thanatopraxis
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Etymology: From thanato- + -praxis, chiefly as a calque of French thanatopraxie. Doublet of thanatopraxy.
Senses: examples: text: [I]t is the English version of Western death that seems to be spreading more widely[…], both in the thanatopraxis of cremation which is spreading even in Portugal with the blessing of the Catholic Church and in the cultural ideals of dying […] In the 'symbolic' perspective one studies death through the prism of cosmology and community, collective and individual representations, mortuary rites, the cultural regulation of the emotions, thanatopraxis, mourning customs, the iconology of death.
ref: 1983, Herminio Martins, “Introduction: Tristes Durées”, in Rui Feijó, Herminio Martins, João de Pina-Cabral, editors, Death in Portugal: Studies in Portuguese Anthropology and Modern History (JASO Occasional Papers; 2), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, →OCLC, pages xi and xix:
text: Le travail de deuil, est-ce un travail, une espèce de travail? Et la thanatopraxie, technique de la pompe funèbre aujourd’hui enseignée dans des instituts, donnant lieu à des diplômes de qualification, la limiterat-on à une corporation parmi d’autres, à l’intérieur d’une économie sociale?
ref: 1986 [1974], Jacques Derrida, translated by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, Glas, Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, published 1990 (1st paperback printing), →ISBN, page 86, column 2:
text: In some respects the thanatopraxis of the Cantonese as described by James Watson is more discrepant, though I will indicate later in this chapter key underlying uniformities. […] Another standard feature of Chinese thanatopraxis is that, whereas spirit-money, paper houses, paper representations of clothes, a set of real new clothes, and other items are all transmitted to the deceased in the otherworld by burning, food is never burned for the dead. […] An individual’s biological death is merely a chapter-ending in that individual’s more extensive biography. This notion, of course, is widespread and by no means specific to the Chinese syndrome of beliefs and thanatopraxis.
ref: 1988, Stuart E. Thompson, “Death, Food, and Fertility”, in James L. Watson, Evelyn S[akakida] Rawski, editors, Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China (Studies on China; 8), Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, published 1990 (1st paperback printing), →ISBN, part II, pages 73, 75, and 80:
text: The following essays attempt to establish subtle connections between many unusual themes, commonplaces and well-known political phenomena: namely, […] cartomancy, thanatopraxis, ethnopsychiatry, […] Thanatopraxis consists of a technique whereby a corpse undergoes somatic treatment and is then stored, a practice that substitutes the ancient religious one of simply burying mortal remains in a cemetery as soon as possible. […] Sophisticated thanatopraxis can work marvels with corpses deformed by accidents, skin diseases, cancer and other mutilations. There are specialized treatments for overweight or pregnant corpses. […] D. Rochette, quoted by Louis-Vincent Thomas, Mort et pouvoir, Paris: Payot, 1978, p. 129. My description of thanatopraxis comes from this book.
ref: 1992 [1981], Roger Bartra, translated by Claire Joysmith, The Imaginary Networks of Political Power, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, pages 1 (Introduction), 208, and 209 (The Resurrection of the Corpses; footnote 3):
text: Therefore, every thanatopraxis, even in contemporary societies, is analysed as the will to ward off this sudden loss of signs that befalls the dead, to prevent there remaining, in the asocial flesh of the dead, something which signifies nothing.
ref: 1993 [1976], Jean Baudrillard, translated by Iain Hamilton Grant, “Funeral Homes and Catacombs”, in Symbolic Exchange and Death, London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, →ISBN, chapter 5 (Political Economy and Death), “My Death Is Everywhere, My Death Dreams” section, page 181:
text: What Ziegler (1982), the Swiss sociologist and politician, states about death in his remarkable book ‘Die Lebenden und der Tod’ (‘The Living and Death’) in which he compares the thanatopraxis – i.e. the way cultures deal with the fact of death – in our capitalist ‘Producer-Society’ with an African culture in Brazil, can be seen as the dominant image of man: “People produce goods and so themselves become products” (Ziegler (1982), 15). […] According to this more person-oriented perspective, the focus on our contemporary thanatopraxis relates more to the personal experience of life and death in the context of its social construction. […] Seriously acknowledging mortality as a human quality of all men and women would eliminate the main basis for inequality which, enforced by the total ignorance of death, is permanently maintained in the thanatopraxis of western societies. […] Contemporary thanatopraxis seems, as far as its lack of participation and self-management is concerned, to mirror the everyday reality in industrial enterprises.
ref: 1994, Burkard Sievers, Work, Death, and Life Itself: Essays on Management and Organization (de Gruyter Studies in Organization: Organizational Theory and Research; 51), Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, pages 10 (Beyond Motivation), 57 (Participation as a Quarrel), 146, and 149 (Equality through Death):
text: The funeral parlor sent a specialist trained at the French Institute of Thanatopraxis to prepare the body for burial, with the usual arranging of the face and body to best advantage.
ref: 1997 [1994], Élisabeth Roudinesco, translated by Barbara Bray, “Tomb for a Pharaoh”, in Jacques Lacan (European Perspectives), New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, part VIII (In Search of the Absolute), page 407:
text: I had to explore, area by area, the death practices (thanatopraxis) of the commercial capitalist societies of the West, […] The thanatopraxis of commercial societies brings legal assassination, as surely as clouds bring storms. . . . There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the conceptual apparatus of contemporary thanatocrats to exclude the arrival of a thanatopraxis similar to that practiced by Nazi barbarity.
ref: 2005, Véronique Campion-Vincent, quoting Jean Ziegler (Les vivants et la mort), “Facts and the Legend”, in Organ Theft Legends, Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, pages 65–66:
text: For Baudrillard all societies, ‘primitive’ and modern, share a necessary ‘thanatopraxis’. This means that any society must do something to ward off or make meaningful the ‘sudden loss of signs that befalls the dead, to prevent there remaining in the asocial flesh of the dead something which signifies nothing’ (1993a: 180).
ref: 2007, William Pawlett, “Symbolic Exchange and Death”, in Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality (Key Sociologists), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 61:
text: The series dramaturgy is therefore far removed from the idea of a chronic illness, whether degenerative or not, but rather placed in a setting much closer to the original model of the resuscitated corpse, matching a culture that systematically practices thanatopraxis and embalming before burial.
ref: 2017 [2016], Josep M. Comelles, Enrique Perdiguero Gil, translated by Kevin Booth, “The Walking Dead and Epidemics in the Collective Imagination”, in Toni de la Torre, editor, Medicine in Television Series (Notebooks of the Esteve Foundation; 42), Barcelona: Esteve Foundation, →ISBN, page 65, column 1:
glosses: Funeral rites; death rituals or practices.