Confessing Death

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century mechanisms for promoting an anatomical identity were increasingly complemented by processes that monitored inter-personal space and incited subjectivity in the medical consultation — with the consequent appearance of a non-corporal psycho-social identity. Even so, the nineteenth century idea of pathological death that provided one of the central underpinnings for the biological identity of Man continued into the twentieth century as the independence of corporal space was reaffirmed at all stages of its existence. By mid-century therefore, there was an increasing tension between a death that provided the basis for an anatomical self and those ‘humanizing’ procedures that invoked a subjective identity and sense of personal agency. The tension was resolved by the construction of a new form of death and dying.