Dirt and the Dead

By Andreas Chenvainu

Source: anouchka via Getty Images

In this photo of NYC’s Calvary Cemetery, the burial ground and the city stand in sharp relief, as separate plots of land with clear boundaries. To explain this separation of spaces for the living and the dead, Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger offers the concepts of “dirt” and “purification,” symbolic concepts linked to the body as a metaphorical representation of society. Dirt is matter out of place according to Douglas, and purifying dirt from the environment or the self is a positive attempt to order the environment, not just an act of cleansing. This act often uses the symbolically charged metaphor of the body and its margins—entrances or exits to the body—to create cultural taboos. In the case a line is crossed, an effort must be made to reorder society in the appropriate way, with the anxiety-inducing dirt separated or ejected from the body, either literal or social kind. Using this framework, corpses and their disposal can be framed in these terms.

In the West at least, there appears to be a cultural imperative to keep the living body of society away from death and decomposition—all represented by the dead body. The culturally specific response to solving this anxiety is to intern them under the earth and in a separate location, reaffirming the barriers between living society and the dead. An example of a violation would be keeping a rotting corpse in one’s living room, and in societies that don’t practice it, cannibalism. Both violate symbolic boundaries, erasing the line that separates living “pure” matter and “impure” dead matter. According to Douglas, there is no absolute standard for what counts as dirt, and this can create cultural mismatches. Tibetan Sky burial creates disgust and anxiety among some people in America because it can be read as a lack of a boundary between the living self, the body, and nature consuming the dead, but is seen as perfectly normal in Tibet. In this interpretation of the photo, Calvary Cemetery and NYC are separate, contrasting spaces to create a barrier between living and dead matter to maintain America’s culturally specific sense of social order.

References

“Calvary Cemetery.” Atlas Obscura. Retrieved Mar. 13, 2023. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/calvary-cemetery.

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 1966.

Dvorsky, George. “10 Bizzare Death Rituals from Around the World.” Gizmodo. Retrieved Mar. 13, 2023. https://gizmodo.com/10-bizarre-death-rituals-from-around-the-world-5960343.