Early in my field research, one of the most well-respected attorneys in the United States’ criminal defense bar described to me a moral sentiment that drives sentencing defense practices in murder cases charged with the death penalty. “In order for
The Death of Maternity?
Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death
Christie McDonald
Contrasting the view of motherhood in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex with the description of her mother's illness and death in A Very Easy Death, this essay examines the revelation of feelings previously unexplored in the relationship to her mother. Faced with a life-shattering experience, Beauvoir revisits issues not only about motherhood and maternity from her philosophical and sociological study, but her own feelings about her mother and disturbing ways in which doctors and families withheld knowledge from the dying in the mid-twentieth century.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2010
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 56–65
Mourning Palestine
Death and Grief Rituals
Aref Abu-Rabia and Nibal Khalil
This article presents various mourning rituals and death rites as they are practised in Palestine. It focuses on differences in the mourning experience among fellahin and Bedouin Arabs but also shows certain parallels in their mourning and grieving customs. The article provides information on the prescribed set of rituals that Palestinians perform, beginning with how the body is treated and the way that it is prepared for burial. Combinations of mourning practices, which vary from rending one's garments to throwing earth on one's head, provide socially sanctioned expressions of grief and sorrow. Mourning practices differ between women and men: the former lament loudly and scratch their faces, while among the latter tears are neither encouraged nor welcomed. Parallels can be seen in these rituals with mourning for Palestine.
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–18
Mirko M. Hall
sale figures.” 4 Although many Germanic bands are active in the scene and worthy of scholarly attention, 5 they are still—to riff on a. n . Whitehead— merely a series of footnotes to their fabled progenitors, the English band Death in June and its
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 60–79
Body Shock
The Political Aesthetics of Death
Uli Linke
In a global media market, images of war and victimhood are trafficked as master tropes of trauma situations with immense emotional appeal. Concurrent with this transformation of historical atrocities into consumable commodities, new forms of spectatorship—focused on bodies, medicine, and death—are being produced by the entertainment industry. The article examines this fascination with corpses by focusing on Body Worlds, a traveling anatomical exhibit that was initially launched in Germany. I interrogate the means by which dissected corpses are presented as popular entertainment in a post-Holocaust society and seek to explain the installation's global appeal. My research reveals that the collusion between the state and private enterprise not only endorses the global traffic in corpses but also enables the public spectacle of anatomical human bodies by negating subjectivity, violence, and history.
Lost Boys
An Estimate of U.S. Circumcision-Related Infant Deaths
Dan Bollinger
Baby boys can and do succumb as a result of having their foreskin removed. Circumcision-related mortality rates are not known with certainty; this study estimates the scale of this problem. This study finds that approximately 117 neonatal circumcision-related deaths (9.01/100,000) occur annually in the United States, about 1.3% of male neonatal deaths from all causes. Because infant circumcision is elective, all of these deaths are avoidable. This study also identifies reasons why accurate data on these deaths are not available, some of the obstacles to preventing these deaths, and some solutions to overcome them.
Sex and Death in Quebec
Female AutobioBD and Julie Doucet's Changements d'adresses
Catriona MacLeod
In comparison to the U.S. market, the trend for autobiographical sequential art arrived late within the history of the francophone bande dessinée. Its rising popularity throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium coincided, and to an extent connected, with another belated development in the French-language industry however: that of the growing presence of the female artist. This article considers the strong presence of life narratives in bandes dessinées created by women, before presenting a case-study examining the manipulation of the medium to an autobiographical end in Québécoise artist Julie Doucet's 1998 Changements d'adresses ['Changes of Addresses']. It considers how, in this coming-of-age narrative set first in Montreal and then New York, Doucet utilises the formal specificity of the bande dessinée to emphasise both the fragmentation and then reintegration of her hybrid enunciating instances. It further examines Doucet's usage of the life-narrative bande dessinée to oppose her representation from that of the disruptive male figures in her life, whose sexual presence in her personal evolution is often connected to images of dysfunction and death, finally suggesting via this examination of Julie Doucet and Changements d'adresses the particular suitability of female-created life narratives to feminist reappropriations of the francophone bande dessinée.
John H. Gillespie
has been fascinating to discover the number of references to ‘la Mort de Dieu’ [the Death of God] 2 in various documents during a key period of his intellectual development (1943–1952). In this article we examine the significance of these references
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 41–57
Blood and the City
Animal Representations and Urban (Dis)orders during the ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’ in Istanbul and Khartoum
Alice Franck, Jean Gardin, and Olivier Givre
relationship’ developed through ritual slaughtering and sacrifice: briefly said, sacrifice appears as a ‘good death’ for some, and the only proper way to kill, and a contestable if not scandalous death for others. Cases of Muslim butchers condemned for cruelty
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 85–111
The Algebra of Souls
Ontological Multiplicity and the Transformation of Animism in Southwest China
Mireille Mazard
deceased. Through transformations enacted in death and fire, the deceased and his or her belongings become ontologically other. This process of metamorphosis entails a geographical movement as well, as they set off for the land of the dead ( mhade ). Lañi