Seeing the Difference: Conversations on Death and Dying

Artists, humanists and medical professionals discuss
what it means to die in America in the 21st Century

By Tom Smith, Ph.D.

 

In June 2000, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley hosted a highly successful two-day institute on viewing death and dying from an interdisciplinary perspective entitled: “Seeing the Difference: Conversations on Death and Dying: Artists, humanists, religious leaders, educators and medical professionals discuss what it means to die in America in the 21st Century.”

The transcripts from the entire Conference are available at: http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/publications/OP24_SeeingtheDiff.pdf

The epigraph on the Introductory page of the website states:

“Just in case you thought there was no distinction between representation and reality there is death. Just in case you thought experience and the representation of experience melted into one another, death provides a structural principle separating the two. . . . See the difference.”

 – Regina BarrecaWriting as Voodoo: Sorcery, Hysteria, and Art

It is from this quote that the Institute took its name. The aim of the Institute was to explore the “techne” or art of dying in America in the 21st Century. Something like this was long overdue since the last consideration of this topic was Jessica Mitford’s provocative book The American Way of Death, published in 1963 that chronicled, in exhaustive detail, the concerted efforts of American funeral providers to wring as much money as possible out of the bereaved. Not long after that, in 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying. Since then, people are paying much more attention to how we die and want to have some control over how they end their life The ultimate purpose of Seeing the Difference was to produce, in video, print, and on-line formats, a record that could be used in other settings where practitioners are trained to work with the dying.

The two-day sessions covered four topics:

I. Silence, Art and Ritual
II. Time: Counting the Moments and Making Moments Count
III. Vision: Confronting the Margin
IV. Speech: Finding the Language

For greater appreciation and to get the most out of this section, the reader is very highly encouraged to review the entire website and take the 45 minutes needed to view the video. It sets a thought provoking and moving philosophical and emotional foundation for this course and is worth the time. NOTE 2014: the video is no longer available online. Viewing the video is not required though, in case you cannot link or do not have the computer to view it. This brief review will have all the information necessary for the post-test.

The video is a collection of salient moments of the Institute. It first focuses on just getting over our collective denial and seeing and being aware that death is always there and that one day it will become plausible. Most of the time death is out of sight and out of mind … even when one of our loved ones may be gravely ill; then, one day it becomes real and we understand and feel deeply inside that we are mortal. We turn and look at the clock and may remember years later the “exact moment dad died”. Dying, whether we choose to pay attention to it or not, is a plausible reality.

Dying is often represented to be an easy exit “going to the white light; but, it is usually not beautiful and often repulsive. The dying person is frequently ignored rather than recognized and often what they want goes unasked. Just what do they want?

With the advances in medical science it is often difficult to ascertain when death occurs. Conceptions of dying differ in a technological age that attempts to triumph over nature. There are our expectations of what can be done and the reality of death as a natural process that we do not have to interfere with at all costs. We want to know what death is, but cannot because no one has come back to tell us. Empirically, it is out of reach.

Finally, how do we close the door on life?

References

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth; On Death and Dying, 1969

Mitford, Jessica; The American Way of Death, Simon Schuster, Inc., 1963