For An Anthropology of The Senses of Death: Investigating the Sensitive Relationships Between the Living and the Dead in Thanatopraxy

This article exposes a reflection on the living and the dead, focusing on the sensorial aspects of the relationship between them. Despite death being an old topic in anthropology, most studies in the discipline focus either on collective representations of the post-mortem or on funeral rituals, leaving in the background the material condition of the dead, expressed by the presence of their corpse. More than a mere object of reflection and/or intervention, the corpse sensitizes those who touch, look and smell it. Such relations do not occur outside the scope of culture: nowadays, death has become a matter of medicine, and the handling of corpses has come to be carried out by qualified individuals. Thanatopraxy is one of the many services created to deal with the dead body. In order to deepen the understanding of the relationships between the living and the dead, an anthropology of the senses of death is defended here, that is, an investigation of how the living feel the dead, with thanatopraxy as a prolific case of study.

Keywords
death; living/dead; corpse; anthropology of the senses; thanatopraxia