Open access
DEATH THAT DOES NOT WANT TO BE VISUALIZED...? CULTURAL FACTORS OF THINKING ABOUT DEATH AND MORTALITY IN REGARDS TO THE POSTMODERN VISION OF DEATH
Monika Miczka-Pajestka1
PHILOSOPHY – PERCEPTION AND VISUALIZATION OF WORLD AND LIFE
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1–2 (88–89) 2016, Publication date: 10 May 2016
Keywords: death, mortality, culture, imaging, symbolism
Abstract In this article the question of perception, as well as visualizing and understanding death have been presented and discussed. The cultural determinants of thinking about death and the prospect of post-modern “crowding” out of death from the space of life are indicated. Also the problem of visualizing death throughout culture, its symbolic and ritual sphere, has been considered, taking into account the post-modern situation, with ”assassination” as its domain, symbol and character. It is a response to the questions: whether a man does not want or need the death being visualized anymore? Or whether death does not want to be visualized anymore? The axis of reflection presented in the following study was the assumption in the postmodern world, that death has been deprived of its “image”, thus it became impossible to describe or discuss. This is strongly connected with the issue of change in the perception and understanding of death. This concerns i.e. idiosyncrasy connected with the antipathy towards the same concept and the phenomenon of death; reluctance to talk about death and its displacement from the sphere of everyday life and the realm of meaning.
Akademia Techniczno-Humanistyczna w Bielsku-Białej, Wydział Humanistyczno-Społeczny
E-mail: mmp111@poczta.fm