Death, Horror, and Culture
Death, Horror, and Culture
Making Sense of the Senseless in Memorials
This chapter explores the cultural question of death and the American response to it in order to understand the meaning of the United Airlines Flight 93 disaster, with particular emphasis on the memorialization of catastrophic death. It begins with an overview of how death as a social reality is perceived by different cultures and civilizations, noting the difficulty of understanding death as a cultural fact. It then looks at examples that demonstrate the nearly unbearable solitude of the dying in some cultural settings and goes on to discuss death's place in American culture. It also considers the risks associated with catastrophic death, along with American public memorials to catastrophic death. Finally, it reflects on Flight 93 memorial sites within the context of the so-called dark tourism.
Keywords: death, America, United Airlines Flight 93, memorialization, catastrophic death, culture, dying, American culture, public memorials, dark tourism
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
