Abstract

Thomas Laqueur argues that the work of the dead is carried out through the living and through those who remember, honour, and mourn. Further, he maintains that the brutal or careless disposal of the corpse “is an attack of extreme violence”. To treat the dead body as if it does not matter or as if it were ordinary organic matter would be to deny its humanity. From Laqueur’s point of view, it is inferred that the dead are believed to have rights and dignities that are upheld through the rituals, practices, and beliefs of the living. The dead have always held a place in the space of the living, whether that space has been material and visible, or intangible and out of sight. This paper considers ossuaries as a key site for investigating the relationships between the living and dead. Holding the bones of hundreds or even thousands of bodies, ossuaries represent an important tradition in the cultural history of the dead. Ossuaries are culturally constituted and have taken many forms across the globe, although this research focuses predominantly on Western European ossuary practices and North American Indigenous ossuaries. This paper will examine two case studies, the Sedlec Ossuary (Kutna Hora, Czech Republic) and Taber Hill Ossuary (Toronto, ON, Canada), to think through the rights of the dead at heritage sites.

Highlights

  • Thomas Laqueur argues that the work of the dead is carried out through the living and through those who remember, honour, and mourn

  • This paper considers ossuaries as a key site for investigating the relationships between the living and dead

  • To resist a narrative of tourist shaming, instead, I ask: what ethics are at stake when places of death become enmeshed in commodities of global tourism? Should certain sites, resting places for the dead, be off limits? Do the dead have human rights, and what constitutes a violation of those rights?

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Summary

Introduction

“We endlessly invest the dead body with meaning because, through it, the human past somehow speaks to us.”. Diogenes’ rationale was that he would be gone and his dead body would not have the capacity to care what happened to it. Laqueur counters this by asking, do the dead matter? Laqueur argues that the work of the dead is carried out through the living and through those who remember, honour, and mourn. He maintains that the brutal or careless disposal of the corpse “is an attack of extreme violence”.3. This paper considers ossuaries as a key site for investigating the relationships between the living and dead. What are the ethical boundaries when a final resting place with bodies on display is marketed as a tourist site? Do the dead have human rights, and how are the living responsible for preserving those rights?

Sedlec Ossuary
Human Rights of the Dead
Taber Hill Ossuary
Future Consideration
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