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Working at the intersection of death studies and media studies, this article examines what we can learn from the death of media technologies designed for the deceased, what we refer to as necro-technologies. Media deaths illuminate a tension between the promise of persistence and realities of precariousness embodied in all media. This tension is, however, more visibly strained by the mortality of technologies designed to mediate and memorialise the human dead by making explicit the limitations of digital eternity implied by products in the funeral industry. In this article, we historicise and define necro-technologies within broader discussions of media obsolescence and death. Drawing from our funeral industry fieldwork, we then provide four examples of recently deceased necro-technologies that are presented in the form of eulogies. These eulogies offer a stylised but culturally significant format of remembrance to create an historical record of the deceased and their life. These necro-technologies are the funeral attendance robot CARL, the in-coffin sound system CataCombo, the posthumous messaging service DeadSocial and the digital avatar service Virtual Eternity. We consider what is at stake when technologies designed to enliven the human deceased – often in perpetuity – are themselves subject to mortality. We suggest a number of entangled economic, cultural and technical reasons for the failure of necro-technologies within the specific contexts of the death care industry, which may also help to highlight broader forces of mortality affecting all media technologies. These are described as misplaced commercial imaginaries, cultural reticence and material impermanence. In thinking about the deaths of necro-technologies, and their causes, we propose a new form of death, a 'material death' that extends beyond biological, social and memorial forms of human death already established to account for the finitude of media materiality and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Los funerales reales eran una de las ceremonias públicas que más representaban los valores culturales españoles durante la Contrarreforma porque combinaban lo espectacular, lo religioso y lo político. Este artículo analiza el sermón pronunciado por el predicador real fray Alonso de Cabrera en el funeral por la muerte de Felipe II (1598). El artículo contextualiza la ideología religiosa y política de la España de finales del siglo XVI con respecto a los rituales de la muerte, y analiza el sermón de Cabrera como un ejemplo paradigmático de la mentalidad de la época. El texto del sermón es, además, un modelo único en cuanto a la manera en que fusiona argumentos bíblicos, la tradición patrística, el género de la hagiografía y el tema del desengaño. Igualmente su estilo retórico es variado con modos de lenguaje ascético, cortesano y literario que inicia ya el estilo barroco. Este estudio arguye que el sermón era una parte central de los rituales de la muerte del Siglo de Oro, y que el predicador transmitía con él unas pautas de conducta específicas que tenían que ver con la salvación. El púlpito, en definitiva, era un lugar donde la Iglesia reafirmaba las creencias católicas tradicionales, y donde legitimaba la dinastía monárquica de los Habsburgo dentro del contexto de la Contrarreforma. Royal funerals were among the public ceremonies most representative of Spanish cultural values during the Counter-Reformation because they combined religion and politics within the same public spectacle. This essay analyses the sermon delivered at the funeral of Philip II of Spain (1598) by the Royal Preacher Fray Alonso de Cabrera. The article places in context the religious and political ideology of Spain at the end of the sixteenth century as reflected in death rituals, and analyses Cabrera's sermon as a paradigmatic example of the mentality of the period. The text of Cabrera's sermon is a model of its kind in the way that it combines a wide variety of different allusions—including biblical references, Patristics, Hagiography, and the theme of disillusionment (desengaño). The rhetorical style of the prose is similarly varied, mixing ascetic, courtly and Baroque literary language in ways indicative of the incipient Baroque. This study argues that the sermon was a central part of Golden-Age funeral rites through which the preacher communicated what were the specific rules of conduct that needed to be followed to achieve salvation. In effect, the pulpit was the place from which the Catholic Church reaffirmed its traditional dogma and beliefs, and at the same time the legitimacy of the Habsburg dynasty within the context of the Counter-Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. D. Kunkel and M. R. Dennis (2003) demonstrated that examining texts for identified components of eulogia, as drawn from the comforting and social support paradigms found in psychology and communication literatures (i.e., credibility establishment, praise for the deceased, self-disclosure of emotion, prescriptions for problem-focused coping, promotion of positive reappraisal for emotion -focused coping, and the affirmation and continuation of relationships), is critical to understanding eulogistic phenomena. Analysis of three Presidential eulogies, as informed by the components, reveals calls for unity in President Ronald Wilson Reagan's 1986 eulogy for the Challenger space shuttle crew, suggestions for action in President William Jefferson Clinton's 1995 eulogy for USS Cole sailors, and positive reappraisal within astronauts' quotes offered by President George Walker Bush during his 2003 eulogy for the Columbia space shuttle crew.

The genre of the grief account is identified to include published narratives of surviving grief. Thematic analysis of Andrew Holleran's (2006) Grief: A Novel, Lolly Winston's (2004) Good Grief: A Novel, Joan Didion's (2005) The Year of Magical Thinking, and J. Canfield and M. V. Hansen's (2003) Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul: Stories About Life, Death and Overcoming the Loss of a Loved One is informed by recent scholarship regarding eulogies and illness and dying narratives. Six dimensions (restorative, evaluative, interpretive, affirmative, affective, transformative) of contemporary grief accounts are recognized as sources of inspiration for the practice and experience of bereavement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the text of the eulogies delivered at the memorial service for Edward Levi on April 6, 2000.

This article explores some aspects of public speaking in the mediated public sphere by examining the verbal tributes offered by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, by the Queen and by Earl Spencer in the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It considers some of the linguistic properties of these three public utterances, but focuses mainly on the ways in which they were assessed by members of 'the public', in order to explore possible changes to the discursive character of the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the treatment of death and the afterlife in the eulogies of English Protestant reformers. Responsibility of the eulogist; Need to establish an alternative to remedial purgation; Concept of spirituality of contempt for the world; Argument for a `middle state' advanced by Christian mortalist Richard Overton.

Presents remarks delivered at the memorial service for Professor Louis Loss, hailed as the intellectual father of securities law, by his friends and associates.

Criticizes Ben Jonson's eulogy on Shakespeare, `To the memory of my Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: and What He Hath left Us'. Ambiguous reaction and criticisms to the eulogy; Historical bias against Jonson's reputation; Shakespeare's lack of classical education; Struggle of vernaculars to supplant Latin; Appeal to nationalistic pride in Shakespeare's use of native idioms over classical models.

Presents the eulogy at the memorial service held for Sal Martirano at the University of Illinois. Author's first meeting with Martirano; Martirano as an artist; Martirano's relationship with his family.

Presents an eulogy for Ioan Davies, a professor in York University in Toronto, Ontario. Death of Davies; Dream for an international solidarity; Contents of 'The New Internationale(?)', a paper wrote by Davies.

The article presents personal appreciation by Lola Paulsen, a psychologist, for Eva Metman, a founding member of London Society of Analytical Psychology. During the last six months of Eva Metman's illness Paulsen had the priviledge of seeing her often. From the moment Metman knew she had cancer of the pancreas she realized that it meant death for her, yet she had the courage to leave room for a miracle. To acknowledge that she was dying of cancer was the hardest chaIlenge of all for her. She remained factual, even in the face of death.

Presents a eulogy delivered by Albert M. Sacks, dean of Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during a funeral service for law professor Arthur Sutherland on March 12, 1973.

Presents a eulogy for Darryl R. Francis, former president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Missouri who died in 2002. Length of his term as president of the Federal Reserve Bank; Information on his hobby.