So I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm doing my masters thesis on the subject of death. More specifically, I'm going to be exploring the effects of our uniquely human capacity for the awareness of death, or our ability to anticipate death. How does this consciousness of our own demise shape our emotional lives, our psychology, our ability to live in the world, operate in relationships, and exist in our finite bodies? Does it drive us to destruction, violence, and war? Does it give the privileged in the world (white, global north/west, wealthy) a way to disavow death and project it onto people of color and the poor through war, economic oppression, environmental devastation? And on the other hand, can our terror of death motivate us to put forward lasting creative projects in the world (to write books, make babies, found religions) to ensure our own symbolic immortality?
In my reading and research, I'm coming across a lot of different theories, ideas, frameworks. Major influences right now are Ernest Becker, and post-Freudian psychoanalysis (Melanie Klein, Otto Rank, Lacan, and Frantz Fanon). I want to branch out into other disciplines as well, and I'd be interested if anyone has any suggestions for research areas I should check out. I'd particularly like to read more women writers.
Some questions I'm generating at this early stage of the game are as follows. Please consider answering any or all of these questions in the comment section. I'd love to know other people's thoughts in order to get a bigger perspective than just what's been going on in my own head and in my reflections of what I've been reading.
1. Do you think the fear of death, or the denial of death is a "universal" fear, or anything close to a "universal" fear? Can you think of ways in which the fear of death manifests itself either psychologically at the level of individuals, or socio-culturally?
2. Do you think there is such a thing as a "death drive" or an instinct that drives us toward, or compels us toward death psychologically, not just biologically toward entropy and decay?
3. What do you think happens when we die? Do you know what your parent/s think/thought about death? Do your beliefs differ significantly from theirs?
4. How often do you think about, have anxious or curious feelings about, or fantasize/daydream about death? (your own death and/or the death of your loved ones?)
I hope everyone feels very free to leave comments. If you'd rather email your thoughts to me personally, leave a comment with your email address, and I'll send you mine if you don't know it already.
Peace,
--Bree
6 comments:
I will come back to answer the questions, but off the top of my head, some woman writers you might want to check out are Kaja Silverman (some of her stuff addresses the "affirmation of the void" in Freud and Nietzsche and how the denial of human limitation - basically mortality - is the sickness of contemporary Western culture) and Laura Mulvey (her latest is Death 24x a Second, which looks at new media and the role of death - stasis - in them).
Thanks, Mag. You've mentioned Kaja Silverman before, I recall. I will put both of them on the list of possible research angles. I look forward to your thoughts!
1) As much as anything can be universal (and I guess this sort of hedging about it is why you put it in quotes), I do feel as if a fear of death is probably pretty up there. While I would imagine cultural conditioning would determine some of the degree to which the fear existed, I also do feel as if the survival instinct exists in all of us, as problematic as such a biological idea might be to couch. Of course, that is not to say that a survival instinct would be the whole sum of a fear of death, but I think it would be a big part of it. There would have to be psychological angles as well, which would have to do with vanity and ego. Perhaps those are the pieces that vary with cultural conditioning. Looking at our own culture, I see the fear of death manifest itself, as I mentioned in the earlier post, as an inability to acknowledge and deal with basic human mortality, and I see it manifesting in cultural goods and services that seem to offer plentitude and limitlessness. Currently, especially, we are caught in the grip of this as the sizes of everything from cars to burgers to lattes grow bigger all the time and elective surgery grows in popularity and availability. There are Botox advertisements in magazines and on TV now. Ironically, the tag line is "Express Yourself." Also ironically, I think our country's drive towards constant warfare is partly rooted in the fear of death as well. We are determined to maintain our status as number one and to exercise limitless power and have an endless supply of goods. Of course I know that behind all of this - from portion sizes to beauty myths to endless warfare - lie economic reasons that drive such things. But there are the psychological compononents also and I think they are rooted in that fear of death, or at least the inability to acknowledge mortality.
2. I think in a way this drive might go hand in hand with the fear of death. As I pointed out before, there is an irony in the way in which the fear of death would drive a country towards constant warfare, as said warfare brings with it death and destruction. The fear of death would seem to bring with it a fascination with death, and there is the way that death and notions of the afterlife, as well as the mechanisms of killing (guns, bombs, etc.) have a seductive quality. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that we would obsess over that thing which we fear most.
3. I don't know what I think. It varies. I guess I mostly don't think there is any sort of afterlife or anything like that. My beliefs do differ significantly from my parents as they both have pretty traditionally Catholic beliefs of the afterlife. My mom's ideas are probably a little more nuanced, and while she believes in a heaven of collective souls of sorts, I think my dad had the more extreme (yet probably typical) idea of a heaven where souls are preserved in their individuality. I don't know quite how to explain the difference except in that, for example, when my mom would say something like "Your grandmother is in heaven looking down on you" she understood it to be true yet metaphorical whereas my dad understood it to be true and literal.
4) I guess pretty often. Just recently my mom and I were talking and we were in the process of cashing in the clause in her life insurance policy for me as I have my own term life insurance through work, and we realized that we both have "scenarios" for the event that I should happen to die suddenly (where would I be buried, who would come to the funeral, etc.). We laughed, but made asides about the morbidity of it. I guess I also do think about losing loved ones sometimes.
I believe that death is subconsciously and sometimes not so subconsciously on our minds at any given moment, whether we acknowledge its presence or not. Our awareness of our own mortality is manifest in our lives in so many small ways that I believe it affects every drive that we as individuals have and everything that we as a species do. I don’t say this to be morbid, but I don’t think it is possible to overstate the influence that awareness of our own mortality has on the formation of individual character and on our evolution as a species.
I’ve been having dreams all summer long in which death plays an active role – dreams of my own death, the deaths of those who are close to me, the death of my dog, the deaths of strangers, the death of the species on a larger scale. One dream I have, a recurring one, is of a strange and vast indoor cemetary, where coffins are just below the level surface of an astroturf lawn, one that can be pulled up to reveal the decay beneath at any time. The grave markers in this strange cemetary are bright and plastic, neon and distracting, more circus than memorial park. I read this dream to be a manifestation of the general “sweeping under the rug” of death by society. Death is taboo, and solemn, something we don’t talk about and don’t discuss and don’t acknowledge in our own lives.
For my own part, I feel the presence of death every day, not because I am ill or fearful of an accident, but merely because I am acutely aware of the passage of time. Much of my own spiritual practice these days is centered around pondering the question of how to be comfortable with and accepting of death, “the inevitable,” and still live a full, warm, and courageous life. In many ways, I want to make my own death a part of my life. Or, perhaps put in a more optomistic light (as a dear, dear friend of mine – now deceased – once said) I want to be alive when I die.
This afternoon I will attend the memorial service of a colleague who, at age 39, perfectly healthy, suddenly passed away. I’ve experienced the shock of sudden absence before, but each time it takes me by surprise, and renews my fascination with and questions about mortality. It’s a subject that’s very much on my mind and I’d be – what, delighted? relieved? grateful? – to share a conversation about it with you, Bree, any time.
It seems impossible to me to live life without a fear of death on some level. Consequently, it seems necessary to have some coping mechanism to deal with it – the denial of death. I think the fear/denial manifest themselves constantly in individual and socio-cultural life. Religion always seems to answer the question, "Is there more to life than just being born, eating, shitting, reproducing, and dying?" Even the Eastern religions offer a bigger purpose, despite the fact that they seem to deny the importance of the individual human life. Even Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, in which Frankl advocates that in the absence of any God or innate purpose people can find their own purpose, suggests that we cannot live without feeling that something goes beyond our measly, decaying lives.
Is it possible that the death drive is just the fear/denial of death come full circle? As I understand the Freudian/Lacanian interpretation of the death drive, it is the wish for reunification with that from which we sprang, a desire to return to an undifferentiated state. In some sense, it seems wrong to call it the death drive since it really is not the seeking of death (a finality) but the seeking of re-integration. Even from the point of view of the repetition-compulsion, one can see a desire to erase one's individuality through repetition of actions that previously diminished one's existence as an individual. And in the end, doesn't this perfectly reflect the denial of death, which is only experienced because we are painfully conscious of our individuality?
At this point, I'm don't quite know what to think about what happens after death. Not long ago, I would have said that individual self-awareness stops and all that composed this personality called Art Staaz just ceases to be anything whole. Now, I find myself wondering more. Part of the reason for this is because I have recently re-adopted a form of dualism when it comes to the mind-body problem. Lately, I'm more inclined to think that the mind has a biological aspect, the brain, and a non-biological aspect, that I refer to as symbolic communication. This architecture of symbolic communication seems to take on an existence, a life all its own, dependent on but separate from the brain. In this sense, how much of our consciousness survives in this symbolic realm independent of human biology? Right now, I don't know. My parents were fairly strong Catholics, so their beliefs reflected the traditional dualism of brain and mind/soul, which survives death and continues on in hell or in purgatory/heaven. I'm beginning to wonder how far my own beliefs are from theirs.
As I progress in life, I get more fearful of death, my own and those of the people I love. I am particularly horrified and fascinated by random death, death that defies logical explanation, the sort that sneaks up without any warning. It seems to unwind any feeble attempts at a grand universal purpose/meaning. On some level, I consider these things consciously at least every other day. However, it does seem to have a constant subconscious existence that colors most aspects of my daily life.
Universal fear -- Yes, without question. (I was about to state that it's true for all mortal beings on earth, but then I remembered all those sacrificial male arachnids and insects, who's willingness to die actually propogates more genes than their death-avoiding comrades.)
Universal denial -- I can't really say because I don't quite get what this means. I don't know of any society that denies death, though we certainly treat it as a distinctly, disturbing topic to avoid or speak about with great sensitivity -- and just like any other topic with that sort of distinction, it becomes both taboo, the subject of humor, and the subject of horror. (Am I being too Fruedian?)
I don't think the fear of death is used for social control, though. I think the fear of ostracization and isolation is much more intense for people (not how they are equally afraid of innocuous viruses with no symptoms as they are of HIV/AIDS, due to social stigma). Dying for a cause, for one's principles, is almost too attractive to be used as a deterrant.
I also think the fear of OTHER people's death is much more of a motivator. You can tell someone "don't smoke because you'll get lung cancer" and they don't flinch. The same person might lay down their life to save a family member or cherished friend.
2. Do you think there is such a thing as a "death drive" or an instinct that drives us toward, or compels us toward death psychologically, not just biologically toward entropy and decay?
Nope. Not at all. But like all taboos and mysteries, some people will be attracted to death-defying acts, dead bodies, morgues, etc.
3. What do you think happens when we die? Do you know what your parent/s think/thought about death? Do your beliefs differ significantly from theirs?
Interestingly, my thoughts are very similar to the religious upbringing I received. JWs don't believe in Hell. They believe in non-existence after death, no souls to go on anywhere and no reincarnation. If you're good, you're resurrected. They have a one-soul-one-body concept. I pretty much do, too, though I find the question of reincarnation interesting. I think "genetic memory" might be a better explanation, though.
4. How often do you think about, have anxious or curious feelings about, or fantasize/daydream about death? (your own death and/or the death of your loved ones?)
I have incredible anxiety about the death of loved ones. I'd suck as a mother. I'm completey the person who thinks "Maybe he's dead!" if I don't get a phone call returned quickly enough. It's pathetic.
I have wanted to die because I have been sick of living or feel poorly skilled at, or undeserving of life. I never attempt suicide though for all sorts of reasons, most of which stem from fantasy/anxieties of WHAT PEOPLE WILL SAY ABOUT ME BEHIND MY DEAD BACK. I always think I have to destroy ALL my journals and writings first, too, which is always too big a project when sucidially depressed.
Post a Comment