prehensible. Thus, religious language may be more of a hindrance to pro-
viding care to the dying and the bereaved. This is not to say that religious
sensibilities should be ignored. Rather, that the use and encouragement of
religious language within public institutions cannot reasonably expect to be
recognized either by caregivers or by friends and family, and that caregivers
may inadvertently encourage such obfuscation when encouraging the so-
called spiritual dimension.
Critical Theory and Thanatology: Introduction
As a discourse interested in the emancipation of human beings from oppres-
sion, critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School registers a polit-
ical protest in the name of autonomy and human happiness alongside a social
theoretical analysis of existing affairs. In the realm of thanatology, such a cri-
tique entails the analysis of death ideologies – regressive patterns in the way
in which dying and death are viewed and experienced through processes of
socialization and individuation. I think that a strong indicator of our cultural
and philosophical attitudes toward death can be found in the narratives
invoked when death is near. The modest aim of my essay is to provide a cur-
sory critique of the kind of narratives taken up around death that Walter
identifies as “postmodern,” looking especially at recent trends in thanatol-
ogy that privilege what might best be called expressive individualism – the
authority, and the rationalization of this authority, conferred to an individ-
ual by caregivers during a process of prolonged dying. In what follows, I
argue that the unchecked encouragement of the expression of feelings cou-
pled with the treatment of individual decision making as “sacred” emerges
out of a cultural attitude of ambivalence and anxiety, a strategic avoidance
of death as real. Evidence of this cultural logic can be found in the trend
toward the inclusion of “spirituality” as a preferential discourse for dealing
with dying, death, and bereavement within the space of a secular environ-
ment. It is my contention that such encouragement may inadvertently have
a disabling effect for those immediately involved in the process of dying and,
at the same time, contribute to a social mystification or a spiritualized under-
standing of death in a wider social sense.
In order to support this claim I again draw on the studies of Walter, who
provides an excellent analysis of contemporary responses to death and also
conceptualizes the nature of authority in the dying and caregiving process.
Intersubjectivity and Religious Language • 185