KHARON

Thanatology Review

Electronic Journal

Content

Volume 28

Number 2 · 2024

Original article


DR. ANNA KÉRCHY
DR. ANNA KÉRCHY

PhD Habil DSc, egyetemi tanár

akerchy@ieas-szeged.hu

Self-portrait from a cat’s eye-view: Sympoetic humanimal bondings in Alaine Polcz’s memoir

Abstract ♦ Alaine Polcz’s memoir Macskaregény (Catnovel, 2000) fits in the series of her confessional, philosophical, autobiographically inspired writings which all break tabboos by narrating “unspeakable” traumas – experiences of passing, loss, and grief -- from a specifically female perspective. The seventy-three-year-old author attempts to revive her past by recollecting fragments of memories related to cats, flashbacks of her feline encounters. Combining personal self-reflection and thanatological insights, with a peculiar mixture of ruthless honesty, scientific curiosity and melancholic self-irony, she explores the embodied cognition of our mortality through reconsidering human-animal relationships. During the meeting of a woman and a cat, "two worlds cross each other's thresholds:" with a derridean epiphany, the recognition of the otherness of the self-same as reflected in the cat's eyes leads to ethical insights concerning interspecies connectedness and the common fate of all living beings condemned to mortality by their very existence. An in-depth analysis of sympoietic connections invites us to realize the necropolitical stakes of the human right for grievable lives.

 DÓRA CSIKÓS
DÓRA CSIKÓS

mentálhigiénés szakember, életvégi tervezés tanácsadó

dora.csikos@hospicehaz.hu

Advance directives – the practical side of the end-of-life planning

Abstract ♦ In this article I would like to give an overview of the official statements concerning the end-of-life period and thus provide that certain plans and wishes of the dying person or the family come in effect. These plans and statements offer some assistance in the uncertainty of these times if they are based on reason and sufficient information. This overview aims to show the power in the practicalities of end-of-life planning and that we can ensure peace of mind for ourselves and our families in the simplest ways.