This week we have been learning about mummies!!! Mummies are
an interesting and controversial subject that has captured the imaginations of
people everywhere. They stir up strong responses; fear, awe, disgust,
fascination? For me they bring issues of ethics to the forefront because they force us to
confront how we conceptualize bodies as human or object or maybe even somewhere
in between. They bring us face to face with death in ways that less fleshy
remains perhaps do not.
I
like bones. Bones appear to be hard, unchanging objects
and I think we often conceptualize of them as objects because we do not
usually
witness the dynamic nature of live bone but only the static state of
dry-bones.
Last semester I took human osteology and I found, for the most part,
that I did
not have a problem dealing with human remains in this way. It was in an
educational environment emphasizing the importance of bodies for
anatomical
learning and scientific pursuit. Even the fetal or young skeletal
remains did
not evoke a large reaction for me. It wasn’t until I was studying
carpals
(wrist bones) one day that I really got the heebie-jeebies that fleshy
remains
give me from the get go. I was sorting through a bag of random carpal
bones
identifying them and when I was done I had eight of one type, six of
those from
one side of the body. That’s when it hit me. I had a small handful of
bones
each one no bigger than a cm long and they represented the remains of
six people. Could I really be holding the remains of six human lives in
one hand? Could
a human life filled with laughter and tears, hardships and victories
really
boil down to a centimeter long chunk of bone? That was the moment for me
when
these clean, dry, dis-articulated teaching bones made the shift in my
mind from
object to person.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t conceptualize human remains as
human. When faced with a full skeleton I would clearly identify it as a person
and I would be eager to study their bones not so much because I find bones
themselves a remarkable tissue, which I certainly do, but because I would want to bring them back to
life, to know their story. As less and less of a complete body is present
however I think it is easier and easier to see objects rather than people. Unless
confronted with the discomfort of facing the magnitude of dead individuals as I
did, it is easy for your brain not to make the connection between a chunk of
bone and a living human. Personally I find fleshy bodies such as mummies much
harder to conceptually divorce from personhood although certainly not everybody
views mummified remains as people rather than objects. 
Where is the line for you? Is it mummies? Is it children? Is
it the recently deceased? It is an interesting question to consider as it is a
very complex and individual process but I think it gets you thinking about how
you conceptualize death and how that relates to issues of ethics when dealing
with human remains. Hopefully these pictures will stimulate you to consider where you
conceptually draw the line between person and object.
1. Lamp (http://store.graciousliving.com/brown-ballister-table-lamp.html), Chinchorro mummy (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/pictures/120813-mummies-chinchorro-proceedings-desert-driest-chile/), John Cleese (http://masticateonthis.blogspot.ca/2010_09_01_archive.html)
2.Tollund Man, Denmark (http://www.mesh5.com/tension/febmarch/tollund1.htm)
3. Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic (http://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/sedlec-ossuary-bone-church-czech-republic/)
4. Bronze Age Wessex, UK (http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/archaeology,ps/Interesting)
5. Rosalia Lombardo (http://www.ticinolive.ch/2013/01/23/rosalia-lombardo-bella-addormentata-nella-catacomba-dei-cappuccini-a-palermo/)
6. Capuchin Monastery mummies: Palermo, Sicily (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/crypt-photos/
Love this post! It is pretty crazy how easy it is to divorce human remains from the human lives they once contained. Even more so, to separate them from the fact that they are human. I too find it pretty easy to handle bones and not feel creepy about it. In fact I am usually pretty fascinated at just being able to have a look at something that is actually inside my body at the moment. Mummies don't really creep me out either, although I am sure that opinion may change if I were to see a body body in person, or have to touch one. It is super easy to say that having only seen them in pictures. I think while it is a bit disturbing at how easy it is to objectify human remains, it may also be a bit of a coping method. If you look at historical accounts of wars and the like, to cope with the mass amount of death, people quickly began to objectify the dead surrounding them. Obviously this is a much more extreme example, however, I think the same concept pertains to doing scientific study on human remains. If we constantly thought about the human lives the remains represented, it would probably be incredibly difficult to do any study of them at all. I know if I didn't at least separate remains from their living human implications a little bit, I would definitely be too uncomfortable to handle them.
ReplyDelete