Death as a sensorial experience in the family: an approach to the Ritual Art of Child Death in Mexico in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

The following work is located within the Sensory and Sensitivity Studies current. Through the revision of the Ritual Art of Child Death, which stands out for being a photographic display of dead children –a very commonplace occurrence in Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century– the aim is to develop conclusions that allow us to comprehend what this ritual answered to –beyond the grieving process– and what kind of ties where weaved, within Mexican families, through death. Trying to interpret human actions in the face of death is to give it meaning, to put into words the sensitivities, a fact that could never pride itself in being objective as it is pierced by the view point of the analyst and internalized according to their own personal history. Focus will be made on the photographic referent, on the elements that make up the ritual and on the language of looks: the photographed subjects’, the photographer’s and the spectators’.