Notes
153 Notes The quotations in the epigraph were taken from the following sources: Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 6. Jacques Derrida, in Ghost Dance, a 1983 film by Ken McMullen (London: Mediabox Limited , 2008). Introduction 1. James W. Green, “The Future of Death: Three Scenarios of Changing Metaphors and Changing Practices,” talk given at Columbia University seminar on death, “Journey to the End—Death, Dying and Bereavement in 21st Century America,” March 24, 2012. In this talk Green pointed out that when dying patients are in the hospital, their family and friends become “visitors,” and it is doctors and nurses who deem themselves most essential to the well-being of the sick, essentially turning the traditional model of family and the social structures we live in upside down. 2. Refrigerated cars allowed for the transport not only of corpses, but also of meat, transforming grocery transportation and distribution to the management of corpses and death. 3. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1981); Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 4. Whole-brain death (as opposed to partial-brain death, which is the definition generally accepted in the United Kingdom) is the definition of death accepted by both the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association and is currently the accepted understanding of death in forty-six states, thirty-six of which have adopted the Uniform Determination of Death Act’s definition. This definition accepts death based on three criteria: (1) severe coma, (2) absent brainstem reflexes, or (3) sustained apnea (or a combination thereof). This definition of brain death often requires more costly health care and sustaining the body beyond normal parameters, partly because it benefits the harvesting of organs for donation to others. The cost of sustaining artificial respiration and feeding of the body, however, is most often borne by the family of the soon-to-be-deceased. In contrast, in the United Kingdom, where public rather than private health care is responsible for the costs of keeping the body alive, death is defined as only partial-brain 154 Notes to Pages 4–9 death or brainstem death. B. Brody and A. Halevy, “Brain Death: Reconciling Definitions, Criteria, and Tests,” Annals of Internal Medicine 119, no. 6 (1993): 519–525; F. Plum, “Clinical Standards and Technological Confirmatory Tests in Diagnosing Brain Death,” in The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies, ed. S. J. Younger, R. M. Arnold, and R. Schapiro (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 34–65. 5. Three and four days are numbers that signify completeness and abundance in Western culture, and the number three has particular significance in the United States. Alan Dundes discusses the importance of the number three in his work “The Number Three in American Culture,” in Dundes, Every Man His Way: Readings in Cultural Anthropology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 401–424. 6. Lisa Guerin, Employment Law: The Essential HR Desk Reference (Berkeley, Calif.: Nolo, 2011). 7. See Richard Block, “Work-Family Legislation in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe: A Quantitative Comparison,” Pepperdine Law Review 34, no. 2 (2007): 11, for an excellent analysis and quantitative breakdown by country, and for the United States and Canada, each state and province ’s policy on all types of employment leave, including bereavement leave. 8. Christopher Hunter, Louisa Lam, and Ketong Lin, Employment Law in China, 2nd ed. (Hong Kong: CCH Hong Kong Limited, 2008), 120–121. 9. Terrie Lloyd, “Terrie’s Job Tips,” www.daijob.com/en/columns/terrie/ article/334 (accessed November 19, 2013). 10. Philip M. Berkowitz, Thomas Müller-Bonanni, and Anders Etgen Reitz, International Labor and Employment Law: Labor and Employment Law in Argentina (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2006), 79. 11. Colombia’s Political Constitution of 1991 dictates current labor laws: “Invest in Colombia,” www.investincolombia.com.co/Adjuntos/103_ Chapter%204%20Labor%20Framework.pdf (accessed January 1, 2014). 12. For a full list of relationships and their definitions covered by the bereavement policies for U.S. government employees, see the following website: Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Government, “Fact Sheet: Definitions Related to Family Member and Immediate Relative for Purposes of Sick Leave, Funeral Leave, Voluntary Leave Transfer, Voluntary Leave Bank, and Emergency Leave Transfer,” www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/leaveadministration /fact-sheets/definitions...
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