Death, Memory and Material Culture· How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies? · How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories? · Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making? Objects, images, practices, and places remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. At the time of death, embodied persons disappear from view, their relationships with others come under threat and their influence may cease. Emotionally, socially, politically, much is at stake at the time of death. In this context, memories and memory-making can be highly charged, and often provide the dead with a social presence amongst the living. Memories of the dead are a bulwark against the terror of forgetting, as well as an inescapable outcome of a life’s ending. Objects in attics, gardens, museums, streets and cemeteries can tell us much about the processes of remembering. This unusual and absorbing book develops perspectives in anthropology and cultural history to reveal the importance of material objects in experiences of grief, mourning and memorializing. Far from being ‘invisible’, the authors show how past generations, dead friends and lovers remain manifest – through well-worn garments, letters, photographs, flowers, residual drops of perfume, funerary sculpture. Tracing the rituals, gestures and materials that have been used to shape and preserve memories of personal loss, Hallam and Hockey show how material culture provides the deceased with a powerful presence within the here and now. |
Contents
Metaphors Bodies and Material Objects | 23 |
Time Death and Memory | 47 |
Spaces of Death and Memory | 77 |
Copyright | |
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agency Antze argues ashes aspects become bereaved bodily cabinets of curiosities Canterbury Cathedral cemetery Chapter clothing collective connections contemporary corpse cultures of death death and memory death rituals death-related decay deceased display diverse domains domestic dying early modern emotional everyday example experience explore Figure flowers forms of memory fragments funeral gestures grave grief grotesque body hair highlight historical human identity imagery individual inscribed inscriptions instance interaction jewellery linked living body located London loss Marischal Museum material cultures material dimensions material environments material forms material objects materialized memories materials of memory meanings memento mori memory forms memory objects memory practices memory processes Merina metaphor mourning Museum narrative Nora Nottinghamshire past perceived perspective photographs physical possessions present preservation Princes Risborough relation relationships relics remembering resonance Seremetakis Sheringham significance Sir Moyle Finch Sleeping Beauty social practices spaces spatial sustain temporal texts tion transformation University of Aberdeen visual images words writing