Symbolic Immortality through Nature. The Deconstruction of a Myth - A Thanatological Perspective

This study has two main objectives. First, it aims at reflecting on the status of immortality as a cultural product, and, thus, analysing the mechanisms by which immortality can be seen, given its tight relationship with death, as a symbolic construct as well. Second, it examines the non-religious symbolic construction of the continuation of existence in/through nature. The role of this second section is to deconstruct this myth from a point of view that merges modern thanatology with the sociology of knowledge, searching to discover and investigate the social and cultural issues entailed by immortality-through-nature. More precisely, it deals with the classic model of the continuation-through-nature, as well as with a different construction of immortality through nature – paradoxical and far-fetched – a new form indebted to the scientific discoveries of the last decades: the positivisation of death.

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