Singing Our Way to Death: Some Remarks on the Contemporary Discourse About Death
Singing Our Way to Death: Some Remarks on the Contemporary Discourse About Death

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims to grasp some of the most relevant aspects of the contemporary discourse about death. The assumption that underlines the investigation states that death, as the inescapable mark of human condition, has a fundamental impact on the cultural artefacts, which can be conceived as strategies that we use in order to better cope with the continuous presence of death. In the first part of the paper, I resort to the analyses proposed by Zygmunt Bauman, Louis-Vincent Thomas and Philippe Ariès so as to outline a picture of the contemporary refusal of death and its mechanisms. Next, I depict a different tone in the discourse about death that manifest itself in music and that explores the fundamental relation between death and love. The reading key that I use in my analysis states that this musical preoccupation with death describes a profoundly romantic refusal of death, by means of its naming through love, and I resort to the music of Hozier, as an exemplification.

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