Elissa Marder
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823240555
- eISBN:
- 9780823240593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823240555.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines how the concepts of death and mourning are gendered in the ancient world, in psychoanalytic theory, and in contemporary culture. It investigates the question of sexual ...
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This chapter examines how the concepts of death and mourning are gendered in the ancient world, in psychoanalytic theory, and in contemporary culture. It investigates the question of sexual difference by looking at it through the ways in which death itself is marked as either masculine or feminine. The chapter argues that Freud has two very different models for the concept of death within the psyche: one is marked as masculine, and is related to castration; the other is marked as feminine/maternal and is associated with the uncanny, mechanical repetition, and literature. The chapter also explores how the maternal function conjures up anxieties about the sex of death through an analysis of a cultural case history of a shocking news story about a woman who denies her pregnancy, then murders her babies, and then preserves them in the freezer in the kitchen of her home.Less
This chapter examines how the concepts of death and mourning are gendered in the ancient world, in psychoanalytic theory, and in contemporary culture. It investigates the question of sexual difference by looking at it through the ways in which death itself is marked as either masculine or feminine. The chapter argues that Freud has two very different models for the concept of death within the psyche: one is marked as masculine, and is related to castration; the other is marked as feminine/maternal and is associated with the uncanny, mechanical repetition, and literature. The chapter also explores how the maternal function conjures up anxieties about the sex of death through an analysis of a cultural case history of a shocking news story about a woman who denies her pregnancy, then murders her babies, and then preserves them in the freezer in the kitchen of her home.
Abby Burnett
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461114
- eISBN:
- 9781626740624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461114.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Burial containers took a variety of forms, with coffins (the earlier style) and caskets being distinctly different, differences that are defined here. These containers were made to order by men who ...
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Burial containers took a variety of forms, with coffins (the earlier style) and caskets being distinctly different, differences that are defined here. These containers were made to order by men who worked with wood, blacksmiths or by those who made and sold furniture. The hardware used to decorate the containers was varied but not functional. The earliest uses of vaults, as well as construction methods, coffin colors, the use of wicker baskets and metal burial cases are all discussed. There is a brief history of the Arkansas Coffin Company, in Fort Smith, one of the few such factories found in Arkansas.Less
Burial containers took a variety of forms, with coffins (the earlier style) and caskets being distinctly different, differences that are defined here. These containers were made to order by men who worked with wood, blacksmiths or by those who made and sold furniture. The hardware used to decorate the containers was varied but not functional. The earliest uses of vaults, as well as construction methods, coffin colors, the use of wicker baskets and metal burial cases are all discussed. There is a brief history of the Arkansas Coffin Company, in Fort Smith, one of the few such factories found in Arkansas.
