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Modernity, Mortality and Re-Enchantment: The Death Taboo Revisited

University of Malaya, rlmlee{at}tm.net.my

The death taboo has been depicted as modernity's burial of the question of human mortality. Death is prejudged as a `pornographic' event that should be veiled. Critics argue that this taboo has been exaggerated and the sequestration of death reflects a crisis of meaning in modernity. However, sources of re-enchantment in modernity have continually undermined the death taboo by keeping alive the meaning of transcendence. New Age redefinition of death as spiritual transition and representation of near-death experiences as affirmation of the afterlife have revived the quest for transcendence over the silence perpetrated by the taboo. As part of the quest for transcendence, re-enchantment emasculates death as a foe in order to redefine it as a vehicle of emancipation.

Key Words: death • modernity • re-enchantment

Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 4, 745-759 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038508091626


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