The back pages Q&A
Victorian corpse displays sparked
John Tropr'sinterestinhowhumans
use technology around dead bodies.
He explores our fascination with death
and its impact on lifeSo,whatdoyoudo?
IamdirectoroftheCentn:!forDeathandSodety.
one oftheworld's onlyinterdiadpllnuy resean:h
centres to study the links between death. dying and
the dead body. My research focuses on the
:relationships between the dead body and
technology. science and bioethics. My younger
sister called me the Overlord of Death.Howdidyouendupworking inthisfield?
I'm the son of a funeral director but that im't really
why I do what I do. M university, I took a seminar
onp~seoond world warclnemaand spectacle.
I ended up studying late 19th-century human
corpse displays (which happened quite a bit) and
wonderedifthose bodies wereembahned.
I asked my dad for his embalming textbooks
and that's when I discovered my PhD dissertation:
how human technologies such as embalming.
photography and even museum displays
altered how the dead body appean!d. I went
toaoonbnceonthe subjectandlknewthen
that I'd found my people: the Death. Dying
and Dead Body People.CanyauteU usaboutyournewbook?
Tuchnologies of the Human Corpse is about
how humans use tools and technologies to
transfonn the dead body intosomethlngnew,
suchuaconsumerpmductor a museum
display. I look at how the social stigma of AIDS
transformed dead bodies into something
terrifying, the politics of detamee deaths in
Guantanamo Bay, those sorts of things.The booklsqultepersonal, tao. Whylsthat?
It'salsopartmemoir.MyyoungersisterJulie
died oug July .amB from brain cancer.
She was 43. I reflect on watching her die
throughoutthe boot.Whatmeyouworldngonrlghtnow?
I'm looking at all the govemmentoommissions
that have studied death and dying. It's amazing
how many say that we are using technology to
alterthehumanaperienceofmortalltyand
increaaJngl.yapectthe t.echnologyto always be
present and available. I've also been reflecting on
the commissions in the 1990s that looked at the
AIDS pandemic. Their aim was to make sure public
health systems wouldn't fail people infected with
a life-threatening vhus in future. Here we are with
coronavirus and all kinds of work bas been done
on large-scale public health support but so much
oflt seems forgotten or sadly shelved.Howhasyaurfleldof studychanged n
thetnieyou havabeenworldng nit?
Death studies as afield has more'Yisibilitynow,
but death has always been accessible as a subject
of study. Wehumanskeepdying;keepprodudng
dead bodies. We keep discussing death.lfyouCDLidsendamessagabac:k1oyourself
as a kid, whatwouldyousar?
Don't wony about beJngfat (Iwaa an overweight
kid)-itwiilall work out in the endWhat'sthebestthlngyou'wreadorseen
In the past l2months?
Radiolab's podcastabout DollyParton,Dolly
Parton~America, was phenomenal.AnianJ, an
existential SWedish sci-ft mm, was also really good.lfyoua:Udhaveaa:mvarsationwtthany
sclentist,livtng ordead,whowouldltbe?
ThemathematidanNorbert Wiener, about bis
work in cybernetics and what he'd think of today's
ultn-rapidcomputing machines.Doyauhawan unaxpectedhobby,
and If so,pleasewtllyoutaUusaboutlt?
IWredrtDtlntD~.lmappedltaftw
""slslardllld but plclalcll It backup this...,... ••Howusefulwlltyoursldllsbeafterthe
apocai,pse?
I know how to handle all the dead bodies.
Death wins. Death always wins.OK,anelMtthing:tallussomethingthat
wlllblawaurmindS-
Ingrad school, I took Intro to Modem Dance and
decided that I needed to start a company called
Big and TallMenModemDancing.I still plan on
makingthishappen. IJohn Troyer Is director of the Centre for Dea1h and Society
at the University of Bath, UK. Technologies af fhe Human
Corpse Is out In April (MIT Press)"Here we are with
coronavirus and
all kinds of
work done on
public health
support seems
forgotten"