4S/EASST conference 18-21 August 2020 in Prague
Please consider submitting an abstract to our panel 52: Dying at the
Margins: Emerging Material-Discursive Perspectives on Death and Dying
Organizers: Philip R Olson (Virginia Tech) Natashe Lemos Dekker (University
of Amsterdam) Jesse Peterson (KTH Stockholm)
This session seeks to explore socio-ecological networks of the dying and
dead that exist at the margins. The borders between life and death are
sometimes unclear. Death may get interrupted, delayed, or come undone,
disrupting culturally shared norms and expectations surrounding death and
dying. We acknowledge such disruptions as material and discursive; that is,
bodies, minds, geographies, stories, technologies, and more act to
challenge human perspectives on how people, animals, plants, or things
ought to die and where and how the dead ought to be laid to rest. Suddenly,
what seemed coherent no longer is, in the breakdown or dissolution of that
which is dying but also in the way one orders worlds and afterworlds.
This session aims to identify and develop ways to explore and establish
connections between dying and death from perspectives that refute a
nature/culture binary—to ask questions such as: What boundary work takes
place to construct and maintain the categories of alive, not-alive, dead,
dying, and undead for places, objects, and beings? How do states and
processes of acquiescing to, existing in between, manipulating, or
overcoming life and/or death affect normative assumptions about dying and
death? What might it mean to reconfigure human understanding of death to a
more ecological frame that accommodates more-than-human lives and/or deep
time? How might the memories, spirits, or spiritualities related to the
dead and dying limit, expand, or explode a material-discursive frame? How
do such challenges alter ethical approaches or values attached to dying and
death?
Keywords: Death and Dying, Environment, Vital Boundaries, Worlds and
Afterworlds, Ethics and Policy
Categories: Environmental/Multispecies Studies, Medicine and Healthcare,
Governance and Public Policy
For further questions please contact: prolson@vt.edu, N.Lemosdekker@uva.nl,
jessep@kth.se
Deadline for abstracts is 29th of February, and should be submitted via
the 4S/EASST website: https://convention2.allacademi
Abstracts are limited to 250 words.