Publications
– Les Gardiens du corps [The guardians of the body](1996, EHESS Editions),
– Faire Vivre et Laisser Mourir [Bring to life and let die](2003, La Découverte editions)
– La Seconde Vie des Bébés Morts [The second life of deceased babies](2011, EHESS editions).
Memmi co-edited Le Gouvernement des corps[The reign of the body] (2004, EHESS editions) and La tentation du corps [The temptation of the body] (2009, EHESS editions).
In La seconde vie des bébés morts (2011), Memmi systematically investigated a revolution that took place in the field of birth practices. This revolution is not to be minimized : mothers who have just lost a child are now encouraged to touch it physically in order to reclaim it psychologically. But in order to understand why the parents need to see the corpse of their baby was tending to grow central again in creating primary relationships and in shaping identities, the question of normal births and adult deaths had to be addressed.
This was why Memmi wrote her latest book La revanche de la chair. Essai sur les nouveaux supports de l’identité (2014, Seuil, Paris). This book explains how fathers were urged to cut the umbilical cord and how mothers were then encouraged to breastfeed their babies. The skin-to-skin contact with the newborn child was enhanced and some medical staff members invite the mothers to look at their placentas. The parents of a stillborn child are encouraged to touch it and accept to go home with a picture of it. The confrontation with the dead body is now felt as a need and people suspect cremation of preventing the process of mourning. In the meantime, being able to track down your biological parents has become vital for the identity and well-being of adopted people or of those born thanks to gamete donations. And with organ transplants, the donor’s personality is now an issue, due to the fear of psychological rejection.
For the past two decades in most western countries, the body has become the basis of identity in birth as well as in death.
What concerns lie at the basis of those conceptions that professionals of the psyche, of health care and funeral rites are the first to wish to put into practice ?
Why is the flesh now related to psychological effects that are supposed to tighten loose bonds and restore impaired identities ? By looking at the way the convergence of these gestures has been unnoticed so far, this inquiry reveals a major ideological and cultural turn.
Dominique Memmi’s next book will aim at the defense and illustration of her heuristic concept of "closer domination": It shows an important and recent evolution in the history of domination and also exports the analysis into the exterior primary and family relationships.
Keywords: corpse, identity, birth, death, biopolitics
