Death as a matter of the body

Death comes to us at the moment we were born, like breathing. Death is a dichotomy: it is simultaneously innate and foreign to us, as long as we live. If being alive and death are two sides of the same coin named “existence,” we will never fully understand what it means to be alive without comprehending death. Death resides in our bodies, yet there is no way we could embody death. You might have found yourself at a point only a split second from death, or you might have tried to give your life in exchange for that of the one you loved, yet, these don’t count as first-hand experience of death. Death as a priori knowledge demands transcendental reflection and the perspective of the subjectivity, which is deeply-rooted in one’s culture.

Albeit being physical states, the life-death duo cannot help becoming abstract concepts once being described. The meaning of words is founded on binary oppositions, within a particular (and at times circular) system of relationship. If being alive is good, being dead has to be not good. Death is a tabooed conversation topic among Chinese. One possible reason is that life-and-death, once verbalized, mutates from a concept of the nature to a concept of the culture. Negative values are thus attached to death, such as loss, defeat, weakness. There isn’t any mainstream religion among Han Chinese. It is not in our philosophy to objectify our ephemeral bodies through the lens of the subjectivity of the soul.  Our time on earth lived through the body is the ultimate purpose of existence – to enjoy the paradise is the Heaven’s work. The consumption of a body is not for its future spiritual elevation but for the continued existence of many other bodies. One life is terminated in rituals in exchange of favourable natural conditions for more lives to be borne; one foremost function of a body is to reproduce more bodies to avoid the extinction of the clan. Life and death is a moral obligation - one can’t help attacked by a sense of guilt when contemplating death from and only from a personal perspective.

How we live and what we believe in capitalist societies somewhat deprive us of our understanding of death. We no longer have to deal with death in order to obtain food for our survival. We are not allowed to deal with the bodies of our deceased relatives because specialized “environmental hygiene” government departments will make sure any traces of death will be demolished with speed and without emotion. Ignorance brings fear. We are so scared of death and we keep it at a distance through the consumption of health products, skin care products, drugs, plastic surgery, insurance policies, funeral service, private medical system, life-nourishing trips…the more the merrier, say the capitalists who loathe limitations and who advocate that there is nothing one cannot change through consumption. Death as the essential limitation is not a capitalist vocabulary.

It is but a recent phenomenon in human history that our life expectation reaches a hundred years. Those living in developed countries regard this new-founded longevity a “natural” outcome of medical advances; disasters that kill many in one blow are regarded as the “natural” revenge on those who destroy the environment; terrorist attacks that take the lives of urban dwellers are but the evil-beliefs of religious fanaticism. Death is for the poor, the greedy, or the lunatics, but not for advanced citizens like me. Says who? Where did you hear that from? Why do you find those statements justified?

To approach similar top-down discourses, one may take reference to the life view found in ethnical beliefs. Sensual well-being is all that matters in folklores: human and animals spirits acquiring human forms conducted exchanges so that both could eat, drink, copulate, get rich, live forever. To live is to embody. Death is embodiment at its very end. Arguably there is no way we could experience our very death while we are living. It takes more than intellectual reflection for us to make sense out of death. It takes delicate sensations for us to imagine death because, death, after all, is a matter of the body.   

Joanna Lee
21 January, 2016