Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and its Timings: When is Death? (Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife) - 9781137583277

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume provides a series of illuminating perspectives on the timings of death, through in-depth studies of Shakespearean tragedy, criminal execution, embalming practices, fears of premature burial, rumours of Adolf HitlerÆs survival, and the legal concept of brain death. In doing so, it explores a number of questions, including: how do we know if someone is dead or not? What do people experience at the moment when they die? Is death simply a biological event that comes about in temporal stages of decomposition, or is it a social event defined through cultures, practices, and commemorations? In other words, when exactly is death? Taken together, these contributions explore how death emerges in a series of stages that are uncertain, paradoxical, and socially contested.

• | Author: Shane McCorristine
• | Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• | Publication Date: Oct 05, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 182 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/History
• | ISBN-10: 1137583274
• | ISBN-13: 9781137583277