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In recent decades the number of clinical dissections has declined rapidly in all Western societies. In seeking to explain this development, one must set it within the frame of the general role of dead bodies and death in general in contemporary society. Against the background of two opposing theses – the continuing repression of death and the ‘new culture of death’ – this paper sketches the historical development of clinical dissection, whose practice was central to the development of what Foucault called the modern “medical gaze.” The question of the reasons for its decline was addressed by a representative survey which showed that dissections are well accepted by the public. The article concludes that while the reasons for the decline in clinical dissections lie in the health system and modern medical practices, other forms of dissection, dead bodies, and death in general are experiencing increasing popularity, in a popular culture of death.
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2
Cf. Dominik Groß, Die Entwicklung der inneren und äußeren Leichenschau in historischer und ethischer Sicht (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002).
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4
Michel Foucault, La naissance de la clinique. Une archéologie du regard médical (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963).
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6
Philippe Ariès, L'Homme devant la mort (Paris: Seuil, 1977), p. 739.
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9
Thomas Luckmann, Die unsichtbare Religion (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), p. 114.
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10
Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine (London: Marion Boyars, 1976).
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11
Mary Bradbury, Representations of Death: A Social Psychological Perspective (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1999), p. 165.
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14
Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain (New York: Arno Press, 1977); Werner Schneider, “Zur diskursiven Ordnung des Lebensendes,” in Thanatosoziologie: Tod, Hospiz und die Institutionalisierung des Sterbens, edited by Hubert Knoblauch and Arnold Zingerle (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2005), pp. 55-79, p. 56.
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15
Lucy Bregman, “The Death Awareness Movement: Psychology as Religion?” in Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain. Contemporary Dialogues, Future Prospects, edited by Diane Jonte-Pace and William B. Parsons (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2001) pp. 320-332.
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17
Bruce Hart et al., “Whose Dying? A Sociological Critique of the ‘Good Death,’” Mortality, 1998, 3, 1: 65-77. The contrast to the notion of taboo becomes quite salient in the concept of the “happy death movement” coined by Lyn Lofland, The Craft of Dying: The Modern Face of Death (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976).
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19
Glennys Howarth, Death and Dying: A Sociological Introduction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2007); Hubert Knoblauch, Populäre Religion (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009).
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20
Cf. Norbert Fischer, Wie wir unter die Erde kommen. Sterben und Tod zwischen Trauer und Technik. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1997); Antje Kahl, “Das Design bestimmt das Bewusstsein? Zur neuen Sichtbarkeit im Bestattungswesen,” in Die neue Sichtbarkeit des Todes (cit. note 18), pp. 119-131.
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23
Tony Walter, “Facing Death Without Tradition,” Contemporary Issues in the Sociology of Death, Dying and Disposal, edited by G. Howarth and G. Jupp (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1996), p. 195.
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28
Margaret Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 66; Diethard Sawicki, Leben mit den Toten. Geisterglauben und die Entstehung des Spiritismus in Deutschland 1770-1900 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002).
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29
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).
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39
Antje Kahl, “Klinische Sektionen: Umfrage zeigt allgemeine Zustimmung,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 2010, 107, 50: 2492-3; Ead., “Die Einstellung der Bevölkerung zur klinischen Sektion. Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsbefragung,” Der Pathologe, 2011, 32: 345-348.
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45
Amit Prasad, “Making Images/ Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining Through Magnetic Resonance Imagining (MRI),” Science, Technology and Human Values, 2005, 30, 2: 291-316, p. 291.
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46
Cf. José van Dijck, “Bodies Without Borders: The Endoscopic Gaze,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2001, 4: 219-237; this virtual body has indeed been online since 1994 (as a female since 1995): (www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html.
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47
Cf. Stefan Timmermans, “Retreat of the Autopsy,” in Der Tod, der tote Körper (cit. note 38), pp. 127-135.
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49
Tina Weber, Drop Dead Gorgeous. Representations of Corpses in American TV Shows (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011).
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Search for other papers by Hubert Knoblauch in
Current site
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In recent decades the number of clinical dissections has declined rapidly in all Western societies. In seeking to explain this development, one must set it within the frame of the general role of dead bodies and death in general in contemporary society. Against the background of two opposing theses – the continuing repression of death and the ‘new culture of death’ – this paper sketches the historical development of clinical dissection, whose practice was central to the development of what Foucault called the modern “medical gaze.” The question of the reasons for its decline was addressed by a representative survey which showed that dissections are well accepted by the public. The article concludes that while the reasons for the decline in clinical dissections lie in the health system and modern medical practices, other forms of dissection, dead bodies, and death in general are experiencing increasing popularity, in a popular culture of death.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 239 | 39 | 4 |
| Full Text Views | 87 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 47 | 6 | 0 |
