Life and death, action and message

The last few days were a weekend that I hope never to repeat, yet it is one that taught me much about life and death, soul and body.  I found out last Thursday that both a cousin and a great-aunt had died earlier in the week, and their funerals were to be on Friday and Saturday respectively.  This is my family from Mexico, a very large, no-longer-polygamous family that somehow manages to live in each others’ back pockets despite the difficulties presented by distance and border nastiness.   It was glorious to see these people, and we smiled and hugged through our tears and continued conversations that had not been halted by time away from each other.

After having to bury a baby years ago, I have a hard time with many aspects of funerals in our culture.  I really don’t see the point of the viewing, for example.  And I have nightmares for days after attending a graveside service. 

So I let everyone else drive 20 minutes to the first graveside service, and I stayed behind and read some more Foucault – in retrospect, a questionable decision.  I’d been reading this for two weeks, yet I still hadn’t finished the book and its many Yeshiva-esque commentaries.  I had been pondering the questions from the assignment about how Foucault viewed the body and what the implications of those views are, and a funeral made his accounts even more vivid and applicable.   I have no experience with any form of torture, but I suddenly had a deeper understanding of his view of the body, “the object of … imperious and pressing investments” (136). 

Foucault sees the body as a physical object that can be used as a means of communication.  Through public events like executions, the public learns of the drastic consequences of rule-breaking.   This message is made more potent by the sacrifices of the prisoner; it is impossible to witness pain without feeling sympathy, compassion, and fear.   In today’s funerals, the body is treated as an object of reverence, a reminder of the life it once held.   Either message is sent so efficiently, it is received at a visceral level that is impossible to disregard.

Foucault laments the shift from public punishment to private discipline: “The great terrifying ritual of the public execution gives way, day after day, street after street, to this serious theatre, with its multifarious and persuasive scenes” (113).  The communication, therefore, becomes watered down and less effective.  The rituals have changed from a public audience to a private one; thus, fewer people learn from them.

I think it is interesting that he talks of rituals, as they play such an important role in our life-altering events.  Birth, marriage, graduation, death – all of these signify that something important has changed for us.  We mark this change with ritual.   Foucault focuses on the rituals associated with death, but all are part of the way we view the ties between body and life. 

Personally, I’m ready to change focus to other aspects of communication, but I have learned a lot from Discipline and Punish.