{"title":"Difficult endings: Unsettling hospice ideology through an image archive","authors":"Gaudenz Metzger","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70064","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Image archives, used as dialogical instruments in ethnographic research, can unsettle the care ideologies they were created to promote. This article draws on the photographic archive of Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, whose images portray St Christopher's Hospice in London as a place of peaceful and dignified dying. Around 200 historical photographs were shared with current staff and volunteers in group workshops, eliciting testimony that complicated this portrayal. Through the lens of hauntology, the analysis examines two themes: complicated deaths, in which intersecting temporalities produce haunting experiences for patients and caregivers that trouble the ideal of a ‘good death’; and marginalized deaths, in which the archive's silences around HIV patients reveal how institutional and sociopolitical dynamics shaped who was included in the hospice's care and its visual record.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"42 2","pages":"11-14"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.70064","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anthropology Today","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.70064","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
Image archives, used as dialogical instruments in ethnographic research, can unsettle the care ideologies they were created to promote. This article draws on the photographic archive of Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, whose images portray St Christopher's Hospice in London as a place of peaceful and dignified dying. Around 200 historical photographs were shared with current staff and volunteers in group workshops, eliciting testimony that complicated this portrayal. Through the lens of hauntology, the analysis examines two themes: complicated deaths, in which intersecting temporalities produce haunting experiences for patients and caregivers that trouble the ideal of a ‘good death’; and marginalized deaths, in which the archive's silences around HIV patients reveal how institutional and sociopolitical dynamics shaped who was included in the hospice's care and its visual record.
期刊介绍：
Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication which aims to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting the breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology. It is also committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine, development etc. as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines. Anthropology Today encourages submissions on a wide range of topics, consistent with these aims. Anthropology Today is an international journal both in the scope of issues it covers and in the sources it draws from.
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