Editorial

Abstract

Death is a phenomenon that has always attracted the human being, who seeks to understand it, analyze it, represent it, honor it; regardless of culture or time, there are always images and imaginaries about it that survive, mix and are reworked. The need to nourish oneself, stay upright and reproduce are basic aspects of survival; avoiding death seems to be one of the most arduous tasks of the human being, perhaps useless and paradoxical insofar as, at the same time that it is horrified, it is fascinated by it. The basic unconscious elements of survival and their cultural prolongation give way to imaginaries, practices and processes. Death is perpetual and omnipresent, it takes various forms and migrates from one context to another; it mixes, renews, transforms; An example of the above is the way in which the Japanese imaginary retakes, at a late date, the idea of ​​the Western Grim Reaper; he adapts it and gives way to shinigami, which he mixes with oriental aspects and is so popular in Japanese mass products that reach us. This dossier is the product of the joint work of two research groups attached to the Faculty of Communication of the BUAP: the Image and Memory academic body and the research group Power: objects, practices and contemporary social processes; both decided to work on the theme of death from multiple angles: their ways of being, of conceiving themselves based on the subjects that die or murder; their ways of representing, honoring and studying it. The articles presented here can be divided into three axes: those that refer to real cases, examined through various sources of information; those who analyze representations of death in literature or audiovisual media; and, finally, the one that examines the cult of Santa Muerte.