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P002b


Life after death: intersubjectivity, care, and hope at the end of existence II 
Convenors:
Annemarie Samuels (Leiden University)
Sylvia Tidey (University of Virginia)
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Format:
Panel
Location:
Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/011
Sessions:
Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

How can/does one live towards death when there is life after death? This panel seeks to address the question of how the fact of a life's inevitable ending shapes intersubjective care practices when death is thought not to be the end of existence, but a transformation.

Long Abstract:

How can/does one live towards death when there is life after death? This panel seeks to address the question of how the fact of a life's inevitable ending shapes intersubjective care practices when death is thought not to be the end of existence, but a transformation.

With the rapidly expanding availability of biomedical technologies that can lengthen life, the timing of death has increasingly become a matter of decision making, with death figuring as biomedical failure and endpoint (Kaufman 2005). At the same time, anthropologists show that expectations of life after death, where death is not the (only) end but (also) a form of continuation or transformation, affect how people live and care towards dying (e.g. Desjarlais 2016; Stonington 2020). This panel therefore asks how hope and other temporal orientations towards different 'endings,' continuations, and possibly new beginnings, shape care practices in the face of impending death. In particular, this panel invites ethnographically grounded reflections on the ways in which people orient themselves towards death, navigate their relationships with intimate others, and accept or refuse particular forms of care, while intersubjectively reassessing what a good life, death, or afterlife might mean. Such questions are especially pressing now that the Covid-19 pandemic has not only brought death to the forefront of our collective imaginations, but has also laid bare local and global inequalities of living, dying, and accessing biomedical and other forms of care that long predate the current pandemic.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -