Death, memory, and material culture

Elizabeth Hallam, Jenny Hockey

"How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies? How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories? Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making?". "Objects, images, practices, and places remind us of the deaths of others and our own mortality. At the time of death, embodied persons disappear from view, their relationships with others come under threat and their influence may cease. Emotionally, socially, politically, much is at stake at the time of death. In this context, memories and memory-making can be highly charged, and often provide the dead with a social presence amongst the living. Memories of the dead are bulwark against the terror of forgetting, as well as an inescapable outcome of a life's ending.". "Objects in attics, gardens, museums, streets and cemeteries can tell us...

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