Sociologist Arnaud Esquerre reflects on the relationship that the State has with the bodies of the deceased. Challenging the idea of a Western negation of death, he shows how an increasingly mobile integration of human remains among the living has been playing out for several decades.
What remains of a human after death ? What relationship do the living have with dead bodies? ? These are the questions asked by Arnaud Esquerre in this work which aims to get rid of the thesis of “ denial of death », appeared in the social sciences at the beginning of the 1970s, in France and in Europe. Carried by Philippe Ariès, the idea of death as “ taboo » or like “ main prohibition of XXe century » is in fact based on a series of arguments, such as the “ reduction in the duration of wearing mourning clothing » or the fact that more people die in hospital than at home. But “ Do these developments authorize us to affirm that death is ‘denied’? », asks Arnaud Esquerre ? The author answers in the negative. Not only have human remains sparked much controversy since the end of the XIXe century, but they have even managed, since the 1970s, to escape state control. Human remains become mobile, move, or even “ travel », to use the term used by the author. The question then arises of how the State articulates the organization of its corpses which are beginning to escape its control. To answer this, Arnaud Esquerre examines four distinct objects: the burning of bodies, human remains in museums, the desecration of cemeteries and suspicious deaths. The stakes of such an investigation are high because if we know, particularly since the work of Michel Foucault, that the State exercises control over living bodies, what about dead bodies? ?
Who owns the bodies? ?
The debate around human remains arose at the time of the French Revolution, raising the thorny question of “ burning of bodies ”, according to the established term of the time. In the first part of his work where he explores the controversies surrounding “ ashes », Arnaud Esquerre analyzes with finesse the arguments legitimizing or, on the contrary, opposing the cremation of bodies. This debate is articulated with reflections around funerals and burials, in a context where nobles and religious people lost the privilege of being buried in churches, and where only “ great men » have the right to be gathered at the Pantheon. The French Revolution therefore wanted to abolish social distinctions in the face of death, in contrast to the Ancien Régime which organized the burial of the dead according to their social belonging. This abolition of privileges in the face of death then leads to the question of who the bodies belong to: if the Church has lost the monopoly on the dead, which now disposes of the remains ? The State or the singular individual ? For defenders of the burning of bodies, it is up to the citizen to choose whether to be buried or, on the contrary, burned: “ each human being, being free of his actions during his life, must be free to dispose of his corpse » (p. 37). Combustion would thus make it possible to respect the dead more, to ensure equality between the rich and the poor, and to be more hygienic, in that it allows bodies to decompose more quickly. Conversely, opponents of combustion “ are alarmed by the mobility of the dead “, reject the cost of the operation being too high due to the scarcity of wood and put forward the argument that combustion would prevent the cause of death from being verified: “ the ashes would thus leave disguised crimes unpunished » (p. 59).
This debate against Christianity resurfaced with force at the end of the XIXe century to achieve a reform of the legislation regarding cremation. The fight against the Church was then carried out by a minority, composed mainly of secular bourgeois and petty bourgeois living for the most part in Paris and gathered around the Cremation Society, founded at the end of the XIXe century and made up mainly of medical and paramedical professions. The word “ combustion » is replaced by that of “ cremation », defended in the name of public hygiene, individual freedom and cemeteries considered too crowded. The mobilization of this minority led to the vote on the law on “ freedom of funerals », promulgated on November 18, 1887 and which authorizes cremation. The first crematoriums were opened in 1889 in Père-Lachaise, in Paris, and in 1899 in Rouen. However, underlines Arnaud Esquerre, “ it is not enough that cremation is authorized for it to be practiced » (p. 81). For a century, cremation remained a marginal activity. For example, in 1980, in France, there were only 1% of funerals by cremation. And yet, in the 1990s, a real upheaval occurred. The rate of funerals by cremation has since been steadily increasing, reaching rates above 70% in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The mobility of human remains
For Arnaud Esquerre, this upheaval is the result of an unprecedented phenomenon, that of the free movement of human remains since the beginning of the 1970s, which the State abruptly put an end to through a legislative reform in 2008. Even more surprising fact , “ of these walks of the dead, of their fragmentation, of their transformations and their dispersions, the State knew nothing » (p. 85). How did the dead gain their mobility and why will it be immediately taken away from them? ?
The dead became mobile at the beginning of the 1970s in a context where the relationship with the body underwent a significant transformation. The slogan “ my body belongs to me » undoubtedly best sums up this new relationship with bodies, living and dead. In order to unravel this enigma of the circulation of the dead, Arnaud Esquerre combines several methods of investigation here: he proceeds to analyze the review of the French Cremation Federation between 1950 and 2010 ; analysis of legislative texts and articles by authors from the Catholic Church and psychological professionals specializing in mourning ; and carried out several interviews with members of crematist associations. We thus learn that at the beginning of the 1970s, crematists mobilized to claim “ free choice of the place of scattering the ashes, in memorial gardens, in the countryside or on a private property » (p. 89). This dispersion is authorized by a decree of May 18, 1976. The word “ cremation » is replaced by “ cremation » and the ashes can now be “ scattered in the countryside, excluding public roads » (p. 91). From the 1980s, the cremation rate has steadily increased, to the point that in 2005 France had 122 crematoriums for a total of 22% of funerals by cremation.
However, underlines Arnaud Esquerre, a vagueness begins to surround the fate of these ashes, “ no one knowing what happens to the urns taken by families » (p. 93). At the beginning of the 2000s, parliamentarians began to worry about this mobility of the dead and proposed repatriating the ashes from private spaces to “ republican cemetery » on the pretext that the circulation of the dead would prevent the “ mourning work “. In 2008, a new law strongly regulating the fate of the ashes was passed. It provides that the ashes must be placed in the cemetery or, when they are given to relatives, the latter have the obligation to scatter them in nature, indicating the location at the town hall where the deceased was born. The whole point of the new law, Esquerre tells us, is to allow the State to “ locate the dead “. This debate is part of an international movement which increasingly attaches bodies to territories, as revealed by the question of the restitution of bodies to indigenous peoples, studied by Arnaud Esquerre based on the case of “ Hottentot Venus » or Maori heads preserved in several national museums in France.
From the “ undead community »
The second and third parts of the work undoubtedly constitute the most fascinating pages of this brilliantly written work. Without wanting to reveal all the mysteries unraveled by Arnaud Esquerre, let us highlight the paradox which surrounds the dead since the State granted itself the right to determine their place of residence. The pages devoted to the Our body exhibition, banned in several museums in France, or to the “ desecration » cemeteries, show that the State treats its dead as if they were living people. The transformation and use of dead bodies, including for scientific or artistic purposes, would have become an attack on “ human dignity “. In the same way, the use in forensic medicine of “ vitropsy “, allowing the integrity of the dead human body to be preserved, is part of this same movement of respect for the body in its entirety. It was not always this way. The use of parts of the human body for artistic purposes, or the commodification to which relics may have been subject, go precisely against the State’s desire to treat dead bodies as if they were acted on living people.
This movement by which the State intervenes in the management of corpses, by wanting to locate them, fix them, identify them, is precisely what Arnaud Esquerre describes as “ undead community “. This is characterized by its “ total » and is opposed to other totalities, such as the “ breed “, there “ nation “, THE “ people » or the “ class “. In this sense, underlines Arnaud Esquerre “ it is not insignificant that it arose in the 1990s, during which ‘totalities’ such as ‘class’ or ‘people’ ran out of steam, or were even undermined and dissolved by this notion that is the ‘network ‘. If these totalities give up ground, this is as much space left to the ‘living dead community’ » (p. 309). The main characteristic of this community, Esquerre concludes, is “ its relationship to the territory » insofar as it ensures a “ fiction of a collective identity distributed individually » (p. 310). By wanting to fix and locate the dead bodies on its territory, by controlling their mobility, the State therefore aims to guarantee the unity of its totality.
As we will have understood, Arnaud Esquerre’s work constitutes an essential contribution to a sociology of the State and its relationship to bodies, dead and alive. The work is remarkable from every point of view, and in particular by its ability to bring together areas most often studied separately and to thus articulate several methods of investigation, chosen according to the problem posed by each of the areas. This process allows Arnaud Esquerre not to bring out structures or invariants in our relationship to human remains, but to describe developments and ruptures in our apprehension of the dead.