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Playing with One's Own Death While Being Alive: The Case of Registered Body–Organ Donors in Greece
Author(s) -
Papagaroufali Eleni
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/ahu.2006.31.2.111
Subject(s) - organ donation , wish , the imaginary , donation , good death , transplantation , set (abstract data type) , element (criminal law) , medicine , sociology , psychology , law , psychoanalysis , surgery , political science , nursing , palliative care , anthropology , computer science , programming language
There is plenty of anthropological literature on mortuary rituals through which people relate to dead kin or close off their relations with them. But there are few accounts in any religious or nonreligious contexts of death‐oriented rituals that are carried out while the person is still alive and in good health and show how that person wishes to prepare for death. It might be thought that prayers and gifts to God for the sake of one's own good health might be included in such practices, or recent biotechnological “miracles” such as plastic surgery and organ or tissue transplantation. However, in these cases—concerned with a fear of dying, of getting sick, or of aging—the emphasis is laid on the prolongation of one's life rather than on confrontation with one's death and preparation for it. The prospective donation of organs or of the whole body is a case in point. Set in Greece, my article is concerned with registered donors, adult men and women wishing to engage in death‐related practices while in life. These practices are intended as a way to confront death rather than exorcise it and to prepare for how they wish it to happen to them, as they wish to experience it. How is this done? Is it possible for death to be experienced in this way? Yes and no. I argue that given the imaginary (yet lived) dimension of this preparation, there is a strong element of make‐believe in such practices, enhanced by the Greek state and donation–transplantation law.