MAAAT-FUNERALI-MANCATI-TERATOLOGIA-001Collection

Funerals Denied: Non-Burial as a Documented Administrative Act

The concept of the denied funeral is the theoretical frame on which this record rests. The 24 specimens recorded at the Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia are, first of all, human beings — foetuses, newborns, children, adolescents, adults — who received no burial. They became museum objects instead of bodies committed to the earth. That passage, from body to specimen, did not happen through inertia: it was decided, requested, authorised and recorded in writing. Section C reconstructs those documents.

Origin: Musei Civici di Reggio dell'Emilia
Period: 800-900

Referenced by theme items

Catalogue metadata

Abstract dcterms:abstract: Philippe Ariès showed how death was progressively taken away from the community and handed over to the medical institution between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The funeral rite has a structural function within the community of the living: it is the device that allows loss to be worked through and the group to be reintegrated after the rupture. For Arnold van Gennep the funeral is a rite of passage in three phases (separation, liminality, incorporation): the denied funeral interrupts the process and leaves both the dead and the community in permanent liminality.en
Type dcterms:type: Death record — Display of human remains
Spatial Coverage dcterms:spatial: Musei civici di Reggio dell'Emilia