Paper short abstract:

In New York City, Hart Island’s massed grave is not the result of war, violence or disaster. Nor was it prompted by Covid. It is simply what happens in NYC to anyone who cannot afford a funeral. Can a massed grave ever be ordinary?

Paper long abstract:

In New York City, Hart Island’s massed grave for Covid dead symbolised long-standing inequalities among the living. Footage of the burials attracted international attention, and many New Yorkers learned about Hart Island through these images. But, unusually for a massed grave, Hart Island is not the result of war, violence or disaster. Nor was it prompted by Covid’s soaring death toll. It is simply what happens in New York to anyone who cannot afford a funeral. As one funeral director told me, nothing different happened on Hart Island during Covid, except that it was busier.

In this paper I ask, can a massed grave ever be ordinary? Further, if massed graves are usually prompted by the exceptional, is it partly Hart Island’s ordinariness that distresses people?