From coping to carrying on

A pragmatic laughter between life and death

Bibliographic Data

ID8964170
AuthorsPhil Emmerson (0000-0002-8103-2471, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham Birmingham UK, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume44
Issue1
Pages141-154
Publication date2018-06-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12252
OpenAlexW2807456620
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited65

This paper explores the relational geographies of laughter, life and death within nursing care homes. Death is often seen as the ultimate Other: sitting in opposition to life, at the limits of what is knowable, and therefore as something that is impossible to fully engage with. In nursing care homes, however, death remains a relatively banal element of ordinary life, and like many other aspects of nursing care home life, is often accompanied by bursts of laughter. Where most scholars position the relation between laughter and death in terms of coping – laughter as a means of pushing away emotions during encounters with death – this paper offers an alternative and more affirmative account of laughter and death. Through drawing on seven months of ethnographic engagement with two nursing care homes in the UK, the paper argues that laughter occurs, not as a means of coping, but rather as a “carrying on”: a taking of our emotions forward with us and folding them into our sense of self rather than pushing them away. Further to this, I argue that this mode of enfolding affectivities is suggestive of a wider form of pragmatic micropolitics in care homes, whereby carers often work towards an “as well as possible” rather than grand, idealistic political visions. In concluding, I therefore propose pragmatics as a new framework through which geographers might further engage with the politics of care

Aesthetics · Coping (psychology · Laughter · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Vision · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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