|
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Death & dying > General
The meaning of our concern for mortal remains-from antiquity
through the twentieth century The Greek philosopher Diogenes said
that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for
beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became
of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural
historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally
rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to
mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age,
the dead body still matters-for individuals, communities, and
nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead
offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the
living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth
century. The book draws on a vast range of sources-from mortuary
archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to
painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead
do for the living: making human communities that connect the past
and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the
dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why
the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He
traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have come to
gather the names of the dead on great lists and memorials and why
being buried without a name has become so disturbing. And finally,
he tells how modern cremation, begun as a fantasy of stripping
death of its history, ultimately failed-and how even the ashes of
the victims of the Holocaust have been preserved in culture. A
fascinating chronicle of how we shape the dead and are in turn
shaped by them, this is a landmark work of cultural history.
Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane,
Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and
Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving
their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of
literature with gaping holes. Their reasons for killing themselves,
when known, were varied and, quite often, unreasonable. Some were
plagued by depression or self-doubt, and others by frustration and
helplessness in a world they could neither change nor tolerate.
Profoundly moving and morbidly attractive, Final Drafts is a
necessary historical record, biographical treatment, and
psychological examination of the authors who left this "cruel
world" by their own hands, either instantly or over long periods of
relentless self-destructive behavior. It is also a devoted
examination of references to suicide in literature, both by those
who took their own lives and those who decided to live. Mark
Seinfelt has selected many well-known (mostly fiction) writers,
from those whose work dates to over a century ago-when the medical
community was ill-equipped to deal with substance abuse and
depression-to more recent writers such as Kosinski, Michael Dorris,
and Eugene Izzi, who have left a puzzled literary community with a
sad legacy. Seinfelt reveals that many authors contemplated ending
their lives in their work; were obsessed with destroying
themselves; were unable-in the case of the Holocaust-to live with
the fact that their contemporaries had been killed; believed death
to be a freedom from the horrors that forced them to create; and,
sometimes, were simply unable to withstand rejection or criticism
of their work. Other noted authors discussed in this volume include
John Berryman, Ambrose Bierce, Harry Crosby, John Davidson, William
Inge, Randall Jarrell, Arthur Koestler, T.E. Lawrence, Primo Levi,
Jack London, Jay Anthony Lukas, Tom McHale, Yukio Mishima, Henry de
Montherlant, Seth Morgan, George Sterling, Sara Teasdale, Ernst
Toller, John Kennedy Toole, Sergey Yesenin, and many others
The main questions raised in this book are: How does the analyst
help the patient to be in touch with pain and mourning? Is the
relinquishment of defenses always desirable? And what is the
analyst's role in the mourning process-should the analyst struggle
to help patients relinquish defenses against pain and mourning,
which they may experience as vital to their precarious psychic
survival? Or should he or she accompany patients on their way to
self-discovery, which may or may not result in the patients letting
go of their defenses when faced with the pain and mourning inherent
in trauma? the utilization of various defenses and the resulting
unresolved mourning reflect the magnitude of the anxiety and pain
that is found on the road to mourning. The ability to mourn and the
capacity to bear some helplessness while still finding life
meaningful are the objectives of the analytic work in this book.
Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence
of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to
Israel, few can doubt that they are a pervasive and terrifying
feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981,
approximately thirty organizations throughout the world - some of
them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried
out more than 500 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the
overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the
same period, the results have proved infinitely more lethal. This
book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts,
and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the
actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational
radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their
motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express
essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so
lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these
disparate attacks have something like a common cause? For more than
two years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has
pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and
perpetrators alike of this extraordinary social phenomenon. Close
comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging
further questions: If suicide missions are so effective, why are
they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to
'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in
the process? Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of
original information and cutting-edge analysis which furthers our
understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in
radically new and unexpected ways.
Wars in the industrial age kill large numbers of people. What do
societies involved in these conflicts do with all the corpses? How
do they show them respect? How do they dispose of them? What is
their attitude to the bodies of the enemies? In the 19th century,
those who died on the battlefield were pushed into mass graves,
their identities unknown. Today, their remains are held in such
high esteem that they are tracked down in order that last respects
might be paid. As a historical account of the way in which war and
death intersect, this book describes the complex attitude societies
have towards death. Lured by the concept of eternal youth, tempted
to deny death as well as physical decay, faced with longer life
expectancy, we retain the hope of going off to war without loss of
life. But does not our own expectation of zero death" imply "more
deaths" for the other side?"
What do Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and Jan
Patocka have in common? First, they were all faced one day with the
most difficult of choices: stay faithful to your ideas and die or
renounce them and stay alive. Second, they all chose to die. Their
spectacular deaths have become not only an integral part of their
biographies, but they are also inseparable from their work. A death
for ideas is a piece of philosophical work in its own right;
Socrates may have never written a line, but his death is one of the
greatest philosophical best-sellers of all time. Dying for Ideas
explores the limit-situation in which philosophers find themselves
when the only means of persuasion they can use is their own dying
bodies and the public spectacle of their death. Silenced by brute
force, they cannot argue anymore and have to turn philosophy into
bodily performance. The phenomenology of this unique situation is
as fascinating as it has been neglected.In the manner of a dramatic
narrative, the book tells the story of the philosopher's encounter
with death as seen from several angles: the tradition of philosophy
as a way of life; the body as the locus of fundamental human
experiences; death of a classical philosophical topic; fear of
death as a torturer of philosophical minds; finally, the
philosophers' scapegoating and their live performance of a martyr's
death, followed by apotheosis and disappearance into myth. While
rooted in the history of philosophy, Dying for Ideas is an exercise
in challenging and breaking disciplinary boundaries. This is a book
about Socrates and Heidegger, but also about Gandhi's fasting unto
death and self-immolation as political protest; about Girard and
Passolini, and still about self-fashioning and the art of the
essay; Boethius and Montaigne are discussed, and so are Bergman's
Seventh Seal and Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich
"I wish I'd had this book when I needed it. Death and dying are not
subjects that many people are comfortable talking about, but it's
hugely important to be as prepared as you can be - emotionally,
physically, practically, financially, and spiritually. This book
may be the most important guide you could have." - Elizabeth
Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love ___________ The end of a life can
often feel like a traumatic, chaotic and inhuman experience. In
this reassuring and inspiring book, palliative care physician Dr BJ
Miller and writer Shoshana Berger provide a vision for rethinking
and navigating this universal process. There are plenty of
self-help books for mourners, but nothing in the way of a modern,
approachable and above all useful field guide for the living. And
all of us - young, old, sick and well - could use the help. After
all, pregnant couples have ample resources available to them as
they prepare to bring a new life into the world: Lamaze courses,
elaborate birth plans, tons of manuals. Why don't we have a What to
Expect When You're Expecting to Die book? An accessible,
beautifully designed and illustrated companion, A Beginner's Guide
to the End offers a clear-eyed and compassionate survey of the most
pressing issues that come up when one is dying, and will bring
optimism and practical guidance to empower readers with the
knowledge, resources and tools they'll need to die better, maybe
even with triumph.
Before Drucilla Cornell's mother died, she asked her daughter to
write a book, "that would bear witness to the dignity of her death"
and that "her bridge class would be able to understand." Shortly
thereafter, Cornell's mother, who had degenerative disease, decided
to claim her right to die. Forceful, honest, and unsentimental,
this is the book that Cornell promised to write. The fundamental
argument of Between Women and Generations is that all women have
dignity: we must ensure that they have the conditions under which
they can claim that dignity in their own lives; even if they are
physically harmed or morally wronged, their dignity cannot be lost.
Cornell uses the personal as a springboard to discuss contemporary
issues concerning women today. She engages with the difficult
nature of intergenerational relationships between women by writing
about her relationship to her own mother. In telling the story of
her adoption of Sarita Graciela Kellow Cornell, her Paraguayan
daughter, and of her relationship with UNITY, a cooperative of
house cleaners in Long island, New York, Cornelll creates a
powerful picture of the legacies of dignity between women and
generations.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Death and the Migrant is a sociological account of transnational
dying and care in British cities. It chronicles two decades of the
ageing and dying of the UK's cohort of post-war migrants, as well
as more recent arrivals. Chapters of oral history and close
ethnographic observation, enriched by photographs, take the reader
into the submerged worlds of end-of-life care in hospices,
hospitals and homes. While honouring singular lives and
storytelling, Death and the Migrant explores the social, economic
and cultural landscapes that surround the migrant deathbed in the
twenty-first century. Here, everyday challenges - the struggle to
belong, relieve pain, love well, and maintain dignity and faith -
provide a fresh perspective on concerns and debates about the
vulnerability of the body, transnationalism, care and hospitality.
Blending narrative accounts from dying people and care
professionals with insights from philosophy and feminist and
critical race scholars, Yasmin Gunaratnam shows how the care of
vulnerable strangers tests the substance of a community. From a
radical new interpretation of the history of the contemporary
hospice movement and its 'total pain' approach, to the charting of
the global care chain and the affective and sensual demands of
intercultural care, Gunaratnam offers a unique perspective on how
migration endows and replenishes national cultures and care. Far
from being a marginal concern, Death and the Migrant shows that
transnational dying is very much a predicament of our time, raising
questions and concerns that are relevant to all of us.
Winner of the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
Nearly 1,600 Americans are still unaccounted for and presumed dead
from the Vietnam War. These are the stories of those who mourn and
continue to search for them. For many families the Vietnam War
remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans-and more than 300,000
Vietnamese-involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In
What Remains, Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America's
missing service members and the families and communities that
continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to
identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese
jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the
remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and
women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their
experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America's most fraught
war. Every generation has known the uncertainties of war.
Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington
National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never
return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic
science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the
remains of the missing, often from the merest trace-a tooth or
other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts
to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost
service members. So promising are these scientific developments
that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping
to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such
homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories,
as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to
reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the
nation.
In this fascinating new book, Vincent Henry (a 21-year veteran of
the NYPD who recently retired to become a university professor)
explores the psychological transformations and adaptations that
result from police officers' encounters with death. Police can
encounter death frequently in the course of their duties, and these
encounters may range from casual contacts with the deaths of others
to the most profound and personally consequential confrontations
with their own mortality. Using the 'survivor psychology' model as
its theoretical base, this insightful and provocative research
ventures into a previously unexplored area of police psychology to
illuminate and explore the new modes of adaptation, thought, and
feeling that result from various types of death encounters in
police work.
The psychology of survival asserts that the psychological world of
the survivor--one who has come in close physical or psychic contact
with death but nevertheless managed to live--is characterized by
five themes: psychic numbing, death guilt, the death imprint,
suspicion of counterfeit nurturance, and the struggle to make
meaning. These themes become manifest in the survivor's behavior,
permeating his or her lifestyle and worldview.
Drawing on extensive interviews with police officers in five
nominal categories--rookie officers, patrol sergeants, crime scene
technicians, homicide detectives, and officers who survived a
mortal combat situation in which an assailant or another officer
died--Henry identifies the impact such death encounters have upon
the individual, the police organization, and the occupational
culture of policing. He has produced a comprehensive and highly
textured interpretation ofpolice psychology and police behavior,
bolstered by the unique insights that come from his personal
experience as an officer, his intimate familiarity with the
subtleties and nuances of the police culture's value and belief
systems, and his meticulous research and rigorous method. Death
Work provides a unique prism through which to view the individual,
organizational, and social dynamics of contemporary urban policing.
With a foreword by Robert Jay Lifton and a chapter devoted to the
local police response to the World Trade Center attacks, Death Work
will be of interest to psychologists and criminal justice experts,
as well as police officers eager to gain insight into their unique
relationship to death.
 |
Death and Dying
- A Reader
(Paperback)
Thomas A. Shannon; Contributions by Paul B Bascom, David DeGrazia, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Kathleen Foley, …
|
R1,152
Discovery Miles 11 520
|
Ships in 18 - 22 working days
|
|
|
Over a decade ago the field of bioethics was established in
response to the increased control over the design of living
organisms afforded by both medical genetics and biotechnology.
Since its introduction, bioethics has become established as an
academic discipline with journals and professional societies, is
covered regularly in the media, and affects people everyday around
the globe. In response to the increasing need for information about
medical genetics and biotechnology as well as the ethical issues
these fields raise, Sheed & Ward proudly presents the Readings
in Bioethics Series. Edited by Thomas A. Shannon, the series
provides anthologies of critical essays and reflections by leading
ethicists in four pivotal areas: reproductive technologies, genetic
technologies, death and dying, and health care policy. The goal of
this series is twofold: first, to provide a set of readers on
thematic topics for introductory or survey courses in bioethics or
for courses with a particular theme or time limitation. Second,
each of the readers in this series is designed to help students
focus more thoroughly and effectively on specific topics that flesh
out the ethical issues at the core of bioethics. The series is also
highly accessible to general readers interested in bioethics. This
volume collects critical essays by leading scholars on the
definition of death, consciousness, quality of life, tube feeding,
pallative care, physician-assisted suicide and the debate on
euthanasia. Included in this volume are works by Paul B. Bascom,
David DeGrazia, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Kathleen Foley, Herbert Hendin,
Michael Panicola, Stephen G. Post, Thomas A. Shannon, Charles F.
von Gunten, Susan W. Tolle.
"Things You Can do When You're Dead!" by Tricia Robertson is the
long awaited book from one of Scotland's foremost psychical
researchers. In this book the author shares some of her thirty-year
research into mediumship, reincarnation, psychic healing,
apparitions, poltergeists, and after death communications. Tricia's
refreshing no-nonsense approach to the subject makes for compelling
reading and should interest skeptics, believers, and anyone who
wants to know what you can do when you're dead!
"I tremble to say there's good in death, because I've looked in the
eyes of the grieving mother and I've seen the heartbreak of the
stricken widow, but I've also seen something more in death,
something good. Death's hands aren't all bony and cold."-from
Confessions of a Funeral Director We are a people who deeply fear
death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as
long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it,
vilifying it, and-when it can be avoided no longer-letting the
professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb
Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as
far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a
difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people
he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring
for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference-in
other people's lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving
his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed: *
The family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his
burial * The act of embalming a little girl that offered a gift
back to her grieving family * The nursing home that honored a
woman's life by standing in procession as her body was taken away *
The funeral that united a conflicted community Through stories like
these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde offers an
intimate look into the business and a new perspective on living and
dying.
Winner of the 2020 Stand-Out Graduate Research Award Winner of the
August 2020 Fonds de recherche du Quebec - Societe et culture
(FRQSC) Prix Releve etoile Paul-Gerin-Lajoie Photographic portraits
of those who have passed have the potential to become valuable
sites of remembrance. Across North America and Western Europe,
parents are increasingly unfamiliar with death; lacking the rituals
and tools that have historically eased the bereavement process.
This book shines a light on how semi-private social media groups
enable the bereaved parents of today to navigate their grief in the
modern world. The author explores how creative, and sometimes
contested, incorporations of photography within these online spaces
demonstrate a revival and renegotiation of historic practices. By
shining a light on recurrent tendencies and their evolution within
new media this book offers an opportunity to observe the complex
relationships grief can prompt some individuals to form with the
portraits of absent loved ones. As social networking sites continue
to enable the reinsertion of death within the social realm, the
author looks ahead: might we begin to see a revival and increased
openness towards end-of-life, post-mortem and funerary photography?
As bereavement increasingly becomes something communicated in an
online context, what new types of embellishments to the
photographic portrait might we encounter?
Though considered by devotees to be perhaps the most potent expression of religious faith, dying for one's God is also one of the most difficult concepts for modern observers of religion to understand. This is especially true in the West, where martyrdom has all but disapeared and martyrs in other cultures are often viewed skeptically and dismissed as fanatics. This book seeks to foster a greater understanding of these acts of religious devotion by explaining how martyrdom has historically been viewed in the world's major religions. It provides the first sustained, cross-cultural examination of this fascinating aspect of religious life. Spanning 4000 years of history and ranging from Saul in the Hebrew Bible to Sati immolations in present-day India, this book provides a wealth of insight into an often noted but rarely understood cultural phenomenon.
What made some 700 men and women in the Yorkshire town of
Kingston-upon-Hull, in the years 1837 to 1900, decide to suffer no
longer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and take their
own lives? In this study, the author seeks to uncover the
experiences that drove people to suicide; to analyze how suicide
was understood by victims, by their families and friends, and by
legal and medical authorities; to study how the presumed causes of
suicide and the meanings of suicide changed over time and in
response to changed social circumstances; and to see what "suicide
narratives" elicited by coroners' inquests can tell us about
Victorian life, beliefs, and values in general.
The book is based on an unprecedentedly complete and comprehensive
collection of inquest files covering the entire Victorian era in
Hull (most coroners' files have not survived or exist only in
fragmentary form). Hitherto, suicide in the Victorian period has
been examined only on a national basis; where local evidence has
been used, it has come chiefly from London. Through the testimony
of relatives, neighbors, friends, and even the deceased (by means
of suicide notes), the author has been able to get closer to the
experience of suicide and its social construction than has been
possible in any previous study.
The framework within which the author evaluates the paths to
suicide is the life cycle. By placing each suicide in its local
socioeconomic context, and by examining each stage in the life
course for each sex and for different social levels, the author has
been able to assess causation factors with great confidence. He
establishes arguments (such as the importance of declining wages
and job security for older men and the loss of a marital partner
for either sex) more securely than have earlier studies, and puts
some new arguments on the agenda (such as the importance of the
presence or absence of interpersonal ties and the influence of Poor
Law policy).
The book Approaches to Death and Dying: Bioethical and Cultural
Perspectives, edited by Marta Szabat and Jan Piasecki, is part of a
still too narrow catalogue of works devoted to end-of-life themes.
The volume consists of eleven articles arranged in four parts
corresponding to a broad range of issues: law, ethics, philosophy,
and cultural studies. The arrangement of the book is thus
constructed around various perspectives upon which any reflection
on death and dying must be based. This is perhaps indicative of how
difficult it is to adopt an unambiguous attitude towards
death-modernity, which introduces a multitude of possible choices
and decisions regarding our own bodies, has enhanced individualism
but at the same time done away with the order provided by old
customs, cultural arrangements, strategies towards the inevitable
and the power exerted by that order.
The first book length anthropological study of voluntary assisted
dying in Switzerland, Leaving is a narrative account of five people
who ended their lives with assistance. Stavrianakis places his
observations of the judgment to end life in this way within a
larger inquiry about how to approach and understand the practice of
assisted suicide, which he characterizes as operating in a
political, legal, and medical "parazone," adjacent to medical care
and expertise. Frequently, observers too rapidly integrate assisted
suicide into moral positions that reflect sociological and
psychological commonplaces about individual choice and its social
determinants. Leaving engages with core early twentieth-century
psychoanalytic and sociological texts arguing for a contemporary
approach to the phenomenon of voluntary death, seeking to learn
from such conceptual repertoires, as well as to acknowledge their
limits. Leaving concludes on the anthropological question of how to
account for the ethics of assistance with suicide: to grasp the
actuality and composition of the ethical work that goes on in the
configuration of a subject, one who is making a judgment about
dying, with other participants and observers, the anthropologist
included.
A comprehensive assessment of the field of Disability Studies that
presents beyond the medical to dig into the meaning From public
transportation and education to adequate access to buildings, the
social impact of disability has been felt everywhere since the
passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. And a
remarkable groundswell of activism and critical literature has
followed in this wake. Claiming Disability is the first
comprehensive examination of Disability Studies as a field of
inquiry. Disability Studies is not simply about the variations that
exist in human behavior, appearance, functioning, sensory acuity,
and cognitive processing but the meaning we make of those
variations. With vivid imagery and numerous examples, Simi Linton
explores the divisions society creates-the normal versus the
pathological, the competent citizen versus the ward of the state.
Map and manifesto, Claiming Disability overturns medicalized
versions of disability and establishes disabled people and their
allies as the rightful claimants to this territory.
"A compulsively readable, totally unforgettable memoir that
recounts a sensitive college student's experience working on an
emergency ambulance in hell, aka New York City." -- James Patterson
In 1967, Mike Scardino was an eighteen year-old pre-med student
with a problem - his parents couldn't afford to pay his college
tuition. Luckily, Mike's dad hooked him up with a lucrative, albeit
unusual, summer job, one he's never forgotten. Bad Call is Mike's
visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers
he spent working as an "ambulance attendant" on the mean streets of
late 1960s New York, at a time when emergency medicine looked
nothing like it does today. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett's hot
dogs, he crossed third rails to pick up injured trainmen,
encountered a woman attacked by rats, attended to victims of a
plane crash at JFK airport, was nearly murdered, and got an early
and indelible education in the impermanence of life. But his work
also afforded moments of rare beauty, hope, and everyday heroism,
and it changed the course of Mike's life as well as the way he saw
the world. Action-packed, poignant, and rich with details that
bring Mike's world to life, Bad Call is a gritty portrait of a
bygone era as well as a thrilling tale of one man's coming of age.
Suicide is the third major killer of young people in the Western
world, and in the closing decades of the twentieth century it
reached epidemic proportions: around the world there has been a
frightening surge in suicides committed by children, adolescents
and young adults. Kay Redfield Jamison is herself a survivor of a
nearly lethal suicide attempt which came after years of battling
manic depression. Her survival marked the beginning of a life's
work to investigate mental illness and self-inflicted death, and
she is now an internationally recognized authority on the
depressive illnesses. In Night Falls Fast Dr. Jamison dispels the
silence and shame that surround the subject of suicide and provides
a better understanding of the suicidal mind and a chance to
recognize the person at risk. She brings to the book not only wide
scientific knowledge and clinical experience but also great
compassion. In tracing the network of reasons underlying the
phenomenon, she gives us astonishing examples and a startling look
at the journals, drawings and farewell notes of people who have
chosen to kill themselves. She also provides vivid insight into the
most recent findings from hospitals and laboratories across the
world; the critical biological and psychological factors that
interact to cause suicide; and the new strategies being evolved to
combat them. Night Falls Fast is a sensitive and penetrating
analysis that helps us to comprehend the profound and disturbing
sense of loss created in those left behind. It is the first major
book on the subject in a quarter of a century and stands to become
a classic account of one of the most devastating and destructive
causes of death of our time.
This book offers an ethnographic exploration of three sites of
infamous atrocity and their differing memorialization. 'Dark
tourism' research has studied the consumerization of spaces
associated with death and barbarity, whilst 'difficult heritage'
has looked at politicized, national debates that surround the
preservation of death. This book contributes to these debates by
applying spatial theory on a scalar level, particularly through the
work of Henri Lefebvre. It uses escalating case studies to situate
memorialization, and the multifarious demands of politics,
consumption and community, within a framework that rearticulates
'lived', 'perceived' and 'conceived' aspects of deviant spaces
ranging from the small (a bench) to the very large (a city). The
first case study, the Tyburn gallows site in York, uses Lefebvre's
notion of 'theatrical space' to contextualize the role of
performativity in memorialization. The second, Number 25 Cromwell
Street in Gloucester, builds on this by exploring the absence of
memorialization through Lefebvre's concept of 'contradictory space'
and the impact this has on consumption. The third expands to
consider the city as a problematic memorial, here focusing on the
political subjectivities of Dresden - rebuilt following the
devastation of the Second World War - and its contemporary
associations with neo-Nazi and anti-fascist protests. Ultimately,
by examining the issue of scale in heritage, the book seeks to
develop a new way of unpacking and understanding the heteroglossic
nature of deviant space and memorialization.
|
|