one can analyse that memory connections are being forged in diverse and increasingly personalised ways. Here there are imaginative attempts to remember the deceased, to maintain their social presence and to reintegrate shifting memories of them into the flow of ongoing lives. The cultural resources that are drawn upon to sustain and regenerate memories of the deceased are notable in their materiality. The body and its material extensions can come to form the substance of memories, not just as an aspect of ‘traditional’, non-Western ways of living in memory, but also in the construction of continuities in the contemporary West. The Western examples through which we have highlighted the significance of materialised memories also reveal certain gendered dimensions. Ritualised memory making in these cases tends to take place at the site of the female body and in the social spaces within which women reside and work. Maintaining embodied memories of the dead might also become the concern of informal ritual specialists, such as clairvoyants whose (marginalised) magical world view activates a domain of ‘sacred’ material objects through which the dead are recalled and enlivened. Death Cultures Material cultures of death and their relation to memories are, however, complex and varied in their constitution, depending upon their social and cultural contexts. Material objects associated with dying, death and grief vary in mnemonic potency from those that occasionally provide ‘fleeting’ sensations of proximity with the deceased, to those that are perceived as threatening or overwhelming in their association with life’s ending. Death tends to throw into relief the values assigned to material possessions, belongings are unhinged and redistributed, death calls for the production and use of dedicated materials, it instigates strategies of salvage and forces questions about what can be kept in the face of loss. Identifying broad domains of death related materials that work within and upon memories; we are confronted by objects of varying complexity from the intricacies of hair jewellery to the simplicity of a single amber bead. Objects that are made to decay, such as coffins, are remembered alongside those materials appreciated for their visible qualities of endurance. It is to the dynamics of preservation and decay, of fragmentation and framing, of inscription and erasure that we have attended in teasing out the extent to which memories are materialised. Memory making in England in the name of the dead one is elucidated by dedicating displays of flowers and other mass-produced objects at graves (such as toys, household ornaments, plastic windmills, lanterns, glass angels, and Christmas decorations). These things are used to construct a sense of enduring personhood for deceased relatives and friends and in instances, selected commodities are appropriated and incorporated within patterns of mourning, grief and remembrance. Grave displays combine objects that were already in the possession of the deceased before their death with new items that are purchased after their death to complement and elaborate existing ones. Bringing together disparate objects that are highly attuned to individuals’ perceived biographies and social identities, grave displays sustain the social presence of the deceased (Parkes et al, 1997, p. 101). This is a manifestation of continuity registered through the changing arrangement and decoration of graves. Here the ‘traditional’ grave components, for example the inscribed headstone, are embellished with new gifts expressing desires to participate in a persistent shaping and personalising of memorials. Configurations of materialised memories in this context tend to be ‘open ended’ rather than finalised and fixed, allowing for the shifting articulation of relationships between the living and the dead. Conclusion Celebrations does not abide us to limit in terms of our emotions, it could be in context with the celebration of welcoming a new born or saying good bye to a member of our society. In both cases, we are headed by sentiments and remembrance. This remembrance is celebrated personally whenever we want to recall the reminiscences of the lost one by relating any of his or her belonging (a physical object) to any occasion. This belonging provides us with an opportunity to express our grief to our loved one depending upon our relation with him or her. However it is not necessary to celebrate our grief in a social milieu, i.e., from funeral to cemetery, still love and care is expressed through the medium of displaying some physical objects on the cemetery. The remembrance dwells deep inside us for which to express, it is necessary to deploy in the form of cherishing a relationship between us and the dead. References Bernstein J. E., & Gullo S. V. (1977) When people die. New York: E. P. Dutton. Boss Pauline, (2000) Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief: Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. Eng L. David & Kazanjian, (2003) Loss: The Politics of Mourning: University of California Press: Berkeley, CA. Parkes Colin Murray, Laungani Pittu & Young Bill, (1997) Death and Bereavement across Cultures: Routledge: London. Peveto A. Cynthia & Hayslip Bert, (2005) Cultural Changes in Attitudes toward Death, Dying and Bereavement: Springer: New York. Rowlands, M. (1999) “Remembering to Forget: Sublimation as sacrifice in war memorials” In: A. Forty and S. Kiichler (eds), The Art of Forgetting, Oxford:Berg. Hallam Elizabeth & Hockey Jenny, (2001) Death, Memory and Material Culture: Berg: New York. Fredman Glenda, (1997) Death Talk: Conversations with Children and Families: Karnac Books: London. Read More