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Living and Dying in a Virtual World pp 79–106Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Commemorative Culture

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

As this chapter will show, the commemorative culture in Second Life materialises the grievability of second lives as semi-autonomous as well as the grievability of more blended lives. In this chapter we consider the culture around commemorating and remembering important people and events. We describe the phenomenon of Second Life cemeteries in which people and animals, both existing within and outside of the virtual world, are memorialised. This chapter engages in the politics of grievability through Second Life’s extensive and diverse commemorative culture. This chapter will explore the material practices around who or what is grievable through monuments, memorial sites, special days of remembrance, and cemeteries.

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Notes

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  2. 2.

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  10. 10.

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  12. 12.

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  13. 13.

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  15. 15.

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  17. 17.

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    Dunn.

  19. 19.

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  20. 20.

    “Rezzing” means making an object or avatar appear.

  21. 21.

    Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (Watts, 1966).

  22. 22.

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  23. 23.

    Gittinger, “Is There Such a Thing as ‘cyberimperialism’?”.

  24. 24.

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  25. 25.

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  26. 26.

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  27. 27.

    Julie Rugg, “Lawn Cemeteries: The Emergence of a New Landscape of Death,” Urban History 33, no. 2 (August 2006): 213–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926806003786.

  28. 28.

    Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Pbk. ed. (London ; New York: Verso, 2010), xix.

  29. 29.

    Butler, 15.

  30. 30.

    “Grief and the Separation of Home and Work,” Death Studies 33, no. 5 (May 2009): 402–10, https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180902805616.

  31. 31.

    Real avatar name used.

  32. 32.

    Sian Lee and Hoe-Lian Goh, “‘Gone Too Soon’”; Nataliya Danilova, “The Politics of Mourning: The Virtual Memorialisation of British Fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Memory Studies 8, no. 3 (July 2015): 267–81, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698014563874; R. N. McEwen and K. Scheaffer, “Virtual Mourning and Memory Construction on Facebook: Here Are the Terms of Use,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 33, no. 3–4 (June 1, 2013): 64–75, https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467613516753; Carroll and Landry, “Logging On and Letting Out”; Gibson, “Grievable Lives.”

  33. 33.

    Aaron Hess, “In Digital Remembrance: Vernacular Memory and the Rhetorical Construction of Web Memorials,” Media, Culture & Society 29, no. 5 (September 2007): 812–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443707080539.

  34. 34.

    Nicholas S. Paliewicz, “Bent But Not Broken: Remembering Vulnerability and Resiliency at the National September 11 Memorial Museum,” Southern Communication Journal 82, no. 1 (January 2017): 11, https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794X.2016.1252422.

  35. 35.

    Moya Lloyd, “Naming the Dead and the Politics of the ‘human,’” Review of International Studies 43, no. 2 (April 2017): 268, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210516000358.

  36. 36.

    Lloyd, 270.

  37. 37.

    Erika Doss, “War, Memory, and the Public Mediation of Affect: The National World War II Memorial and American Imperialism,” Memory Studies 1, no. 2 (May 2008): 246–47, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698007088388.

  38. 38.

    Thomas Gregory, “Potential Lives, Impossible Deaths: AFGHANISTAN, CIVILIAN CASUALTIES AND THE POLITICS OF INTELLIGIBILITY,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 14, no. 3 (September 2012): 341–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2012.659851.

  39. 39.

    Butler, Frames of War, xix.

  40. 40.

    “Memorials in Second Life,” Second Life, accessed August 14, 2017, http://secondlife.com/destinations/memorial.

  41. 41.

    We use Random Demina’s real avatar name here as it is impossible to discuss her work without providing sufficient clues for an informed person to ascertain her identity.

  42. 42.

    Lloyd, “Naming the Dead and the Politics of the ‘human,’” 271.

  43. 43.

    Doss, “War, Memory, and the Public Mediation of Affect,” 231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Margaret Gibson & Clarissa Carden

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  1. Margaret Gibson
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  2. Clarissa Carden
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Gibson, M., Carden, C. (2018). Commemorative Culture. In: Living and Dying in a Virtual World. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76099-5_4

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