Guest post: Still Another New Academic discipline
Guest post by Jonathan A. Gallant
An Inside Higher Education article on “Critical Studies” announced another triumph of this modern academic approach to socially constructed categories: “For instance, critical childhood studies investigates how childhood is socially constructed, understood and experienced cross-culturally and trans-historically. It challenges the notion that childhood is a natural and universal stage of life...”
Permit me to announce the new, related approach of Critical Mortality Studies. This field will interrogate the social construction of death, challenging the notion that those who are assigned to the category of “deceased” are any different from you, me, or the Associate Dean for DEI. They are just on their own position along the spectrum of vitality, and should therefore be referred to as “vitalistically challenged” or alternatively as “trans-living”. We believe that members of this marginalized community should never have to feel unsafe on campus, and deserve protection from the harm they suffer when disparaged by unkind words like “deceased”, “the late”, “departed”, “defunct”, or “dead”.
If you want to get rid of childhood (as I do) magicking it away with word games will not have the desired effect. Growth accelerants and brain implants are probably the most feasible solution (and that’s ages away if we were even working towards it). Ironically all the puberty blocker nonsense stands somewhat at odds with this particular critical approach as it promotes neoteny in humans, making childhood somewhat eternal.
You may think it’s a joke, but in some parts of the world, death really is a social construct. Well, some death, anyhow.
“the late”
I recall an episode of the ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ in which a funeral was being arranged for a relative of them and Granny complained about the guest of honor being called ‘the late’. “Sure he was never on time for anything in his life, but it’s a bit petty to bring that up now.”
Heh.