Death Denial, Human Supremacy and the Ecological Crisis




主題簡介

I will introduce the work of anthropologist Ernest Becker, particularly his existential explanation for human supremacy. His argument that death denial shapes behavior, culture, and institutions inspired a subfield of social psychology known as terror management theory (TMT), which received considerable media attention in the COVID-19 era. And yet, beyond social psychology, his work has had limited uptake across the humanities and social sciences, even though his death-denial thesis bears on foundational questions of power and injustice. According to Becker and other TMT researchers, the intense existential fear caused by the reality of death compels humans to psychologically buffer themselves with cultural constructions of supremacy that compensate for the overwhelming helplessness they feel in the face of finitude. A key limitation of Becker’s argument, however, was his overreach: his claim that all cultures denied death, albeit in different ways. The final part of the chapter includes a case study of Coast Salish approaches to mortality, arguing that the nonsupremacist worldviews and ecological successes of Salish peoples are deeply connected to their different orientations toward death, especially when compared to Euro-American death denial. The Coast Salish case is one example among many of non-European societies who have developed mind–body practices to face the fact of finitude and avoid compensatory illusions of supremacy.



講者簡介

James Rowe is associate professor of environmental studies and cultural, social and political thought at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Radical Mindfulness: Why Transforming Fear of Death is Politically Vital (Routledge 2024) and the co-editor of Contemplative Praxis and Politics (Routledge 2026).