Experiencing Loss in Contemporary Worlds: Toward an Anthropology of Grief

Conférence internationale de conclusion du Programme ANR Phantasies "Fantômes ou fantasmes? L’expérience du deuil dans un paysage thérapeutique en mutation", organisé par Serena Bindi, maitresse de conférences en Anthropologie, Université Paris Cité, CANTHEL, et Aidan Seale-Feldman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Etats-Unis.

Conférence en anglais, ouverte au public.
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Entrée libre sans inscription pour la journée à l'Université Paris Cité.

Présentation

While funeral practices and sociocultural conceptions of death have long been a central research theme for anthropology, much less attention has been paid by anthropologists to the ways in which the living respond to the loss of a loved one. Nevertheless, a reflection on this theme seems all the more important since, at the present time, the Euro-American world, among others, is crossed by lively scientific and social debates on the ways of coping with the experience of death of a loved one. Mental disorders related to bereavement have recently been included in the two international psychiatric diagnostic manuals, a historic culmination, according to some, of a tendency to medicalize the experience of loss and normalize its course.

But if this experience of loss is indeed universal, is it possible to define absolutely how it is or should be lived? Does the notion of "grief" have the same meaning in every social context? And if specific somatic and emotional responses are considered to be at odds with the experience of loss, how does the management of these body conditions vary across societies? What happens when divergent, even conflicting, loss management methods intersect within the same society? Whether in the context of situations of contact between cultures or due to the co-existence of various institutions (therapeutic, religious, political), grief may take different forms within the same human environment, impacting understandings, perceptions, and the lived experience of loss as well as the "symptoms" which accompany it.

The sessions of this conference will address these questions based on anthropological, theoretical, and empirical contributions, covering a broad range of cultural and geographic locations. The aim of this conference is to invite reflections on the epistemological premises on which an anthropology of loss and grief could be built, as well as the types of theoretical contributions that have already been made by the discipline, and those that might be developed in the future. The conference will also serve to support reflections on the specific methodological techniques used in the study of grief and mourning, as well as the ethical challenges of conducting ethnographic research on this sensitive topic. In this way, the conference seeks to create a space conducive to open and collective reflection around the multiple complex dimensions of the experience of loss, as well as the different ways it is lived, communicated, and given form and meaning.

Programme

16 décembre 2024
IEA de Paris - 17 Quai d'Anjou, 75004 Paris - Salle des Gardes

10-10.45
INTRODUCTION
Serena Bindi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Université Paris Cité, Coordinator Programme ANR PHANTASIES
Aidan Seale-Feldman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

10.45 - 11.30
Immersive Light
Todd Meyers, Professor and Marjorie Bronfman Chair in Social Studies of Medicine & Acting Department Chair, McGill University

11.30 - 12.00 Coffee Break

12.00 -12.45
Time After Time: Digital Memory and the Multiple Temporalities of Loss
Alexa Hagerty, Affiliate Researcher of the University of Cambridge Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy

13.00 - 14.30 Pause déjeuner

14.30 - 15.15
Lost Objects: Dreams in the Endlessness of Grief
Aidan Seale-Feldman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

15.15- 16.00
Funerary Trait. On marking death at a ‘club thérapeutique’
Anthony Stavrianakis, Senior Researcher in Social Anthropology, CNRS, LESC

16.00 - 16.30 Pause café

16.30 - 17.15
Thinking with ‘Cargo’: Biography, Understanding, and the Work of Transit in Palliative Care
Sarah Pinto, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Tufts University

17 décembre 2024
IEA de Paris - 17 Quai d'Anjou, 75004 Paris - Salle des Gardes

10.00 - 10.45
Mourning Elsewhere: Specters of Grief in the Life Death of Abdelkader Bennahar
Robert Desjarlais, Professor, Sarah Lawrence College, New York

10.45 - 11.30
Ghost, Fantasy, Symptom. Shifting Relations with the Dead and Imagination of the Future(s) in the Himalayas
Serena Bindi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Université Paris Cité

11.30 -12.00 Pause café

12.00 - 12.45
Grabbing On and Letting Go: Grieving Bodies in Southeast Rajasthan
Andy Mcdowell, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University

13.00 - 14.30 Lunch Break

14.30 - 15.15
Coastal distress: The biomorality of ecological loss
Claudia Lang, Anthropologist, Research Associate Max Planck institute and University of Leipzig

15.15 - 16.00
Grieving the ordinary. Wounded knowledge in the face of political violence
Lotte Segal, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh

16.00 - 16.30 Pause café

16.30 - 18.15
Screening of and debate on ‘MORIRE A PALERMO’ (‘TO DIE IN PALERMO’) by Caterina Pasqualino  (A finished 1-hour documentary in Italian with English subtitles)
Caterina Pasqualino, Senior Researcher in Social Anthropology, CNRS, LAP

18 décembre 2024
Université Paris Cité -  45 rue des Saints-Pères 75006 Paris - Room R 229

09.15 - 10.00
Mourning in the world: Island experiences of loss, home, and place
Devin Flaherty, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas- San Antonio

10a.00 - 10.45
Thinking about mourning by dealing with the pain of the dead - examples from Iceland and Portugal
Christophe Pons, Senior Researcher in Social Anthropology, CNRS, IDEAS 

10.45 - 11.15 Pause Café

11.15 - 12.00
Bones from 6 million Parisians below Paris (three times the population of Paris today)
Gilles Thomas, Historian, Prevention and Protection Department of the Paris City Council

12.00 - 13.00 Pause déjeuner

13.00 - 14.00
Discussion finale