lecture 5 approaching the corpse 1

Initial hours → 1 day after death

• body start to cool (cooling to ambient temperature in several hours)

• Within a few hours, blood pooling starts to create bluish-purple skin discolouration in lowest parts of body

• Within a few hours, muscles starts to stiffen, with full rigidity typically developing after several hours

  • In many traditional rites the body of the deceased is washed and prepared soon after death, before rigor temporarily makes the process difficult or impossible

Livor mortis

Blood pooling starts to create bluish-purple skin discolouration in lowest parts of body

Rigor mortis

Muscles start to stiffen

Following several days after death

• rigor mortis relaxed (roughly 1-2 days after death in many conditions)

• Decay begins as tissues start to be broken down by digestive enzymes and bacteria released form the digestive tract

  • timing varies by temperature and humidity; first visible changes as soon as 1-2 days

  • Earliest visible changes include greenish skin discolouration

  • As decay advances (first week in warm conditions), other signs including loosening of skin and purging of liquid from mouth/nose appear

Over the following weeks to months the soft tissues decay

• The body is reduced to a skeleton held together by desiccated remnants of soft tissue, then finally to bones alone (skeletonization)

• The time required for the body to be reduced to bones depends on whether (and how) it’s buried and on local conditions if it is exposed

  • In exposed remains, animal scavenging speeds up the process

• In most conditions an exposed body might be skeletonized in a few months

• Decomposition is slower in buried bodies, and full skeletonization might take a few years especially in cooler climates

Postmortem transformation of the body: after death the doggies through a series of natural changes

• initial hours → 1 day after death

• Following several days after death

• Over the following weeks to months the soft tissues decay

A common idea across many early theoretical approaches to the corpse is that of a basic ambivalence

• this is the body of someone I know, please treat it with respect

• This is a death body, please keep it away from me

Researchers have long been interested in avoidance

In many cultures, expressed through traditions of how to treat the corpse so you won’t be attacked or haunted by the spirit of the dead person

Van Gennep and Hertz both discussed how mortuary beliefs and practices can sometimes be seen as expressions of fear

• the corpse is a reminder of the departed person (loved) but also a reminder of our own inevitable death (loathed/feared)

• Worry over spirits of the dead and measures taken to appease of contain them, especially soon after death

The corpse is a reminder of the departed person (loved( but also a reminder of our own inevitable death (loathed/feared)

This can lead to ambivalent treatment of the corpse – at the same time it may be respected/honored and seen as polluting

Worry over spirits of the death and measures taken to appease or contain them, especially soon after death

Customs intended to protect mourners may express the basic fear that the spirits may want to bring the living with them into death

Disquieting corpses example: van Gennep (The Rites of Passage) described treatment of the corpse during funerals of the Kol (India)

• much of the treatment was seen as helping the deceased

• However mourners were also protected from the corpse

Disquieting corpses example: One example: van Gennep (The Rites of Passage) described treatment of the corpse during funerals of the Kol (India): Much of the treatment was seen as helping the deceased

• Corpse placed on the ground right after death to help soul find the world of the dead, which was thought to be underground

• Corpse was painted yellow to chase away evil spirits

• Rice cakes and silver coins were placed in the mouth as supplies for their journey

Disquieting corpses example: One example: van Gennep (The Rites of Passage) described treatment of the corpse during funerals of the Kol (India): Mourners were also protected from the corpse

• After being prepared, corpse was placed on platform in front of the hut with its feet facing away from the hut

• Corpse was carried to cremation ground feet-first, and along a winding path

• These measures kept deceased from finding their way back home

Hertz and van Gennep also discussed the symbolism of the transformation of the corpse

• Its state reflects progress along a journey or transition

• Hertz – from ‘wet’ (fresh/early decay) to dry (bone/ash)

• van Gennep special treatment and material setting (e.g. embalmed and set up for viewing in coffin) mark liminal status of deceased

Ultimate destination/disposition

soul is now ‘safe’ in new social role and remains are now ‘safe’ in final grave

Embalming

• replaces the distressing natural transition of the body

  (decaying) with a sanitized transition (dead, but stable & lifelike)

• creates a new social identity for the deceased in the period of the viewing & funeral – tranquil, a ‘good death’

• During this liminal period, embalming suspends decay

As we’ve just seen, many cultures see the dead as both in danger and dangerous during the liminal phase of rites

• The dangerous and liminal state of the corpse can be seen as contagious – able to pass to the living

• Mourners may need to take measures (special clothing, special practices) to avoid this danger or cleanse themselves of it

• In other words the corpse is seen as ritually polluting – those exposed to it risk taking on its dangerous ‘bad energy’

A key work on ritual pollution is Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger (1966)

• discusses symbolic pollution in ritual, but also in avoidances practices in everyday life

• Argues that symbolic pollution is attaches to things/people/situations that violate important ways in which we classify the world around us

Douglas: from this perspective we can understand ritual pollution attached to the corpse as a reaction to its liminal nature

• The remains of someone we knew, but also a frightening object

• A member of our living society, now separated from it by death

• An object that can (and will) decay

Julia Kristeva

• Bulgarian-French philosopher, linguist, feminist, psychoanalyst, literary critic

• Key influences on anthropology include the notion of abjection, another important way to understand human reactions to corpses

Abjection

a sense of horror/nausea/ revulsion/dislocation triggered by things that threaten our sense of primal identity

• More or less, the divisions we set up in our minds very early in development between me/not-me, subject(person)/object, living(person)/not-living, human/animal

• Whole body and soul ick

Abjection was influenced by

Freudian thought on identity and development and Douglas’ writing on pollution

The prime example of the abject is the corpse

By bringing us up against the reality of our mortality and by being both ex-person and object, the corpse menaces our primal identity

• Inspires and disgust but also often fascination, helping to explain the attraction of exhibits like BodyWorks and shows like ‘CSI’ and ‘Bones’

the ideas of Douglas and Kristeva on pollution, abjection and avoidance of the dead

• Both of them argue that this tendency is a basic part of the human experience – rooted in how our views of the world develop

• However, others have pointed out that societies vary in their level of comfort with death and dead bodies

  • Rejection and avoidance of the dead may be especially strong in cultures with a high degree of separation of the dead from everyday life

Philippe Ariès and ‘invisible death’

French historian who studied Western European death beliefs and practices in the medieval through modern eras

• Key works translated into English as Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (1974) and The Hour of Our Death (1981)

• Best known for his argument that death is the ultimate forbidden subject in some modern Western nations (‘forbidden death’ or ‘invisible death’)

Ariès argued that this ‘invisibility’ of death developed in the early to mid 20th c as the result of three changes:

• improving medical technology offered better pain relief, and cures for more conditions

• The older practice of telling the ill

• An increasing value began to be placed on restraining the expression of mourning in public

Aries: Improving medical technology offered better pain relief, and cures for more conditions

• However, this also prolonged the process of dying and moved it from homes to hospitals (‘medicalized death’)

• It also encouraged people to see death as a ‘failure’ of an otherwise powerful system (Doctors, hospitals and their bureaucracy) that could control life and death

Aries: The older practice of telling the ill that they were dying so they could say goodbye to friends and family and make their peace with God began to shift

With death seen as less certain, the emphasis on helping the dying to die well was replaced by an emphasis on staying optimistic and on avoiding the fear and distress approaching death might cause – a kind of denial of death