Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe PDF
Preview Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe
Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe Edited by Marius Rotar and Adriana Teodorescu Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe, Edited by Marius Rotar and Adriana Teodorescu This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Marius Rotar and Adriana Teodorescu and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3208-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3208-3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Steps in the Cold Shadow............................................................................1 Marius Rotar and Adriana Teodorescu Death: General Outlooks Death and Modernization..........................................................................10 Ilona Kemppainen Religion and the Meaning of Death How Sacred is Secular Death? And Just How Secular Can Sacred Death Be? A Theoretical Proposal......................................................................20 Adela Toplean A Place for the Dead: ‘Angels’ and ‘Heaven’ in Personalized Eschatology...............................................................................................43 Thomas Quartier The Order of Funeral Services in the Romanian Orthodox Church at the End of the 17th and Beginning of the 18th Century, Reflected into the first Romanian Printed Books.......................................57 Dumitru Vanca Understanding Death in the 21st Century: Vito Mancuso and His Re-Assessment of the Christian Teaching on Death from the Perspective of Man’s Historical Experience.................................................................69 Corneliu C. Smiut Cultural History of Death These Horrid Superstitions: Death and Dying amongst the English ‘Folk’, c.1840-c.1914................................................................................84 Helen Frisby vi Table of Contents Honour and Death in Military and Militaristic Discourse in Romania (1859-1918).............................................................................................101 Mihai Chiper Collective Interments: Ossuaries and Brotherly Mounds in Bulgaria, 1944-1989................................................................................................129 Nikolai Vukov Infanticide – Between a Private Matter and Public Concern in Serbia from 1800 to 1860...................................................................................149 Aleksandra Vuletic Welcoming Home the Dead: Exhumation and Reburial of Famous Deceased in Serbia..................................................................................160 Aleksandra Pavicevic The Death of the Star: Social and Cultural Issues..................................182 Adriana Teodorescu Disposal of the Body Body, Culture, and Place: Towards an Anthropology of the Cemetery...200 Alessandro Gusman and Cristina Vargas The Natural Burial Ground Bergerbos: An Alternative Place of Burial in the Netherlands....................................................................................230 Mirjam Klaassens and Peter Groote Birth of the “Cremation Power”: Growth in Cremation and Building of Crematoria in the Czech Republic.......................................................248 Zden(cid:415)k R. Nešpor On Cremation in Interwar Romania........................................................263 Marius Rotar New Ritualisations of Death in 21st Century Liminal Bodies of the Dead and Dying: Ritual and the Construction of Social Identity......................................................................................288 Janneke Peelen and Joanna Wojtkowiak Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe vii Death and Memory in the Context of the Contemporary Bulgarian Street Posted Obituary.............................................................................302 Emiliya Karaboeva Everprivate Grief in Public Space: Roadside Memorials in the Czech Republic...................................................................................................331 Olga Nešporová The Modern Hospice Movement: A Quiet Revolution in End of Life Care..............................................................................................351 Ken Worpole Contributors............................................................................................356 Index........................................................................................................359 STEPS IN THE COLD SHADOW MARIUS ROTAR AND ADRIANA TEODORESCU „Death is our shadow. It tags along to engulf us.” Tudor Arghezi, Romanian writer (1880-1967) One of the strongest explanations of death, both as event and state, belongs to the Italian writer Dino Buzzatti. In his short story Friends (Buzzatti, 2005: 200-209), he imagines cellist Toni Appacheter, dead for two days, returning to the world of the living, asking his friends for shelter and an ounce of compassion. Their reaction to this unusual occurrence is a strong rejection of the deceased, seen as a discordant, unsettling, anguish- causing presence. This is the reason why, Dino Buzzatti concludes, some of the dead people still lingering in this world prefer to isolate themselves in deserted houses and castles until their final integration into another world. The Italian writer’s short story brings into the limelight one of the most painful features of death – its irreversibility, while underlining the discontinuous relationship it entails between the dead and the living. However, none of this means that it is impossible to find answers and explanations to the questions of death, on the contrary. Even accepting that death surpasses human thought, as death researchers in various fields proclaim in various ways - Vladimir Jankélévitch (Jankélévitch,1977: 357), for instance, Louis-Vincent Thomas (Thomas, 1999:7), or Michel Picard (Picard, 1995: 26-27) - this would be only a half-truth. Eventually, although death puts thought in a difficult position, going as far as denying it, death, in its turn, the extraordinary power unfolding as death anxiety, gets relativised by thought. That is why, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes, conceptualising death is already denying it (Bauman, 1992:15). By thought we mean all the scientific and sociocultural modes able to shed light on the relationship between human beings and death, that is: philosophy – as reflection on finiteness or temporality, history – as science of the past, literature – as a way of investigating the imaginary and symbolic roots of death, religion – as a means of generating hope, medicine – as an instrument for temporary postponing death, and sociology and psychology with their specific scientific tools. Moreover,
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