Editorial

Abstract

This editorial introduction provides an overview of the articles contained within this special issue devoted to the theme(s) of public dying and public grieving. Conceptually, it acknowledges that the addition of the prefix “public” to these two inescapable dimensions of human existence—dying, and the grief that follows death (but which may also accompany dying, as grieving for a life that is slowly fading)—is what renders these phenomena unusual or noteworthy. Yet it does so while also acknowledging that dying and grieving are, for the Global Majority of the planet's inhabitants, already and axiomatically “public”—shared human experiences without the privacy or “sequestration” afforded them or to which they have become subjected in the modern era in the Occidental West/Global North. The attempt to situate public dying and public grieving in these cultural conditions is followed by a discussion of wider binaries (or dichotomies), including public-private, within which public dying and public grieving must be understood, but which are themselves subject to increasing erosion in the contemporary, reflexively modern era. This is followed by a discussion of the materiality of activity surrounding public dying and public grieving, followed by a discussion of how such activity is also an aspect of culture and embodied cultural activity. It concludes by providing a description of each of the nine articles contained within the special issue and the ways in which each of them speak to the core themes that run throughout it.