ABSTRACT
Not so many years ago, it was commonplace to describe death and grief as so-called ‘tabooed topics’ – something to be kept behind closed doors and not to be put on display or paraded in public. According to many researchers, this was the age of forbidden death and hidden grief. Something quite extraordinary has happened since then. In recent years – in social life, within popular culture and social research – grief has re-surfaced as a topic of much publicity and debate. If the 1990s was the decade of ethics and the 2000s was the decade of anxiety (in the post-9/11 world), then the 2010s is the age of grief and memorialisation. Grief is no longer a privatised and socially sequestrated phenomenon. Rather, grief, in many ways, has become spectacular. In this chapter, the authors document and discuss three main trends in the contemporary culture of ‘spectacular grief’: individualisation/singularisation, professionalisation/commercialisation and memorialisation/mediatisation. Firstly, in an age of individualisation and ‘singularity’ (Andreas Reckwitz’s notion), death and grief increasingly become a personal affront, an attack on the very core of being, that we individually have to deal with. Second, following this, processes of professionalisation/commercialisation have meant that grief is also increasingly becoming an ‘industry’ that is promoted and handled by a variety of interest groups supposed to help individuals cope with death and grief. Thirdly, in a culture of expressivity, grief is now an emotion that we are expected to share with, and show to, others through new commemoration and memorialisation practices, some of which are particularly connected to the rise of new information technologies and social media.
