The Crossroads of Plastination and Pilgrimage
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
At the Singapore Science Centre in 2010, I went to Body Worlds, an exhibit set up by the Institute for Plastination, founded by Gunther von Hagens. As I later learned, he pioneered plastination—the art, science, and technique of preserving entire bodies and body parts for use in medical and anatomical research, exhibition, or both. A few months after, I made the decision to donate my body after death to the Institute under arrangements similar to that of a Living Will. In my visits to two other Body World exhibits in Germany and the Netherlands, I have seen organs perfectly preserved and had thoughts occur to me that one day, I may well be an exhibit specimen instead of an exhibit attendee. By establishing a connection with existing pilgrimage literature; and using a combination of thick description and pragmatic analyses; this paper puts forward the proposition that visits to these; and other similar; exhibits constitute a pilgrimage of and to the self. The paper also discusses the ethics and practical consequences of body donation; and evaluates the arguments for and against the body donation decision from the lenses of the person making the donation; the person’s significant others; and societal influencers. The paper concludes by suggesting take-off points in discussing the connection between plastination and pilgrimage; particularly in the contexts of intercultural communication and religious studies.
Authors and Affiliations
Chadwick Co SY SU
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25955
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9030087
- Views 333
- Downloads 10
Hermeneutic Neurophenomenology in the Science-Religion Dialogue: Analysis of States of Consciousness in the Zohar
Many mystical texts convey insights into the nature of mind that have the potential to assist in the framing of scientific models in psychology and neuroscience. In many cases, however, the insights are concealed withi...
Elizabeth Bishop and the Poetry of Meditation
Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry has won the admiration of a number of Christian poets and scholars. This essay argues that one reason for this is Bishop’s subtle engagement with the work of the poet-divines Gerard Manley Hop...
From the Sacred Sound of the Conch Shell to the Cemetery Dance: Reimagining an Africana Festival Created in a Southern Appalachian City
To contemplate African American experience and its many racialized contours is to invoke a tensive quandary concerning the reconstruction of African American cultural identity in a dynamic network of historically assai...
Romantism, Amazement, Imagination—A trias religiosa
To wonder is a gift of the romanticist in particular. Wonder seeks explanation. If reason doesn’t provide that, imagination provides a way out. One imagines a transcendental world of which the God-idea may become the c...
Returning Home to the Advaitic Self: Svam ¯ ¯ ı Rama T ¯ ¯ ırtha and His American Audiences
A recurring theme in the Advaita Vedanta traditions is the necessity of empirical purification ¯ through means such as the cultivation of virtues, the study of the Vedas, and so on, even though the transcendental self...