Sister Death – Political Theologies for Living and Dying (Beatrice Marovich)
OVERVIEW
When scientists are asked when “modern man” first emerged, many will cite the historical period when hominids began practicing ritualized burial. What separates man from other animals is, effectively, awareness of our own mortality. It’s probably true that we’ve always wanted to escape death (that seems a very natural preoccupation) – we may have feared or denied it, but we didn’t always consider death an enemy. In Sister Death – Political Theologies for Living and Dying, Beatrice Marovich explores this idea that death is the enemy, something to do battle against – how this story was given to us by Christian theology, and what the consequences of this perspective have been. Marovich also shares other perspectives, including her own: that it’s healthier to think of life and death as sisters rather than as adversaries, and what that might mean for our future.
Death as the enemy
One of the most powerful narratives within Christianity is that death is the enemy, the last enemy, and because of the scope and reach of this narrative into many dimensions of culture, even secular ones, Marovich opts to call it the political theology of death. “Political theology” suggests that political concepts like sovereignty, justice, rightness, etc. are secularized theological concepts… religious narratives that endure within the secular realms of society (see John Gray’s Straw Dogs for more). Marovich points to the formation of the Nicene Creed (and rejection of Christ’s mortality) as the origin of our current political theology of death. In 323 A.D. The Catholic Council of Nicaea had a problem: they couldn’t root out unchristian heresy if they couldn’t first achieve ideological uniformity (because it's hard to identify heretics without first establishing what believers should believe). At the time, one of the most prominent schisms within Christianity was over the divinity of Jesus Christ – whether he was a mere mortal, or if he was divine. The Council members agreed he could not be both… Christ could not have power over death and also be subject to it… he could not be mortal, killable, and also resurrected, unkillable. They had to pick a side and enforce it. The Council chose the divine Christ, Christ on the side of eternal life – Christ as the conqueror of death. He was still human, yes, but he was closer to God, closer to holiness than earthliness… he was less creaturely, less mortal. This was ratified in the Nicene Creed and set death as the enemy of true Christians. If you were a believer, you (like Jesus) were a friend of life – your mission was to defeat death, to transcend your finitude, to triumph over mortality. The battle lines were drawn – you were either a Christian on the side of life, or you were a non-believer on the side of death.
The “human-above-death” & holy hierarchies
One critically important (and possibly inevitable) consequence of this religious antagonism between life and death was the hierarchy that was created. Post-Nicene Christology set Christians apart as those occupying a superior dimension of humanity, those who had transcended their earthly mortality. True believers were more super-natural, more divine than non-believers. Marovich calls this new category of imagined human the “human-above-death.” Everyone else – the heretics, the pagans, the non-Christians – were de facto sent to the bottom of the hierarchy. The “human-above-death” was on the side of life and divinity, on the side of God, Christ, virtue, and goodness (it also often happened to be on the side of maleness and whiteness). On the side of death, then, was the Devil – fleshiness, creatureliness, and sin. Death was for the non-humans, the non-Christians, the animals.
Life was for believers. Death was for sinners.
Christianity gave us our modern political theology of death as the enemy and in doing so created a set of constellated negatives (sin, evil, privation, etc.) around mortality. Those closer to their mortality (non-Christians) were lowly and needed to be “saved” from their sinfulness. Those above mortality (Christians) were more celestial, more divine. This, in turn, created fertile ground for hierarchical distinctions, imperialism and racism; it set colonizers apart as “saviours,” and helped foster delusions of sovereignty.
“To be a non-Christian (to have no Christ in you) was to be more mortal, more creaturely, and less human-divine. . . This refusal to encompass all humans within the figure of the human-above-death, and the attempt to push these other humans into a category of creaturely mortality, shared not with the fully human but with the non-human, would become a source of political tension, and political subjection, for centuries.”
When you raise the status of yourself you must lower the status of someone else, identify the “other.” In the Christian hierarchy, the “other” embodies sin and mortality. The “other” is the non-believer, evil, primitive. Setting death as the enemy of life within this early religious context contributed to a hierarchy that eventually escaped the confines of religion, that allowed those at the “top” to mortalize those at the “bottom”… to wield death as a necrotheological tool, to cheapen the lives of the “other,” and to desensitize us to their mortality. It allowed (and allows) colonizers to eradicate indigenous peoples with impunity, to set up an imagined difference between “enlightened man” and “the primitive savage.” It allowed (and allows) capital punishment against those who “sin” to seem just and righteous. In moving beyond religion, the “human-above-death” falls into Marovich’s category of political theology, something with religious roots that has bled into the secular and broader dimensions of society. At its core is death, framed as the enemy of life.
Back to the battle
So, the narrative of death as the enemy of life plays out in the social and political spheres, contributing to colonial and racial impulses, to supremacy and subjection. (It is undoubtedly reinforced by our readiness to seek domination over the things that threaten us, to control or destroy). The complete antagonism between life and death manifests in other ways too – in the battle language we use when someone is “fighting cancer,” or has “lost their battle.” If death is the enemy, then death is something we must wage war against and triumph over. It requires militant, unyielding opposition (look no further than the explosion of life-extension technologies and interest in transhumanism). When death is the enemy, aging becomes an injustice – something that is indecent, something we must hide the evidence of (behind Botox or in care homes). If death is the enemy, we must remain hostile toward it. Death – which we’ve been indoctrinated into believing is fundamentally bad, fundamentally evil – can only ever be something that antagonizes life, or that is weaponized against those we deem inferior.
Alternatives to the friend-enemy bifurcation
By now you should have sufficient reason to seek out an alternative to the life-death/friend-enemy narrative, given the social and moral havoc it has wrought and the unhealthy and inflexible doctrine it imposes. I’ll present three alternative narratives Marovich considers and then discards.
Death as the friend – the issue with re-casting death as a friend is that it keeps us tied to the same problematic dichotomy. If death is a friend, then death is pure good (a complete shift away from death as pure evil). If death is a friend, shouldn’t we desire it? And how now do we make sense of sorrow and mourning? How do we make space for social activism that seeks to protect those unfairly and disproportionately vulnerable? Labeling death a “friend” removes much of the necessary antagonism, such as toward injustice and oppression, which we should vehemently oppose.
Embracing finitude – perhaps a softer approach would be to “embrace our finitude,” not cast death as friend or enemy, but instead consider finitude as a limit-giving and value-giving border to life. Thinking of death as a beneficial boundary (a frame of finitude) might help us ameliorate our hatred and fear toward mortality… but it goes too far to say that we should all embrace our finitude and accept death without condition or restriction. In short, it presents the same problem as “death as a friend;” we are simply perpetuating the bifurcation… you can either love death or hate it… embrace it or reject it - and in “embracing finitude” we are still caught up in division and still undermine important tensions and dimensions of resistance.
Biophilia – perhaps we should abandon any story for death and instead focus our story on life, on biophilia: the love of life, the love of birth. But is it really possible to divorce death from life, to have living without dying? Inherent in natality is mortality… the two go together. And so, by declaring that we should simply “love life” we create another false dichotomy, a false choice… that you must choose either a story for death, or a story for life – that you must love life and ignore death. As with this narrative and the above two, what we should be trying to achieve is not the for-against, either-or, all-or-none stance to life/death, but something entirely different.
The sisterhood of life-death, and what we might gain
If death is neither friend nor enemy, neither pure good nor pure evil, if we must choose a story for both death and life, what should that story be? How might death and life be related? The narrative should be one that avoids divisive polarities and instead allows for nuance, something we can wield for whatever the situation calls for. Marovich proposes, like Francis Assisi, that we consider life/death bonded in sisterhood (hence the title: Sister Death). A bond of sisterhood disrupts the wholesale enmity we might otherwise fall into. Sisterhood is relational – it means there are ties that bind. Sisters can empower or challenge, nurture or antagonize. Sisters may be rivals or companions, alike or different, in conflict or in agreement. Sisters can search for commonality without ignoring points of dissention, and sisterhood allows for mutual care without removing vital resistance. It contains lessons on limits, but also encourages growth. This is the counter-poetic we need… a life/death dynamic that is more akin to kinship, that allows space for all the complexity of mortality – the nurturing nature of decay and decomposition, the sorrow of grief, the importance of finitude, and the moral resistance to injustice. Sisterhood does not seek to remove all tension and does not seek to polarize. Death and life could be not friends, not enemies, but siblings, standing not in opposition to each other but in conversation with each other. We could appreciate the life-giving and value-giving power of death while also sheltering each other from it.
Thinking of life/death in this way, what might we stand to gain? Ripening and growing old as a privilege, rather than an evil – wise and just rather than unjust. Accepting decay and decomposition as the life-giving things… going down into the dirt not with horror but with humility. Acknowledging the important frame of finitude that death provides – really, truly knowing that finitude is what makes things matter. At the same time, refusing to be desensitized or habituated to the deaths of others, refusing to ignore “the uneven distribution of mortal vulnerability.” Opposing injustice, suffering, and oppression – opposing the weaponization of death as a political tool. Protecting each other from war, famine, and insecurity. Protecting life from extinction.
This new perspective on life/death, as bonded in sisterhood, allows for tension and nuance. It also gives us an alternative to the postbiblical political theology of death, which has exalted one cohort of humans while damning another. If you are captured by the current death-enemy narrative, acknowledging your inevitable mortality will be uncomfortable, will create anxiety. The thought of decomposing, decaying, and returning stinking to the soil might seem horrific. Barbaric, even? Perhaps unbefitting of your important status? It’s only animals that rot… that die insignificant, creaturely deaths, right? (Ponder on how our existing narrative for death makes these responses seem natural, when in fact they are culturally internalized). A renewed sisterhood of life/death might allow us to find our true place, all of us together. A sisterhood of life/death might help us chart a different path, one that returns us to nature and to each other, one that can hold together all the devastation, fear, complexity, and wonder of mortality.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
The story you tell yourself about death matters
In Death and Philosophy (Mapas and Solomon) we’re introduced to several potential stories for death – death as a friend, death as balance, death as nothing, and yes, death as an enemy/evil. I like that in Sister Death we’re invited to think about life/death in a way that allows flexibility – death doesn’t have to surrender to one end of a dichotomy that fits every possible circumstance (in fact, it’s better if we abandon dichotomy altogether). Sometimes death is something to resist, sometimes something to embrace – sometimes something to horrify, and sometimes something to be grateful for. What Sister Death should also show you is that the story you choose for death matters, and if you think you don’t have one it’s probably because you’re not choosing… you’ve unknowingly accepted the narrative given to you by your culture (and that is worth interrogating).
Check your privilege
A quick note about privilege, because Marovich does a superb job of returning us to this reminder. For privileged people (present company included), mortality is something that can be contemplated – death is distant, abstract, and theoretical. But those who struggle for survival daily do not have the luxury of this removed, philosophical reflection. It is a privilege to choose to contemplate death, to connect and disconnect from the reality of mortality as one pleases. While some reflect in leisure, others fight to preserve their lives – for billions of people, death is always a possibility, not something they can choose to disengage from for awhile and return to later. If you don’t live your life near death, be grateful.
One dimension of Sister Death I did not explore above is our relationship with extinction, of living in a time of mass death. In talking about the “human-above-death” I did not include Marovich’s thoughts on how this has pushed us to the precipice of collapse. Consider, for a moment, that the world the “saintly” humans have designed to repel death, the world that sets them as the righteous conquerors of people and planet, is now one in which we are all at risk of extinction. In trying to live above death… to conquer, control, and consume to oblivion… we’ve brought death to the doorstep of everyone. And when pondering on this, consider yourself lucky, too, if this is the first time you have had to grapple with the prospect of extinction… “make note of the narratives of inevitable extinction that have been applied to enslaved, formerly enslaved, Indigenous, and colonized peoples. . . These communities have already lived into, against, and through the proclamation of extinction events.”
In short, if contemplating death and extinction is a philosophical exercise for you, you are privileged. If you can peacefully reflect on mortality from a safe distance, write a blog or write a book that handles mortality as a contemplative abstraction, appreciate the good fortune you possess.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? No.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? Why we treat death as an enemy and what the consequences of that are.
Who should read this book? Anyone interested in rooting out secularized theological concepts that have infiltrated the mainstream without interrogation, and consciously deciding whether they are best serving us.