Dealing with death in contemporaryWestern culture: A view from afar

The treatment of death in many cultural settings traditionally studied by anthropologists and in contemporary Western contexts is compared with respect to the three types of phenomena this event involves: the presence of a corpse, the emotional reactions of those close to the deceased and collective representations of pain, loss and dying. In the former, the presence of the corpse at the center of mourning rituals allows for an emotional sharing between the different parties at hand. It is argued that in the case of collective catastrophes in the contemporary West, the conflicts raised by collective commemorations, like mourners’ reactions to the corpse in other cultural traditions, allow persons occupying different positions to participate in an emotional attunement in which physical presence, affective expression and shared representations of loss are made to converge.