PhD Research
As a part-time PhD student, I’m now in my fifth year. My research is focused on the death positivity movement, looking at how it has spread and the different historical roots for it. It incorporates questions such as whether the DPM can be seen as Implicit Religion (Bailey, 1997); I’m interested to find out how practitioners who consider themselves death positive view their work and what influences their “positive” view of death. I have interviewed 25 people who work as death doulas, mortuary workers, funeral staff from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Israel.
Other aspects of my research consider whether and how certain aspects of the DPM can be seen to trivialise or ‘tivolize’ death (Jacobsen, 2020). Jacobsen describes tivolization as: ‘‘The otherwise inconspicuous normality of certain events or themes transformed or even exaggerated into a playful, carnivalesque, commercialized, entertainment-based, self-propelling, unserious, and often rather superficial kind of spectacle or experience’. Included in this definition might be selfies with dead bodies, themed funerals, body plastinisation exhibitions and I am interested in exploring people’s opinions through social media posts and also within the interviews.
The concept of hyperreality, ‘a real from which all meaning and charm, all depth and energy of representation have vanished in hallucinatory resemblance’ (Baudrillard, 1994: 23) is also part of what I am questioning within death positivity. Is the reality of death and grief being turned into a hyperreal “experience” for consumption?
The term “death positive” itself can be problematic; if someone has lost a loved one, they may consider it crass and/or insensitive. Some of the humour or detail of invasive procedures used on certain death positive websites may not be appropriate for people who are grieving and may add to their sorrow.
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