Litterature review

Why is fear of death so prevalent in society?

The Concepts of Failure and Lose

In modern society, there are many perspectives, which correlate death with failure or defeat as opposed to linking it to a naturally occurring phenomenon.

French historian Phillippe Aries for example, suggests that cultural views of death have shifted from a position that death was omnipresent and its inevitability accepted, to a perspective he titles ‘forbidden death’ where death is seen as something almost shameful and not to be discussed. This shift in perspective happened quickly between 1930 and 1950, in part due to what we can consider as the displacement of death. The dying individual then submitted their power of decision to the doctor. “One no longer died at home in the bosom of one’s family, but in the hospital alone.” (Aries, p. 87). For several reasons, the social relationship to death shifted dramatically.

Aries comments coincide with the work of Swiss born psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who would pioneer dialogues about issues and repricussions of death and dying. She did so from within the medical community becoming an advocate of the implications of none scientific practices linked to death, dying and bereavement. Perhaps she was best known for her theory of the five stages implicated in the dying process. According to Kübler-Ross these progressed through denial, anger, "bargaining for time," depression, and into a final state of acceptance. She criticised what she considered inhumane and neglectful treatment regarding patients with terminal illness and her struggles eventually saw her introduce the concept of the Hospice to the United States.

For London based artist Inventory this fear of death is the result of material consumption and mediated reality, which distances us from actual responses, feelings and even lived interactions. Invited to redesign traditional artefacts found in rituals related to Death, he intervened to with a black pvc body bag boasting a printed manifesto:

‘Our material world, the moraine of our existence, provokes nothing more than the profoundest disquiet. Supposing we were to make an inventory of everything we owned, all our possessions. What could this accumulated data say to us? – Nothing more than the extreme poverty of modern life. For all our constructions, our technologies, our material cultures attempt to mask our corporeal existence – our true materiality. Our flesh, our bones, our laughter and screams are our material condition, and no intellectual formulation, no technological construction or scientific data will bury this understanding indefinitely.’

'A deeper understanding of life – to exceed itself purposelessly. A life composed of so many perishable moments, both cruel and loving; for which there is nothing to be regretful or guilty. You could stand on the highest hilltop, trembling with anguish, shaking your fist at the heavens and what will it soothe for you? What can it assuage? – NOTHING. Therefore, this nothingness can only be willingly embraced. For as we drown in that dark and empty void, we refract back at ourselves, rendered in sharp detail, as much more than a mere shadow in a discontinuous landscape.'

'There will never be enough time; this is why we should cherish life, and why we fear death- because death completes us.’


The decline of mourning

British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (1905-85) wrote an article on ‘the pornography of death’. His observation is based on the difference between cultural attitudes toward death in the Victorian era and in twentieth century. He points out that death has the same social function now that sex held in the 19th century. The principle thought being that in Victorian times death was discussed as openly as sex is today. This came as always after some struggle, and a century later had lost ground to conversations of new taboos.

This conscious or unconscious denial affects our way of grieving as well as the codes we use to express our mourning to others– from wearing black, armbands, mourning jewels to the very strict mourning codes, many of these rituals show trends towards extinction. If we are not expressing our grief, what might happen to it?

The question of hidden grief has stimulated much debate amongst psychoanalysts. Psychology Professor Harry W. Martin of Texas Southwestern Medical School, points out the danger of the decline in expression of grief, claiming that ‘slick, smooth operation of easing the corpse out, but saying no to weeping and wailing and expressing grief and loneliness. What effect does this have on us psychologically? It may means that we have to mourn covertly, by subterfuge – perhaps in various degrees of depression, perhaps in mad flights of activity, perhaps in booze.’

Mourning does not just happen inside of a person: it happens in the interaction between people.

The paradox is as we see death as a failure, grief as a sickness and sometimes embarrassment. Society is uncomfortable with death and avoids all kind of grief display. Added to this pressure is the organizational approach to go that often allows an employee less than one week to prepare the funeral and mourn the loss before returning to work.
This tendency pushed bereaved people to hide their emotions and act as they are ‘back to normal’ and as soon as possible…

How to express in this paradox?

It is the apparition of digital mourning. Online memorials and forums that focus on death become a comfort support for the bereaved. For example My Death Space aggreagates links to deceased My Space user’s pages, new stories, obituaries or blogs that detail their lives as well as how they died. As the internet becomes a bigger part of our lives, this is a natural evolution, but does it mean there is a lack of support/ interaction between the bereaved and his surrounding people?

Changing the way our culture mourns

Artist Felix Gonzalez- Torre’s translated his grief of his boy friend Ross into a concept of art work - Untitled (Loverboys- 1991). The installation is a pile of white and blue swirled candies which the size and weight represents the combined weights of the artist and his lover. At the same time it invites audience to take a piece of candy for their own until it disappeared completely.

‘I was losing the most important thing in my life – Ross, with whom I had the first real home, ever. So why not punish myself even more so that, in a way, the pain would be less? This is how I started letting the work go. Letting it just disappear.”

Gonzales’s work illustrate the compromise between private and public/ social (in his case is the audience), his grief becomes a sharing feeling for whom who interacted.

I see this compromise as the future way of mourning.




Bibliography

- Phillippe Aries – Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen Age a nos jours.- Editions du Seuil

- Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Kübler-Ross

- Experimental Fomats & Packaging – Roto Vision

- Geoffrey Gorer ‘the pornography of death’
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying: Mourning

- Article - The New York Times – death in the west
- Article - The New York Times – on death as a constant companion
- Article - We make money not art – mourning and digital culture

- Binding to Another’s Wound: of Weddings and Witness – Chapter Author: Jane Blocker