The Role of Death, Burial and the Afterlife in Shaping Human Identity

20 Pages·2010·0.12 MB·English

“Our Birth is Nothing but our Death Begun”
The Role of Death, Burial and the Afterlife
in Shaping Human Identity

25-26 September 2010

Humanities Institute of Ireland
Seminar Room

Research Strand “Death, Burial and the Afterlife”
UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies
Humanities Institute of Ireland

On behalf of the Organising Committee, the members of the Research Strand ‘Death, Burial and
the Afterlife,’ and the Humanities Institute of Ireland I would like to welcome you to ‘Our Birth
is Nothing but our Death Begun’ – The Role of Death, Burial and the Afterlife in Shaping Human
Identity. We hope you will find your way around our campus and to the city centre, but if you
have any questions please do not hesitate to ask one of the organisers.
We would like to thank the Humanities Institute of Ireland and particularly its Director, Dr Marc
Cable, for his financial and logistic support of the conference. We are also grateful to Professor
Mary Daly, Principal of the UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies, for her ongoing support of
our projects.
We hope that you will enjoy the conference, that you will be stimulated by the papers and
discussions, meet old friends and make new ones. Welcome to Dublin again!

Wolfgang Marx

Organising Committee
 Danielle Clarke (School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin)
 Gabriel Cooney (School of Archaeology, University College Dublin)
 Edward James (School of History and Archives, University College Dublin)
 Wolfgang Marx (School of Music, University College Dublin)
 Elizabeth O’Brien (Micheal O Cleirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and
Civilisation, University College Dublin)
 Darach Turley (Dublin City University Business School)

The organisers would like to sincerely thank Mary Daly, Marc Caball, Valerie Norton, Melissa
Devereux, Colleen English, Miriam Haughton, Denise Keating, Nienke Van Etten and Niamh
Wycherley for their support of the preparation and running of the conference.

Supported by the Humanities Institute of Ireland Seed Funding Programme
Programme

Saturday, 25 September 2010

08.30: Arrival & Check-in

09.30–9.45: Opening Address

09.45–11.15: Session 1: Defining Ourselves in the Face of Death
Chair: Tony Walter (University of Bath)

Nicole Volmering (University College Cork)
The Good, the Bad and the Suffering: Categorisation of the Soul in Medieval Irish Vision
Literature

Bridget English (National University of Ireland Maynooth)
Beginning at the End: Death and the Quest for Identity in Malone Dies and The Barracks

Dan Farrelly (University College Dublin)
Identity and the Act of Dying – Josef Pieper (1904-1997)

11.15-11.45: Coffee Break

11. 45–12.45: Session 2: Last Rites, Consolation and Remembrance
Chair: Elizabeth O’Brien (University College Dublin)

Gordon Raeburn (Durham University)
Emotions and Funerals in the Scottish Highlands and Islands

Leonie Kellaher (London Metropolitan University), David Prendergast (University of Sheffield)
Destinations for the Dead: Rationales offered by Family and Friends for Decisions surrounding
the Disposal of Human Ashes that Shape an Afterlife for the Deceased and Survivors

12.45–14.15: Lunch
14.15–15.45: Session 3: Death and Mourning in History and the Arts
Chair: Michael Lloyd (University College Dublin)

Nienke Van Etten (University College Dublin)
The Murder of Murchad Ua Maelsechnaill: A Re-examination of the Irish Round Towers

David Lillington (Wild Gift II, London)
Are Ethics and Aesthetics separate? A Perspective on Death Studies from Arts Practice

Tony Walter (University of Bath)
Dying, Mourning and the Arts: an Ethnographic View

15.45–16.30: Coffee Break

16.30–17.30: Session 4: Death in the Media
Chair: Dan Farrelly (University College Dublin)

Mary B. Ryan (National University of Ireland Maynooth)
Nuala O’Faolain and Marian Finucane Discuss Dying and the Impact on One’s Identity

Gregory Bowe (Trinity College Dublin), Fergus Gleeson (Trinity College Dublin)
Exploring Death in the Virtual Context

17.45–18.45
Keynote Lecture
Douglas Davies (Durham University)
Death-style, Life-style and Society

20.30
Conference Dinner
Mermaid Café, Dublin City Centre
Sunday, 26 September 2010

9.30–11.00: Session 5: Reflections of the Self in Burials and Remains
Chair: Gabriel Cooney (University College Dublin)

Christina Haywood (University College Dublin)
Tomb Cult and Identity in the Greek City-State

Elizabeth O’Brien (University College Dublin)
Politics, Family, Religion – Burial Rites in Ireland 5th to 8th centuries AD

Denise Keating (University College Dublin)
All that Remains? The Study of Child Death and Children’s Skeletal Remains in the
Identification of Early Medieval Irish Social Identities

11.00–11.30: Coffee Break

11.30–12.30: Session 6: Performing Death?
Chair: Leonie Kellaher (London Metropolitan University)

Miriam Haughton (University College Dublin)
Performance as Confession and the Soul’s Impetus for Innocence

Margaret Gibson (Griffith University, Queensland)
Screening Death: The Moving Image and the Scene of Death

12.30–14.00: Lunch

14.00–15.30: Session 7: Death and the Irish Identity
Chair: Douglas Davies (Durham University)

Niamh Wycherley (University College Dublin)
Wonder-working Insignia: The Role of Relics in Shaping the Identity of Early Irish Churches

Stuart Kinsella (Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin)
A Millennium of Memory: Commemorating the Dead at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Paul Murray (Irish Hospice Foundation, Dublin)
How Ireland Does Death
16.00–16.30: Coffee Break

16.30–18.00: Session 8: Creating and Utilising Memory
Chair: Wolfgang Marx (University College Dublin)

Shane McCorristine (Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich)
Searching for the Franklin Expedition: A Contemporary Canadian Ghost Story?

Anne O’ Connor (National University of Ireland Galway)
Death and Memory: Creating an Italian Identity in Nineteenth-Century Florence

Max Engman (Åbo Akademi University)
Emperor’s and Secretary General’s Chosen People. Obituaries of Russian Rulers in Finnish
Newspapers from Alexander I to Chernenko (1825-1984)

18.00: Closing Address
Abstracts

Session 1: Defining Ourselves in the Face of Death

Nicole Volmering (University College Cork)
The Good, the Bad and the Suffering: Categorisation of the Soul in Medieval Irish Vision
Literature

What happens when I die? A simple question, the elusive answer of which lies at the basis of
much philosophical speculation. Within Christian theology in particular, death takes centre stage,
and it is no surprise that literature of every age offers references galore to the possible nature of
the beyond. In early Medieval Europe, too, theory concerning death and the afterlife was in a
state of constant fluctuation. It has been argued by Eric Rebillard that the formulation of the
concept of original sin in the wake of the Pelagian heresy caused a shift of attitude from a view
that regarded death as the celebrated culmination of salvation theory to a feared last port before
Doomsday and possibly Hell. Fundamental to this last theory is the belief in the inherently sinful
identity of the human soul. This theory subsequently gives rise to the notion that this identity is
measurable in various degrees of sinfulness and to the classification of the soul into various
categories, ranging from the Holy and the Sainted to the most decrepit sinners and Satan himself.
This paper, focusing on Medieval Irish visionary literature specifically, aims to explore the
categorisation of the human soul according to its sinfulness in relation to its earthly identity as
well as the various methods used to ascertain the quality of the soul and the consequences of this
qualification for the soul in the afterlife and for the living Christian community in general.

Bridget English (National University of Ireland Maynooth)
Beginning at the End: Death and the Quest for Identity in Malone Dies and The Barracks

The death of a loved one, the diagnosis of illness and the approach of old age all serve as
reminders of the frailty of human existence. These events not only serve to remind us of our own
mortality but also force us to redefine our identity, to evaluate our accomplishments. The
individual must find some way of establishing his own identity in the wake of grief or in the
throws of depression and physical pain.
In Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies Malone struggles to establish his identity as his body becomes
increasingly useless to him and his mental abilities to create and remember begin to deteriorate.
Malone is so detached from reality that he cannot actually determine whether he is alive or dead.
His attempts to inventory his possessions in an effort to construct objective reality prove futile
and he turns to his imagination, to create an identity. Similarly, Elizabeth in John McGahern’s
The Barracks struggles to find meaning in her life as she battles breast cancer. Despite her
attempts to define herself in relation to the people and objects around her, she discovers that
there is no distinct impression of identity to be left on the world. Coffins and burial feature as
generic rituals that link the isolated individual back to the community after death.
This paper will examine the ways that the characters in Beckett’s Malone Dies and John
McGahern’s The Barracks attempt to define themselves in the face of death, an event that holds
the possibility of erasing all meaning and identity. Both Elizabeth and Malone fear being
forgotten and are afraid that their lives have been for nothing. As they seek to create an identity
in the face of death, both Elizabeth and Malone also must consider how they will be
remembered. However, they soon discover that they have no control over how their words will
be misconstrued, their identities distorted by memory.

Dan Farrelly (University College Dublin)
Identity and the Act of Dying – Josef Pieper (1904-1997)

For Pieper as a philosopher, any knowledge he derives from his Christian faith – as, for example,
the biblical teaching of resurrection after death – is achieved by means which are not available to
the philosopher and which may not be used directly in philosophy. But Pieper tries to define how
close his philosophical analysis can bring him towards the ‘knowledge’ he has through his
Christian faith. In this, his subtle and convincing analyses of Plato’s ‘eschatological myths’ serve
him well. He shows the steps which bring Plato, as a philosopher, close to some sort of Christian
understanding of the afterlife – in other words, of the implications of dying. We can indicate here
the point where Pieper thinks Plato’s thought reaches its limit; and then we can indicate what
further steps Pieper thinks are possible in the direction of the frontier where the sign says to the
philsopher: thus far and no further – the point where only revelation, and faith in revelation,
could show the way ahead.
In the ‘act of dying’, in the moment of total isolation from all other created things, the human
‘creature’ ultimately defines his own fundamental identity – that of this creature in his absolute
dependence on the Creator. In the final instant, the moment of his last breath, at the separation of
body and soul in death, he can freely accept or reject his fundamental status as creature. He it is
who decides who he really is and what his life has meant. He freely decides on his own radical
identity.

Session 2: Last Rites, Consolation and Remembrance

Gordon Raeburn (Durham University)
Emotions and Funerals in the Scottish Highlands and Islands

This paper will investigate the presence of emotions, both ritualised and spontaneous, at funerals
in the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It
will attempt to determine what impact, if any, the Scottish Reformation had on the presence of
emotions at Highland and Island funerals, and how these emotions may have changed over the
course of two centuries. As records pertaining to the Scottish Highlands and Islands during this
time period are sketchy at best, it will be necessary to provide an overview of the entire range of
the Highlands and the Western Isles, rather than to focus on the development of emotions at
funerals in one or two specific areas within the region.
One particular area of ritualised emotion throughout the region that will be studied in close detail
will be instances of the Corronach, the Gaelic lament for the dead, which has parallels during
this time in both Gaelic Ireland and the Isle of Man, and was officially prohibited by both the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church in Ireland. It will be interesting to
investigate whether the ritualised aspect of the practice in any way reduced the emotions that
were felt by the practitioners, or if the practice remained as much a truly heartfelt emotional
spectacle as the more spontaneous outpourings of grief observed att funerals in the Highlands
and Islands.

Leonie Kellaher (London Metropolitan University), David Prendergast (University of Sheffield)
Destinations for the Dead: Rationales offered by Family and Friends for Decisions surrounding
the Disposal of Human Ashes that Shape an Afterlife for the Deceased and Survivors

The decision-making processes which led family members and friends of someone who had died,
to choose a particular mode or site for the disposal of their ashes was one of the central questions
explored in our ESRC funded project Environments of Memory. The deliberations involved
place and space, yet temporal issues were also important in that a particular past – that of the
deceased – was generally to be encompassed. However, assuming responsibility for the ashes,
people quickly came to realise that they had to plot a path through ritual territory that is still
uncharted, not least as far as any afterlife is envisaged. Many described how they had needed
time to work out what 'fitted', or made sense in terms of the person they had known and the
relationships they had built.
This paper discusses our ongoing analyses to suggest how bereaved people also work at reaching
decisions that make space for an afterlife, not only for the deceased, but also for survivors to
access from time to time. Using material aspects of a former shared life – places, events,
moments, objects – many surviving family members and friends appear to craft a dimension in
which the deceased person's habitual dispositions might persist. Since the survivors have put
together the elements that constitute the destination, they are in a position to understand the
terrain and to 'inhabit' this shared place and an afterlife that is imagined though grounded in the
past.

Session 3: Death and Mourning in History and the Arts

Nienke Van Etten (University College Dublin)
The Murder of Murchad Ua Maelsechnaill: A Re-examination of the Irish Round Towers

While many antiquarian and archaeological studies concerning the round towers have been
conducted over the past three centuries, the intended purpose of the buildings is still uncertain.
Many scholars have accepted Petrie’s conclusion that the round towers were primarily intended
as bell-towers. However, due to a few annalistic entries, which refer to deaths within these
buildings, it has remained the popular opinion that these buildings may have been places of
refuge. This theory has often been disputed - apparently quite unsuccessfully- by the scholarly
community. Recently, however, the same argument has been re-examined by the scholars and it
seems that the problem has remained unsolved.
The proposed paper, drawing from my completed MA thesis, will focus on the historical
references to deaths within the round towers, and I thus hope to re-examine the intended function
of the medieval buildings.
While the popular opinion is that many annalistic references are made to deaths within the round
towers, I will show that these are actually relatively few but significant. The paper will examine