« Death’s Anthropology : A social fact »

by Stéphane Malysse

«Philosophizing is learning to die »

A fatal fear in the dead of night ? Feeling death as destiny ? In many non-occidental
cultures there is a fear concerning death. This fear has a social origin without a mixture of
individual factors. It is able to cause physical and mental damage in the person’s body
and consciousness that can lead into his death in a short time. Death is announced
because it is expected. This “physics effect in the individual gives the idea of a suggested
death by the community.”1 studied in several cultures by the French anthropologist
Marcel Mauss.

He seems to send us irremediably to the provoked disturbs by the AIDS2 epidemic in the
death community representations in the occident at the end of the XX century. Man is the
unique live being conscious of his own death. Since the pre-historic period death’s
knowledge has stimulated diversified representations and practices3 . There is no
equivalence culturally among all ways of dying, but the corruption or the decomposition
of the body is always seen as dirty. There are many purification rites where the people
close to the dead body might go through because death is radically polluted4.

1
In most of traditional societies a man lives after his physic death. It is believed that his
individual consciousness continues existing after he abandoned his body. Thus, the man
becomes an uncomfortable corpse that may be buried, cremated, exposed, eaten or treated
in different ways. The idea of dying does not transform the dead person automatically
into an ancestor. That transformation occurs through a crossing rite far beyond (cultural
treatment of the not-being status) which normally happens in two different times.
According to the current practice of double funerals 5 : the first which are dedicated to the
corpse treatment open an ominous period in which the corpse spirit is malevolent due to
its presence among the living beings, the second transform this spirit into an ancestor
offer the group of living creatures the opportunity of reaffirming their social, cultural and
emotional cohesion.

That connection between the alive and the dead ones, clear in the funerary rites, is
inseparable from the relation between the society and the earth as well as its
representations: “The Earth is for the dead people as a common house”. Moses’ story
buying a cave which turned into a family tomb witnesses and constitutes a natural
symbol. His descendants found him into the tomb inside the earth making a corpse
community gathered by the common earth. The dead is joined in the other world through
the burial and funeral rites which blend him into the dead community. For that reason it is
important to have the corpse body naked or dressed6 : the man identity before his
disappearance is linked to the corpse.

In the identity extremity is the man’s end. In the occidental societies death became
something forbidden. Nowadays it goes through in silence7 , and it can remain invisible.
The refusal in suffering the physic emotion in face of the death vision, the live body rite
fervency, and the spiritual conceptions decline converge to transform death not into a
passage rite ( between the moribund before and after to the corpse)8 but it becomes a
hidden happening that occurs far away from home. In general death happens at the
hospital, far away from the looks. Although we are always alone in death’s agony, our
death is not the other’s death9 ?

2
 Arts Moriendi10: man’s finite as the greatest existential problem is also an art issue11 .
Man dies and makes it die. Arts must be enough to this pulsate at the same time vital and
fatal. The Arts shows death as a human problem, always present in a radical way because
man got into life and soul at the same time. Although, he always wanted immortality and
eternal youth « all his life, the body is also a dead one, a dead body, that dead person that
I am in life. Dead or alive, neither dead nor alive I am the opening, the tomb or the
mouth, one inside the other” 12

1
Mauss central idea in this text is that death may be provoked by moral and religion reasons through
« suggestion: Refers to the case of brutal death, caused in many individuals, because they know or believe
(what is the same thing) they will die. In those tragic cases, magic origin happenings, suggest the individual
the dominant and fatal idea « He will die ». Mauss mentions the case of the young aborigine from the
Wakelbure tribe, in Australia, who after eating an animal from a forbidden hunt, got sick and die, in a few
days, shouting in the same way the animal did. . Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et Anthropologie, 1950, Paris.
2
« The positivism serum, by the threat it contains, faces a private experience in the silence. It is scared by
the perspective of the announced death. For every man it represents the destruction of the feeling of been
taken away by the time infinite, immortal and immerse, trusting the world. Death’s announcement
corresponds to the safety ethnological rupture that follows every man during his lifetime. It is a fully
subversion of itself, a fracture of the personal identity feeling. Dying from a death that is not yours in a
body that is not yours either, dying without being recognized. David Le Breton, Du silence, Paris, 1997.
3
The Anthropology of Death deals with this cultural diversity of man’s relations with death. Its goal is to
study the community representations associated with death in a certain culture and observe how the
community and individual practices are used to answer to death’s anguish... Through funeral rites the
Anthropology of Death describes death’s cultural treatment, and interprets its rites...
4
“The terror the corpse inspires, however, has nothing to see essentially with the natural transformations
that happen in the body. Those transformations, by themselves, do not mean a lot. They are worth in reality
by what they send man’s spirit. No society can stand a strange body in control. That is the reason why we
treat the body carefully after its death. We dress it, close its mouth and eyes close all the orifices which can
cause any kind of activity which will shock the community. That uncontrolled activity that comes from the
corpse and also consumes it is something the society cannot stand. .” José Carlos Rodrigues, Taboo do
Body
5
Many cultures associate silence and death. The tibenti, a mourning rite dedicated to ancients, is celebrated
in silence by the Tammari from the North of Congo. The corpse’s clan gather around the takienta, an
edgeless house that it is built in the middle of the fields, and supports the attic. The clan keeps still and
quiet. Silent is the death’s language, the true word. Through silence the participants communicate with the
dead person and ancestors from another caste. As night comes, the old people’s blow leaves the tombs in
the cemetery and goes in the direction of the houses where in each one there is an altar. The clans silence is
an intentional call, an invitation to meet them. Installed in the houses they get ready to guide the corpse in
the way where it will go. A man stays in the balcony and turns on the high and low from the house through
a hole. He whispers the dead person’s name his sacred name which he was forbidden to be called while
alive. The soul startles and becomes attentive. The drums and flutes offer the continuity. Death’s blow,
separated from its shadow is susceptible to return in a child. Cf Miriam Smadja

3
6
« In the Middle Age people slept naked in beds, therefore it is not strange that the dead be represented
completely naked in this time. There are other ideas associated to nudity; first the innocent state in which
man has to abandon this world. How he arrived, a parallel is made between birth and death, his soul is
many times represented in a naked man shape that evokes the new-born. That nudity expresses equally the
man’s humbleness that will face God. He will be placed naked. Being naked is also abandoning the
appearance given by the clothes. It is impossible to hide anything from his life and soul and even lose the
marks of his profession and social identity. The separation is about to happen. The naked body is the one
which is about to pass away.” Florence Bayard, le corps à l’agonie.
7
“Death is the brutal eruption of an unbearable silence. The last breath is that last sound from humanity
still conceivable. At the moment death supports the man it also brings him down in the silence. Around
death, there is no word, it seems hesitant, and the gestures lose security. Silence shows its presence
intensively. Suffering and the difficulty in communicating suffocates the word and the impotency in giving
sense to the happenings, in recreating the linking multiply the pain. .” David Le Breton, Du silence.
8
« Before, facing this body that hesitates between life and death, we say which the body’s place in a
society, culture or tradition is, exalted or forgotten, glorified or rejected. Afterwards because of the cult, by
liturgy or rite we take a long look on our own body, the Egyptians mummified body, the autopsy
experimental body. We go through several affirmation attitudes of faith beyond the grave this body will
take part. There is the fear that justifies the desperate call to experts who they trust the carefulness in
investigating death to extend in favor or against all life that escapes from the body....” Marc Baietto, Le
mourant et le cadavre.
9
This Idea expresses itself perfectly in the pain we feel because we lost someone beloved. As time goes by
we introduce this beloved one in our nervous system.Several relations that we had with him were
interiorized, in such a way that they are part of ourselves. We cry because of that part of him which is
inside of us and was necessary in the functioning of our nervous system .Moral pain is like a physical
amputation without anaesthetics. Thus, what others gave us is essentially what we will take to our tomb...
Henri Laborit, Eloge de la fuite.
10
In the Middle Age, the Arts moriendi (Art of dying well) are books considered preparation to death
bound for either the moribund or the “assistant”. The moriendi arts summarise the different phases the
moribund goes through... Its interest is in his reactions and how to help him. The books provide them with a
message, through them we learn the pattern attitude that church will demand from the moribund and the
ones who are still alive. They propose a ritual to dominate the man’s attitude in his last moment...
Florence Bayard, Le corps à l’agonie.
11
« The Arts history is a death’s theatre. The art history shows it was fed and irrigated substantially with
sex, blood and death. How many war scenes, crucifixion, murders, crime, suicides happened .How much
blood was spilled, how many tortures hanged on the museums’ walls. From Dos Lascaux’s walls to the
classical paintings of battles, going through the cenography of the martyr, Christian death’s pulsing goes
through art.” Paul Ardenne, L’image-corps.
12
Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus.