Difficult endings: Unsettling hospice ideology through an image archive
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Image archives, used as dialogical instruments in ethnographic research, can unsettle the care ideologies they were created to promote. This article draws on the photographic archive of Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, whose images portray St Christopher's Hospice in London as a place of peaceful and dignified dying. Around 200 historical photographs were shared with current staff and volunteers in group workshops, eliciting testimony that complicated this portrayal. Through the lens of hauntology, the analysis examines two themes: complicated deaths, in which intersecting temporalities produce haunting experiences for patients and caregivers that trouble the ideal of a ‘good death’; and marginalized deaths, in which the archive's silences around HIV patients reveal how institutional and sociopolitical dynamics shaped who was included in the hospice's care and its visual record.
Source: Anthropology Today
Author: Gaudenz Metzger
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,470
OpenAlex ID: W7148643133