Introduction: Death and/as Relationality

1 Exploring the "eerie uncomfortable feeling"—resulting from a combination of grief, distress, and apprehension—that, for many, has characterized our co-existence with a global pandemic, the author of the article interviewed three social psychologists on the subject of "the existential anxiety caused by reminders of our own mortality " If SARS-CoV-2 has performed any useful function, it has at least accelerated a process that began to develop in the 1970s, by forcing us to confront our psychological, cultural, and possibly even neurological propensity to deny death 2 The daily press conferences, news bulletins, and social media feeds, each containing an update on the latest death tolls, have rendered mortality shockingly salient Catherine Ceylac's 2018 book A la vie a la mort, which brings together fourteen leading French artists, writers, and personnalites who share with Ceylac—and the reader—their thoughts on absence, loss, pain, and beliefs in the context of losing a loved one, provides an illustration of France's recent public conversation on death 4 The topical debates taking place in France on euthanasia, following the 2018 decision of the Assemblee consultative du Conseil economique, social et environnemental (CESE) to adopt a recommendation that people suffering from an incurable disease "en phase avancee ou terminale," and whose pain is classified as "inapaisable," should have the right to benefit from a "sedation profonde explicitement letale," offer further compelling evidence that France is reconsidering its relationship with death 5 The socio-cultural shifts towards talking and thinking about death are all the more remarkable since, as Ceylac observes, Western cultures have traditionally been reticent, even anxious, about the subject: "Par peur de l'inconnu, du mystere, du vide abyssal, la mort, en Occident, est taboue, on en parle en baissant la voix, a demi-mot, de peur qu'elle nous contamine" (Ceylac 10) Citing figures from Strasbourg that show that, whereas in 1840, 15% of the population died in hospital, that figure rose to 30% by the time of World War One and stands at 75% today, Anne Carol has written extensively on the "revolution recente" in cultural practices of dying in modern France 10 Many important consequences have resulted from the cultural shift towards what is termed a "medicalized death