ABSTRACT
Modernity responds to this scandalous “relic of fate” in two dierent but related ways. First, it banishes death from public view: the dying are moved from the homes in which they used to die and are sequestered in hospitals where they no longer have to be seen, and the dead are moved from the easily accessible graveyards of central-city churches to the less accessible outskirts of town. Corresponding to this spatial segregation of the dead and dying is a psychological separation that takes the form of the inability of the living to speak with, or even about, the dying: “Death has become unmentionable,”6 except perhaps euphemistically in such expressions as the “passing” of a relative or the “loss” of a friend.
