CSTonline

*Funes. Journal of Narratives and Social Sciences*

Directors: Stefano Bory, Gianfranco Pecchinenda (University Federico II,
Naples, Italy)

- [http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81](http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81){.moz-txt-link-freetext}

The experience of death represents one of those few things every society
must face, no matter what historical period. It has been defined as the
most marginal situation, as it sits at the borders of every symbolic
system, of every structure of significance that a community can possess,
since it is not concretely knowable.

Therefore, every group as well as every individual who must face the end
of human life, the loss and the elaboration of grief, also must question
himself about the sense and the meanings of death to be able to face
such big event.

Every epoch has its own generally consolidated ways to deal with the
weight of death, through symbols, prevailing ideas and individual and
collective more or less spread strategies. Analysing this symbolic and
experiential repertory, the ways in which death is represented and
perceived, even resistance and innovative ways, means to decipher
different aspects of whole societies.

Death and its representations highlight, under the surface, different
social issues connected, from religious phenomena to the stratification
that dominant meanings can sustain, from social conflicts to the
characteristics of everyday life, etc.

Therefore, it is possible to assert that death must be considered as one
of those fundamental indicators to study the collective behaviour and as
one of the central themes to analyse the imagery of an epoch, since from
the transformations of the way to represent death it is possible to
identify many cultural changes.

Technologies -- most of all media -- have had a relevant impact on the
sense that everyone attributes to death and to its experience. If,
according to many scholars, death in modern society has been
characterised by a firm connection with privatization and
individualisation, typical connotations of modernity, to the extent that
we can talk about the segregation of the dying and the removal of the
phenomenon from the public sphere and the rational analysis, it can be
said that the development of technologies, especially media, has made
death a public event, accessible and visible to all, producing new ways
of representation, rituality, commemoration and narration.

We speak about death, but consequently we also speak about its
inescapable corollary: the idea of immortality that in our times finds
its most common expression in the cult of youth, in the valorisation of
the body, in the idea of health and in the dominant aesthetic models.
That is to say, phenomena revailing the fear of the old age, the fear of
illnesses and of the end disclosed by the inescapable process of
biological degeneration of the body and of physical pain. Starting from
these issues, the articles, that can have a theoretical profile or
present the results of empirical investigations, will have to reflect on
the different ways through which the theme of death is represented,
narrated and avoided, or on the experience and the meanings that are
elaborated.

The proposals could concern the following themes, not exclusively,
considering differrent approaches:

- Death and modernity
- Narrative practices and death experience
- Media, technologies and death
- Visibility and segregation, public death and private death
- Meanings, symbols, ideas about death and dying
- The body of the dying person
- Strategies of immortality
- Rituality, elaboration of grief and commemoration

#### Editors:

Luca Bifulco, Antonio Cavicchia Scalamonti, Gianfranco Pecchinenda,
Alessandra Santoro

#### Submission:

The abstract (max 500 words) can be written in Italian or in English and
sent at the email addresses:

- [info@atelierfunes.com](mailto:info@atelierfunes.com){.moz-txt-link-abbreviated
  target="_blank"}
- [alessandrasantoro984@gmail.com](mailto:alessandrasantoro984@gmail.com){.moz-txt-link-abbreviated
  target="_blank"}
- [luca.bifulco@unina.it](mailto:luca.bifulco@unina.it){.moz-txt-link-abbreviated
  target="_blank"}

The e-mail has to contain: Name, Surname, Institue of provenience and
academic position of the author;  
Provisional title of the article; Indication in the email Subject line:
"Call: The representation of death in modern society"

#### Times:

- Abstract deadline: 30 November 2017
- Results announced: 15 December 2017
- Paper deadline: 20 March 2018
- Referees' decision: 30 April 2018
- Final papers: 5 June 2018
- Publication: July 2018
- Accepted languages: English or Italian

Link:
[http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81](http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81){.moz-txt-link-freetext
target="_blank"}


<i>
 Funes. Journal of Narratives and Social Sciences
</i>
Directors: Stefano Bory, Gianfranco Pecchinenda (University Federico II, Naples, Italy) http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81  The experience of death represents one of those few things every society must face, no matter what historical period.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

CfP: Funes. Journal of Narratives and Social Sciences: ‘The representation of death in modern society’. Deadline: Nov 30, 2017.