Vortrag
Freitag, 5.2.2010, 15:30h

Gesine Palmer

Undressing and Dressing the Dead: Professional Approaches to the Work of Sorrow

The desire to make the life of loved ones last in spite of death seems to be one of the oldest forces in culture. The shock of real death produces an urge to act in ritually prescribed ways – rituals of cleaning (oneself and the dead and the living world from death) are the real immortals of cultures. With them culture itself comes into being and disappears. In their attitude towards the death of the other (which is the only death that we can perceive, as Rosenzweig before Heidegger contested) people often discover/reveal the deeper layers of their imbeddedness in their own culture. Interestingly enough, the oldest tales of the Western world are tales about struggles or even wars, fought about the proceedings of undressing and dressing the dead, of how to deal with dead bodies and the memories of the deceased (particularly the victims of violence). My paper will confront insights from cultural history with observations on professional dealing with death and sorrow in secular Berlin.

Gesine Palmer is a philosopher, author, and funeral orator. Ph.D. 1996 at Freie Universität Berlin in Historic Theology. 1996/97 she was a fellow at the Franz Rosenzweig Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 1995–2001 Assistant Professor for History of Religion, Freie Universität Berlin, 2003–06 she was a researcher at the Interdisziplinären Forschungszentrum “FEST”, Heidelberg. Since 2007 she also works as a professional orator at funerals. Her publications include: Ein Freispruch für Paulus. John Tolands Theorie des Judenchristentums (1996, engl. translation: Aquittal for Paul: John Toland´s Theory of Jewish Christianity, forthcoming); Apokalyptische Müdigkeit und Die Hure im Buch Jecheskel (2002); Der Protestantismus. Ideologie, Konfession oder Kultur? (with Richard Faber, 2003); Fragen nach dem einen Gott: Die Monotheismusdebatte im Kontext (2007).

Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache