The Implicit Religion of Organs
Transformative Experiences, Enduring Connections and Sensuous Nations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v10.i1.4210Keywords:
organ transplant, implicit religionAbstract
Religion is not absent from the study of organ transplant. However, it is the formal, explicit components of religion that are attended to. This paper argues the concept of implicit religion more aptly describes and evaluates the language, rituals and symbols that pervade recipient narratives, transplant communities and broader public discourse about organ exchange. Drawing on ethnographic research with transplant recipients and other transplant populations, the paper endeavours to show how this hermeneutic tool illuminates both the individual and collective dimensions of transplant. An implicit religion of organs is evident in the transformations that transplant recipients attest to. An implicit religion of organs also underwrites contemporary understandings of death and immortality. And, finally, an implicit religion of organs is deployed in civil ceremonies designed to solidify, engage and envision the republic.References
Aries, Phillipe (1974) Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
—(1981) The Hour of Our Death. London: Allen Lane.
Bailey, Edward (2002) The Secular Quest for Meaning in Life. Denton Papers in Implicit Religion, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1992) Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bellah, Robert (1970) ‘Civil Religion in America’ in Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 168–86.
Berger, Peter (1969) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.
Fox, Renee C. and Judith P. Swazey (1992) Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Freud, Sigmund (1939) Civilization, War, and Death: Selections from Three Works by Sigmund Freud, J. Richman (Ed.). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Gorer, Geoffrey (1965) ‘The Pornography of Death’, in G. Gorer, Death, Grief & Mourning in Contemporary Britain, London: The Cresset Press, pp. 169–75.
Hogle, Linda (1999) Recovering the Nation’s Body: Cultural Memory, Medicine, and the Politics of Redemption. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Donton: Rutgers University Press.
Houlihan, Patricia Jane (1988) Life Without End: the Transplant Story. Toronto: NC Press.
Joralemon, Donald (1995) ‘Organ Wars: The Battle for Body Parts’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9: 335–56.
Kübler-Ross, E. (1970) On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock.
Lifton, Robert Jay (1979) The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Lock, Margaret (1995) ‘Transcending Mortality: Organ Transplants and the Practice of Contradictions’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9(3): 390–93 doi:10.1525/maq.1995.9.3.02a00060.
—(2002) Twice Dead. Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
Mauss, Marcel (1967 [1990]) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. W. D. Hauss. London/NY: Routledge.
Meilaender, Gilbert (1996) ‘Second Thoughts About Body Parts’, First Things 62: 32–37.
Mellor, Philip A. and Shilling, Chris (1997) Re-forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity. London: Sage Publications.
O’Connell, Laurence J. (2001) ‘The Religious and Spiritual Perspective Toward Organ Donation and Transplantation’, in Shelton, W., and Balint, J. (eds.), The Ethics of Organ Transplantation, Advances in Bioethics, Vol. 7, London/NY/Oxford: Elsevier Science, pp. 277–92.
Prottas, Jeffrey (1994) The Most Useful Gift: Altruism and the Public Policy of Organ Transplants. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Test, Robert N. (1976) ‘To Remember Me’, Chapter Chat, Newsletter of the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Western Ontario Chapter, January 2004.
Sahin, A., Namihira, E., Trivedi, H.L., Scorsone, S., Bulka, R.P., Sugunasiri, S. and Kalshoven P. (1990) ‘Different Religious Views Concerning the Dead Body’, Transplantation Proceedings, 22.3:939–51.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (2000) ‘The Global Traffic in Human Organs’, Current Anthropology 41(3): 191–224.
Sharp, Lesley A. (1995) ‘Organ Transformation as a Transformative Experience: Anthropological Insights into the Restructuring of Self’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9(3):357–89. doi:10.1525/maq.1995.9.3.02a00050
—(2002) ‘Commodified Kin: Death, Mourning and Competing Claims on the Bodies of Organ Donors in the United States’, American Anthropologist Mar: 112–33.
Simcox, Carroll E. (1986) ‘The Case of the Missing Liver’, Christian Century Feb 26, 103.07: 200–201.
Veatch, Robert (2000) Transplantation Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Walter, Tony (1994) The Revival of Death. London/New York: Routledge.
—(1996) The Eclipse of Eternity. London: Macmillan Press.
Weiss, D.W., Tsuji, E.T., May, W.R. and Sachedina, A.A. (1988) ‘Religious and Cultural Issues’, Transplantation Proceedings Vol. II, no 1, Suppl 1(February): 1079–83.
Weist, Walter E. (1991) ‘Introduction to Religious Perspectives’, in Keyes, C. D. (ed.), New Harvest: Transplanting Body Parts and Reaping the Benefits, Clifton: Humana Press, pp.181–221.
