Introduction: Death and/as Relationality

Abstract

1 Exploring eerie uncomfortable feeling—resulting from a combination of grief, distress, and apprehension—that, for many, has characterized our co-existence with a global pandemic, author of article interviewed three social psychologists on subject of the existential anxiety caused by reminders of our own mortality If SARS-CoV-2 has performed any useful function, it has at least accelerated a process that began to develop in 1970s, by forcing us to confront our psychological, cultural, and possibly even neurological propensity to deny death 2 The daily press conferences, news bulletins, and social media feeds, each containing an update on latest death tolls, have rendered mortality shockingly salient Catherine Ceylac's 2018 book A la vie a la mort, which brings together fourteen leading French artists, writers, and personnalites who share with Ceylac—and reader—their thoughts on absence, loss, pain, and beliefs in context of losing a loved one, provides an illustration of France's recent public conversation on death 4 The topical debates taking place in France on euthanasia, following 2018 decision of Assemblee consultative du Conseil economique, social et environnemental (CESE) to adopt a recommendation that people suffering from an incurable disease phase avancee ou terminale, and whose pain is classified as inapaisable, should have right to benefit from a sedation profonde explicitement letale, offer further compelling evidence that France is reconsidering its relationship with death 5 The socio-cultural shifts towards talking and thinking about death are all more remarkable since, as Ceylac observes, Western cultures have traditionally been reticent, even anxious, about subject: Par peur de l'inconnu, du mystere, du vide abyssal, la mort, en Occident, est taboue, on en parle en baissant la voix, a demi-mot, de peur qu'elle nous contamine (Ceylac 10) Citing figures from Strasbourg that show that, whereas in 1840, 15% of population died in hospital, that figure rose to 30% by time of World War One and stands at 75% today, Anne Carol has written extensively on revolution recente in cultural practices of dying in modern France 10 Many important consequences have resulted from cultural shift towards what is termed a medicalized death