Institutional Bodies: Spatial Agency and the Dead

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the Catholic Church and Western medicine assumed historically significant roles in the use and circulation of human remains and, in so doing, established distinct traditions of dissection, preservation, and display. Furthermore, both institutions still maintain an essential role in making human remains ever more popular and culturally acceptable. The Church and Western medicine uphold various means of interaction that effectively keep the dead undisposed for specific purposes: as forms of cultural capital, objects of veneration, and fetishized, or aestheticized diversion. As such, the institutionalized dead have come to inhabit very particular spaces where they are made to perform a variety of duties for the living.Two seemingly opposed institutions in Western society have each contributed to the use of human remains as material culture. These institutions are the Roman Catholic Church, with its rich tradition of making and displaying relics, and the field of medicine in its creation and promotion of anatomical specimens. Both establishments, sanctioned by and representing powerful forms of authority, have been processing and displaying the dead human body over as many centuries as they have been active. But rather than representing two separate and distinct philosophies with respect to the human body, the Catholic Church and Western medicine have each promoted and established a very similar type of commodification and commercial aesthetic of the cadaver. Both have also created forms of spatial agency around the dismemberment Correspondence to: Myriam Nafte, Anthropology, McMaster University,

An Ethical, Cultural and Historical Background for Cemetery-Based Human Skeletal Reference Collections

“…However, Roman Catholic practices and traditions have also facilitated this practice through the cultural acceptance of contact with, and the disturbance of, human remains from cemeteries and other contexts. In Catholic countries the manipulation and dissection of bodies was already common and practised widely as part of the veneration of the dead (Bynum 1994;Park 1994Park , 1995Buklijas 2008;Nafte 2015). Specifically, the Catholic Church established, in parallel with Western medicine, a distinct tradition of dissection, preservation and display of human remains through the cult of relics or of the remains of martyrs and saints (Park 1994(Park , 1995Wortley 2006;Walsham 2010;Nafte 2015;Kerner 2018).…”

“…In Catholic countries the manipulation and dissection of bodies was already common and practised widely as part of the veneration of the dead (Bynum 1994;Park 1994Park , 1995Buklijas 2008;Nafte 2015). Specifically, the Catholic Church established, in parallel with Western medicine, a distinct tradition of dissection, preservation and display of human remains through the cult of relics or of the remains of martyrs and saints (Park 1994(Park , 1995Wortley 2006;Walsham 2010;Nafte 2015;Kerner 2018). These relics, which have an intermediary role in establishing a dialogue between the Church and its communities through Mass, feast days, other ceremonies and ordinations, form a vast imagery of human remains and of mummies that is visible in Catholic churches around the world, and, along with later exhumation as a frequent component of burial ritual, this has normalised frequent or prolonged contact with human remains, in comparison with Protestant practices.…”

Serious Enquiries Only, Please: Ethical Issues Raised by the Online Human Remains Trade

“…Understanding the online and offline commercial trade in human remains is, relatively speaking, a new area of research (e.g. Huxley and Finnegan 2004;Kubiczek and Mellon 2004;Nafte 2014Nafte , 2015Huffer and Chappell 2014;Huffer and Graham 2017;Huffer et al in press). Collectors and dealers in this 'niche' market have garnered their own attention in the popular press, given the esoteric and macabre nature of what they seek (e.g.…”

“…(more here re: a few refs about repatriation and museum controversies). As mentioned at the beginning of this section, academic work attempting to document and quantify commercial collecting, especially outside of religious or medical contexts (see Nafte 2014Nafte , 2015Quigley 2001), is still quite rare.…”

Overcoming Death: Conserving the Body in Nineteenth-Century Belgium

“…These collections of anatomical specimens and holy relics were designed to be displayed, and by the Renaissance period, they became increasingly adorned and made into commodities. 6 However, in the seventeenth century, anatomists working on (lay) bodies developed techniques to conserve tissues by macerating and storing body parts in alcohol-filled jars. This meant that they could create new spectacles of death, beyond the dry skeletons that originally filled their cabinets.…”