The Names of the Dead: Identity, Privacy and the Ethics of Anonymity in Exhibiting the Dead Body

Abstract

One of the foundational principles of modern medical ethics is the maintenance of anonymity in the case of researching human material and in disseminating that research. This principle safeguards the privacy of living human subjects, and minimizes the prejudicial effect that personal knowledge might have on the researcher. Does this principle transfer to human material in museum contexts, especially when human remains are on public display? Many of the human remains displayed in museum or other institutional settings are necessarily anonymous. However, some institutions display the remains of historically identified individuals, often famous (royalty, senior clerics, saints, and celebrities) or infamous people (criminals). What are the ethical implications of exhibiting the remains of known individuals? This paper argues that human remains are situated on a continuum between person and thing. Anonymity is one of the strategies used to move the remains further towards the universal body as an object of enquiry (thing) and away from a biographied and personalized self (person). By decentring the post-colonial context in which much of the debate about the archaeological and museological treatment of human remains has taken place, I hope to tease apart some of the broader ethical issues around the power relations between the living and the dead.