The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains by Thomas W. Laqueur (review)

Historian Thomas W. Laqueur, displaying his impressive knowledge of history, philosophy, religion, anthropology, and sociology, walks the reader through the churchyard to the cemetery, discussing the significance of the dead to the world of the living and pointing out the importance of names of the deceased. As the author notes in the afterward section, he began working on the book “many years ago.” Such a claim is obviously supported in the extensive, detailed research found throughout this 711-page book. Much of his concentration is on England, though the overall focus is on Western Europe and North America, largely from the early Enlightenment into the twentieth century, somewhere between 1680 and 2000. He argues that a universal feeling seems to exist that there is something wrong about not caring for the dead body and that the uncared-for body is unbearable. In the vast knowledge that Laqueur imparts to the reader, his book recalls Philippe Aries’s monumental work, Hour of Our Death.

The history of the work of the dead is a “history of how they dwell in us,” both individually and communally, Laqueur observes. In addition to being heavily steeped in the social sciences, The Work of the Dead is sprinkled throughout with great literature and poetry. Not only does the term “the dead” refer to dead bodies, but there are also terms of gradation, including the not-quite-dead, the returning dead, and the undead (zombies). The dead haunt the living and are a powerful category of the imagination, with the corpse being their token. Laqueur’s interest is in how we imagine our own or others’ deaths, and what dead bodies do here in our world. Such a link Laqueur likens to the connection between the individual and the social world, which is the insight in French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s study of suicide in the 1890s. Our relationship with the dead is the corpse becoming an icon, a way of making something present and tangible that is not present (a memory), a soul subsisting somewhere.

Churchyards, particularly in England by the twelfth century, had become a naturalized feature of the landscape—a “congregation of the dead.” The clergy and families with wealth were buried within the church itself, the nearer the altar the better. The word “cemetery,” which first appeared in English in 1485, was a synonym for “churchyard,” and comes from the Greek meaning “a sleeping place.” Cemeteries, however, evolved and and moved away from churches, becoming burial places for anyone—public places more of the larger “society,” rather than a smaller “community” space in churchyards. Cemeteries segregated the dead from the living, creating a separate sphere, as the dead had no place in the urban environment.

As modern cremation came to be in the 1870s, it relied on sophisticated new technology and promised the complete destruction of the dead. Prior to the 1870s, however, wood was the usual fuel and left recognizable bits of bone that could be utilized according to local custom—something of the dead body remained. Cremation was for a time about cleanliness, though it was discovered that burning bodies could potentially be even more polluting than bodies buried in the ground. The destruction of the body via cremation was an issue in itself in some areas.

At the end of the book, Professor Laqueur looks “into the future” and updates the reader on late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century “innovations” regarding dying and death, and various controversies which current generations face. Pictures scattered throughout the book nicely illustrate some of the descriptions found in the manuscript itself. Toward the middle of the book are 19 colored photos on glossy paper. This well-researched study has over 100 pages of footnotes, followed by a 30-page index.

Overall, Laqueur is to be commended for this very thorough presentation on the cultural history of mortal remains. He likely addresses, especially from an historical perspective, most anything...