Mourir à l’hôpital : aspects rituels et transculturels

• Main Authors: Claire Mestre, Aicha Lkhadir
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: L’Harmattan 2018-05-01
• Series: Droit et Cultures
• Subjects: Death; Dying; Hospital; Ritual; Medicalization; Sense
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/4394

This article is an anthropological approach of the death at the hospital. The analysis leans on the literature produced on this subject, on inquiries led by both authors, in France and somewhere else (Madagascar and Morocco) and examples from their consultation of cross-cultural medicine in the CHU of Bordeaux. The death and its sense are examined through the history in West and by examples of medicalization in other contexts there. The funeral rites turn out essential in certain cultures for the future of the dead person and the peace of the alive ones. In West, the rites diminished, and the medicalization, the individualism, the marginalization of religious beliefs, do that the sense of the death has modified. The culture of the end of life which is implemented in hospitals is thought so that the person can give a sense to its life and not to prepare her to one beyond. Examples are taken in various services of the CHU in Bordeaux. The teams invent collectively gestures, supports by the words, so that the end of life is the most peaceful. Indeed, the gravest risk at the hospital is to die alone, infamous and violent condition that dread all, patients, families and nursing.