Death Dying Culture An Interdisciplinary Interrogation

This inter- and multi-disciplinary volume examines how culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying, and ways the dead are re

This inter- and multi-disciplinary volume examines how culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying, and ways the dead are remembered. Over the past three decades, scholarship in thanatology has increased dramatically. This text localizes a broad array of perspectives that research, analyze, and interpret the many interrelations and interactions that exist between death and culture. Culture not only presents and portrays ideas about 'a good death' and norms that seek to achieve it, but culture also operates as both a vehicle and medium through which meaning about death is communicated and understood. Sadly, too, culture sometimes facilitates death through violence.

The Art of Dying: 21st Century Depictions of Death and Dying examines how contemporary media platforms are used to produce creative accounts, responses and reflections on the course of dying, death and grief. Outside the public performance of grief at funerals, grief can strike in anticipation of a loss, or it can endure, continuing to interject itself and interrupt a permanently changed life. This book examines the particular affordances possessed by various contemporary creative forms and platforms that capture and illuminate different aspects of the phenomenology of dying and grief. It explores the subversive and unguarded nature of stand-up comedy, the temporal and spatial inventiveness of graphic novels, the creative constructions of documentary filmmaking, the narrative voice of young adult literature, the realism of documentary theatre, alongside more ubiquitous media such as social media, television and games. This book is testament to the power of creative expression to elicit vicarious grief and sharpen our awareness of death.

The Quest for Happiness Is a Universal Fact. It is a scientific fact, which means we can measure happiness, we can assess it, and we can devise strategies to make ourselves happy and fulfilled human beings. So says Professor Gad Saad, the author of the sensational bestseller The Parasitic Mind and the irrepressible host of The Saad Truth podcast. In this provocative, entertaining, and life-changing new book, he roams through the scientific studies, culls the wisdom of ancient philosophy and religion, and draws on his extraordinary personal experience as a refugee from war-torn Lebanon turned academic celebrity. In The Saad Truth about Happiness you’ll learn the secrets to living the good life, including: • How to live the life you want—not necessarily the life expected of you • Why resilience is a key to happiness • Why your career needs to have a higher purpose than a paycheck • Why variety truly can be the spice of life • Why choosing the right spouse is so important • Why Aristotle had it right when he preached moderation • Why you should take a hint from your dog and realize that playfulness equals happiness The Saad Truth about Happiness is as lively, stimulating, and captivating as its author, who has become a "de facto global therapist" to an ever-growing audience of hundreds of thousands of people. Read this book and you’ll see why so many seek his counsel.

Enea Bianchi provides the first in-depth introduction to the pioneering thought of 20th-century Italian philosopher, Mario Perniola. Examining Perniola's entire oeuvre, this book also pushes his philosophy into new directions by investigating the connection between his aesthetics and the philosophical underpinnings of dandyism. Rich in influences, from ancient Stoicism to Roman ritualism, Baroque literature and avant-garde revolutionary movements, Perniola's philosophy is wide-ranging. This book highlights and explores numerous notions pivotal to understanding Perniola's thought, including: the “sex appeal of the inorganic”, the “enigma”, “strategic beauty” and the “artistic shadow”. Combining these concepts with three exemplar dandies – George Brummell, Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde – Bianchi demonstrates not only the close relationship between their principles and Perniola's aesthetics, but their shared, and timely, opposition to the status quo. A dandy philosophy emerges, which challenges the individual not only to refute the ongoing commodification of tastes, emotions and lifestyles, but also to develop a welcoming and loving disposition with respect to the enigma of our prismatic world.

Chapter 12 of this book is open access under a CC BY license. Well-established scholars from a variety of disciplines - including sociology, anthropology, media and cultural studies, and political sciences – use the social construction of death and dying to analyse a wide variety of meaning-making practices in societal fields such as ethics, politics, media, medicine and family.

With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.

Few issues apply universally to people as poignantly as death and dying. All religions address concerns with death from the handling of human remains, to defining death, to suggesting what happens after life. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying provides readers with an overview of the study of death and dying. Questions of death, mortality, and more recently of end-of-life care, have long been important ones and scholars from a range of fields have approached the topic in a number of ways. Comprising over fifty-two chapters from a team of international contributors, the companion covers: funerary and mourning practices; concepts of the afterlife; psychical issues associated with death and dying; clinical and ethical issues; philosophical issues; death and dying as represented in popular culture. This comprehensive collection of essays will bring together perspectives from fields as diverse as history, philosophy, literature, psychology, archaeology and religious studies, while including various religious traditions, including established religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as new or less widely known traditions such as the Spiritualist Movement, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Raëlianism. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, philosophy and literature.