Going Beyond Human Death: Preserving, Mourning, and Keep Relics of Animals

This panel probes diverse aspects of non-human animal mortality. Participants examine models for mourning the extinction of species (Ryan Darr); the ways humans mourn the deaths of beloved pets (Chris Miller); and the preservation of non-human remains as sacred relics in museums (Natalia Schwien). Jamie L. Brummitt provides feedback, followed by audience Q&A. Join us for the business meeting immediately after the panel.

In “Grief and Mourning in an Era of Extinction: Alternative Models,” Ryan Darr considers how species are disappearing from our planet at an alarming rate as we move quickly toward a possible mass extinction event. Loss on such a tremendous scale ought to be recognized not only with grief but also with public acts of mourning. The most popular practices currently employed to mourn species loss are modeled after rituals for grieving human death: funeral rites and the creation of memorials. The grief, then, is focused on species death. In this paper, Darr argues that we need rituals of mourning species focused not on death but on the ongoing destruction of relationships between species and human communities.

In “The Furry Friends We Leave Behind: Human-Animal Relationships Commemorated in Obituaries,” Chris Miller examines how animals and humans have complex, deep, and meaningful relationships. Throughout history, people have commemorated animals with whom they were close through various mortuary practices. But what about when the human or owner dies first? Based on analysis of Canadian obituaries, this paper explores the ways that people commemorate human-animal relationships. Though hardly ever showing up prior to the 1990s, the last thirty years have seen a gradual rise in obituaries that mention these bonds. Animals appear in these texts in various ways, from people who fed birds in their backyard and lived/worked on farms, to pets who are listed alongside surviving family members. These examples point to different types of relationships, and different understandings of the bonds people form with animals. Overall, however, the simple inclusion of other-than-human animals speaks to the perceived importance of these relationships as well as transformations in how people memorialize loved ones.

In “The Materialist Relic: Nonhuman Bodies in Zoological Museums,” Natalia Schwien evaluates how the treatment of the bodies of endangered or extinct species as well as charismatic nonhuman-animal individuals in museum settings echoes the treatment of holy relics in the development of Christianity from the early Church up through the Middle Ages. Since the mid-19th century mechanistic revolution in biological research, the preserved and displayed remains of nonhumans have performed the role of a materialist relic, and this has only been augmented as scientists and the general public reckon with mass extinction, climate change, and dismantling the ontological positions underpinning environmental degradation.