The Open University
Yorkshire Region

Cultural Studies Research Forum
Reports and Abstracts 1995 -2000

introduction | contents

Funerary protocols

Ken Rook

I attempt explanations for funerary protocols and suggest that all have their roots in matters relating to (primarily economic) power.

Promising explanations

• Protection of the dead
• Protection of the living from the dead
• Public mourning

These fail to account for the fact that most funerary display celebrates family or social class.

Death as socio/economic hiatus

Any death disrupts the structure of society, and the greater the socio/economic hegemony involved, the more disruptive the death and the more necessary it is to smooth over the hiatus between generations, while maintaining social differentiation.

This thesis is anticipated in the 16/17C Two Bodies Theory, by which social continuity requires two representations of the body:

1. the natural body - the one that decays.
2. the social body - the socio-economic representation of the deceased. It is this that avoids the hiatus, but the distinction between the two bodies must be represented in the protocol, if the theory is to be exhibited:

The thesis is confirmed by:

• funeral rites.
• the death-bed picture, in which the deceased is shown both on the death-bed and as a living person, with family members.
• the Transi Monument, in which the deceased is represented both as a corrupted corpse (the natural body) and as a living person (the social body)
• inscriptions in which the dead speak to the living - 'as I am now, so shall you be…'
• monuments which emphasis continuity of family influence (weepers etc), and establish social and political position.

19C middle-class monuments: social class, rather than rank, is displayed.