The Death Café Movement: Exploring the Horizons of Mortality

This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Café, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in "death talk" over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a death identity and reveals how Café attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants' embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. The analysis of death talk draws heavily from Jürgen Habermas theory of communicative action, a set of propositions that argues how different communication and argumentation styles, what he terms discourses, can be harnessed to reveal key themes of any group communication event. The findings reveal, however, that no central, key theme that can universally frame mortality surfaced. Rather than see this as a limitation of Habermas's theory, the author attributes the findings to the depth of the theme of mortality itself, a depth that inspired the grass roots to engage in all kinds of death talk that attends to living and dying in contemporary society. These are thus the different "horizons" of mortality presented in the work, horizons that enable café participants to reimagine their birth, life and death in a manner that frees them from systemic influence. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of a myriad "others," Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafés instead build community in spite of such identity divisions—with strangers—while being inspired toward living more fulfilling lives as part of a shared humanity. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, they end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a "good death." According to Fong, participants in this phenomenon offer us a sublime way to confront the facticity of our own demise—by gathering as one. Read more