Preserving the Human Being. The Struggle for Secular Eternity in Europe’s Entangled Modernities

该项目的重点是从19世纪到21世纪欧洲和美国现代的工程师，医生，自然科学家和计算机科学家。它追溯了他们对死亡的世俗和世俗主义定义，以及他们为克服人类死亡而进行的斗争。在19世纪，这些世俗主义的前卫者追求火葬和其他处理尸体的方法，与基督教传统对抗。在接下来的几个世纪里，这些尝试得到了模拟和虚拟空间中其他策略和技术的补充。通过他们，世俗主义者影响了公众舆论和现代性的范式。这个项目探讨了这些世俗主义者在跨越死亡门槛后对人类进行概念化的方式。通过对历史背景、技术、科学知识和实践的分析，探讨了他们在世俗时代对死亡的理解策略。在这样做的时候，它的目的是证实一个假设，即持久的人是世俗的一个关键因素。多亏了技术，它们得以生存：作为不会进一步分解的灰烬，作为可能复活的标本或冷冻保存，存储在数字中，或通过生物技术过程进行物理保存。该研究集中在意大利，德国和法国，以及英国，俄罗斯，瑞士和美国对现代历史的看法。除了在死亡史领域分析的世俗与宗教的纠缠之外，该项目还涉及技术和身体的历史。此外，将特别关注他者概念（性别、种族、阶级、宗教）可能对世俗形成的影响。

The focus of this project is on engineers, physicians, and natural and computer scientists of the European and US modernities from the 19th to the 21st century. It traces their secular and secularist definitions of death and their ongoing struggles to overcome human mortality. In the 19th century, these ʻavantgardes of secularismʼ pursued the project of cremation and other approaches of dealing with the human corpse in confrontation with Christian traditions. Over the following centuries, these attempts were complemented by additional strategies and technologies in analog and virtual space. Through them, the secularists influenced public opinion and the paradigms of the modernities. This project explores the ways in which these secularists conceptualized the human being after crossing the threshold of death. It probes their strategies to make sense of death in a secular age by analyzing historical backgrounds, technology, scientific knowledge and practices. In doing so, it aims to substantiate the assumption that the enduring human being is a crucial element of the secular. Thanks to technology, they live on: as ashes that do not decompose further, as potentially resurrectable specimen or cryopreserve, stored in the digital, or physically preserved through biotechnological processes. The study centers on Italian, German and French, as well as British, Russian, Swiss and US-American perspectives on modern history. In addition to the secular in its entanglement with the religious, which is analyzed in the field of the history of death, the project involves the histories of technology and the body. Furthermore, special attention will be paid to the influence that concepts of othering (gender, race, class, religion) may have had on the formation of the secular.