In the previous chapter I outlined some of the main contributions to the ‘denial of death’ thesis. This thesis is most commonly associated with Ariès, Gorer and Elias, but its themes appear in the work of figures as diverse as David Stannard, Milton Gatch and Ivan Illich, as well as in the thinking of more contemporary sociologists, philosophers like Martin Hägglund – though his complaint is as much with the religious denial of mortality as with the pathologies of reflexive individualism – and psychologists such as Darian Leader. Given the diversity of standpoints involved here, reducing this to a single argument or perspective would clearly be a misrepresentation. Critical commentators have thus rightly emphasized the need to differentiate the many different meanings that ‘denial’ may have, and which social groups it may plausibly apply to, and to look at these meanings in more nuanced and open-minded ways (Kellehear 1984; Walter 1991; Seale 1998).

Among the more persuasive arguments against the reductive nature of the theory of death's repression or denial, three stand out. The first is that it is premised on a romanticized view of nineteenth-century attitudes to death; the second is that its critique of twentieth-century modernity confuses the repression of death with its structural differentiation or ‘sequestration’; the third is that it fails to accurately describe attitudes to death in affluent urban societies over the last 50 years, which are far more expressive and accepting of the reality of human mortality than the theory claims. In what follows I will summarize these three arguments, before revisiting them with a more critical eye.