Invisible Complexes of Death A Preliminary Review and Personal Reflections on Researching Deathlore

Abstract

Beliefs about life as predictable, subject to our control, and destined to continue indeterminately are incompatible with the experience of death. It is this contradiction that first drew my attention to folkloristic works on death and sparked my attempt to discover the different themes that folklorists have explored in their death-related research. Here, I reach across folklore genres and draw on different time periods in the discipline’s history to trace the story of folkloristic approaches to death. Folklorists’ explorations of grief culture extend from historical and contemporary death customs and rituals to belief and vernacular spontaneous memorials. In exploring the themes that emerge, I ask how this body of work on death and grief differs from that of
other disciplines, including psychology, health professions, and sociology. Finally, I draw attention to the challenges of doing ethnographic research on death customs and beliefs. Because individuals mourning the death of a loved one
negotiate complex fields of emotion, folklorists have struggled with the responsibilities of eliciting, recording, and reporting extremely sensitive, personal information and emotions of grief and loss. They have faced challenges of representation as they attempt to convey family members’ re/creation of memories of the deceased person. In this regard, I explore how folklore researchers have positioned themselves in their works on death. What is particularly challenging for them in sharing their fieldwork experiences when dealing with others’ mourning and grief?