The Human Body. Anticipation of Death and Recollection of Birth

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Although the human body has now been the central concern of historical anthropology for more than twenty-five years, it remains enigmatic. One important spectrum in which we experience its inscrutability – the body as corpus absconditum – is indicated by the dynamics of the anticipation of death and the recollection of birth. So far, cultural studies, like philosophy, have dealt with the human body’s transience and mortality. Especially death, being the boundary of life, has formed a main area of interest. On the other hand, birth, the other side of physical existence, has hardly received any attention at all until recently. The discussion is now becoming more complex: Birth is the precondition of death. Only what has been born can die. It is the alternation of birth and death which permits the creatio continua, without which neither the human body nor any human life could ever have come into being. Therefore, this article first looks at human evolution from the perspective of the rhythmical repetition of birth and death. I then address the question of how culture deals with human mortality, showing that even for Neanderthal man already, the fear of death occupied the imagination and gave rise to ideas about the hereafter. I show that death is also central to cultural studies with regard to ontogenesis. These considerations require reflections on birth and on the human body’s natality – which is the subject of my third section.