Mourning the death of a child, feelings and affects

Authors

• Pirjo Pöllänen Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland
• Ismo Björn Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.57124/thanatos.127591

Keywords:

affect, feelings, death, death of a child, wandering, cemeteries

Abstract

Affects and feelings have entered the social and cultural sciences, even to the extent that there is talk of an affective turn in research (e.g. Jokinen et al. 2015; Rinne et al. 2020). Death is one of the most emotional situations in a person’s life, full of affects and feelings. In this article, we consider the relationship between affects and feelings in death research with a social science focus. The research focuses on the deepest of griefs, the death of a child, which we approach as an affective experience and an affective condition. As a concept, affect is a condition that is defined as something, is prior to feelings, and includes bodily reactions. We find out what kind of feelings and affects pertain to the death of a child. The research applies a method derived from ethnography (see Davydova-Minguet et al. 2022). We are looking for the affects and feelings related to  death in people’s interview speech, informal conversations with relatives and death professionals, from a Facebook group, as well as from cemeteries’ tombstones. Through this extensive and versatile material, we look at how the person who has lost a child is encountered and encounters others as a part of society, i.e. how grieving the death of a child and the feelings and affects it reflects become part of society. Through our research, we may generate more questions than we give answers.