Return of the Flesh

Dominique Memmi, Director of Research in Social Science at the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, France, has published widely on the social administration of life and death. Her books include Les Gardiens du corps (1996), Faire vivre et laisser mourir (2003), Le Gouvernement des corps (co-edited with Didier Fassin, 2004), La Seconde Vie des bébés morts (2011), and La vengeance des femmes (2025).

• PART I. THE REINCARNATION OF THE DEAD.- I.1.Care professionals: the second life of dead babies.- I.2.Psychological professionals: mourning “through the body”.- I.3.Funeral professionals: tracing the dead.- I.4.Cultural intermediaries: “impossible mourning".- I.5.Transplant professionals: when the Other is in the organ.- PART II. THE REINCARNATION OF THE LIVING.- II.1.“Body to body” with newborns.- II.2.The reincarnation of filiation: adopted children, children born under X and children born by sperm donation.- PART III. AGENTS OF CIVILISATION.- III.1.The profane didn't ask for so much.- III.2.Professional activism often goes unnoticed.- III.3.The social identity of agents of civilization.- III.4.Nature “all the same”: lay bricolages.- PART IV. A GREAT PLACENTAL REVERIE.- IV.1.“Rebiologize”, “renaturalize” or “reincarnate”?.- IV.2.Restoring gravity to being, and weight to time.- IV.3.Restoring a little autonomy to “life itself”: a long-range interpretation.- Conclusion. Putting flesh back into the social bond.