The futures of grief

Abstract

This provocation raises questions about the future of grief through digital vestiges thatoffer the animated presence of the biologically dead in the lives of the bereaved. Thevast amount of digital data produced and shared with others accumulating on socialmedia, on phones and computers, creates a substantial archive in which the deadcontinue to be and also not be with the living. The digital data that is left behind afterbiological death provides new ways in which to create replicas– holograms of thedeceased as well as voice bots in which the bereaved might speak to those they miss andhear their voice answering back to questions much like Apple’s Siri. Bereavement isabout living with ghosts (often about discovering that the dead ghost our own bodies)and the digital has ushered in new forms of ghostliness in which we find ways of stayingconnected to the loved and missed. Digital remains of the dead, while often lively withalgorithms generating messages from accounts of the deceased, also, arguably, exposethe corporeal, emotional and cognitive difference and limit between a living biologicalhuman presence and a digital human presence. The latter can never truly substitute forthe former. This provocation suggests that holograms and voice bots can be just as muchtools for grieving and acknowledging loss, as they might be tools in the service ofdenying death and prolonging grief.