Is There a Comfort for Strangers? Shaping Personal Identities at the Expense of Collective Memory, in the Proximity of Death

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that traditional environments that regulate death do not have complex (sacred) uses anymore because of constant personal conscious re-evaluations. The rich European material culture, especially traditional religious heritage, cannot “keep up” with such inner swings implied by a circumstantial and constantly negotiated perception of a divided authority of death. Most Europeans have “commuted” inwards, towards a personalized spirituality in order to save whatever can be saved from tradition: the physical static space of a church. Collective memory of the past becomes heritage when no longer serves as a comfortable zone. A highly subjective perception of time, space, death and the dead, life and the afterlife makes an individual’s engagement in mutual identity support and collective memory-making a lot more difficult that it used to be in the past. Perhaps salutarily, the very idea of “heritage” becomes a paradoxical tool for social collective amnesia.

Keywords

• Sociology of death
• Collective memory
• Heritage
• Post-secular spaces
• Spirituality