Abstract
Critiques of ecologically harmful human activity in the Anthropocene extend beyond life and livelihoods to practices of dying, death, and the disposal of bodies. For members of the diffuse ‘New Death Movement’ operating in the post-secular West today, such environmental externalities are symptomatic of a broader failure of modern death care, what we refer to here as the ‘Death Industrial Complex’. According to New Death advocates, in its profit-driven, medicalised, de-ritualized and patriarchal form, modern death care fundamentally distorts humans’ relationship to mortality, and through it, nature. In response, the Movement promotes a (re)new(ed) way of ‘doing death’, one coded as spiritual and feminine, and based on the acceptance of natural cycles of decay and rebirth. In this article, we examine two examples from this Movement that demonstrate how the relationship between death, religion, and gender is re-configured in the Anthropocene: the rise of death doulas as alternates to funeral directors and the invention of new necro-technologies designed to transform the dead into trees. We ask how gender is positioned within the attempt to remake death care, and show how, for adherents of the New Death Movement, gender is fundamental both to a critique of the Death Industrial Complex and to mending our distorted relationship to death. By weaving together women, nature, and spirituality, the caring labours of death doulas and the fertility symbolism of new arboreal necro-technologies build an alternative model of a good death in the Anthropocene, one premised on its (re)feminization.
Highlights
The keynote for the 14th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal, hosted by the University of Bath in September 2019, proved to be a charged site of public confrontation between the modern UK funeral industry and its discontents
After the Head of Insight and External Affairs at the funeral company Dignity gave his presentation on consumer trends in the British funeral market, the audience stirred, and the first question was delivered from the back of the room: Will you recognise that it is the patriarchal take-over of the funeral industry that has destroyed our culture’s relationship to death and created these problems
The specific castigation of contemporary death care communicated through the first question can only be understood when we know the identity of its asker: Zenith Virago, an Australian death educator, author, celebrant, ritualist, self-styled ‘deathwalker’, i.e., somebody who “walks with people through the dying process” (Natural Death Care Centre 2017), and founder of the Natural Death Care Centre in Byron Bay
Summary
The keynote for the 14th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal, hosted by the University of Bath in September 2019, proved to be a charged site of public confrontation between the modern UK funeral industry and its discontents. The NDM has roots in earlier social movements, in particular 1970s groups concerned with death awareness, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death Movement (Lofland 1978; Troyer 2020) Not coincidentally, these movements arose during an age of both secularization and the rise of new religious movements, when religions—which had once provided people with rich rituals and meta-narratives on life and death—began to lose their hold on society (Davies 2002). These movements arose during an age of both secularization and the rise of new religious movements, when religions—which had once provided people with rich rituals and meta-narratives on life and death—began to lose their hold on society (Davies 2002) Despite this shrinking social role of religious institutions, the quest for meaning-making in the face of death was profound, and in the new spiritual approaches to death that emerged, gender was critical. Complementary to this material, author conducted fieldwork at five different NDM events and meet-ups in Australia during 2019 and virtual fieldwork in events and social media groups hosted by groups in the USA and UK during 2020. undertook a three-day intensive death doula training course, conducted interviews with ten women who identify as part of the NDM, and participated in Death Cafes and community events for ‘Dying to Know Day’ (8 August 2019)
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