Preserving personhood: resisting objectification while dying and managing the ethics of life online after death

In this article we – mother and daughter – critically examine the ethical concerns that arise during, and after, death. Drawing on our recent experience of losing our husband (Evelyn) and father (Ümit), we discuss the objectification of the dying person in societal systems, and the decisions about the deceased person’s life online that must be made by those left behind. In our discussion of the objectification of dying, we explore how the dying subject becomes an object for ‘the medical gaze,’ dehumanised in the medical and bureaucratic systems; disrespected as an individual and excluded from decision making. We discuss the ways the dying subject asserts their agency and maintains their personhood and identity while dying. One such way is through posting on social media, where the subject can assert their presence and construct their own narrative of dying. We therefore examine the subject’s life online, leading up to and after death. Recognising the act of posting online as an automedial process of becoming – and therefore approaching life online as life – we discuss the ethical dilemmas we faced after death, about whether to delete, or hand over ownership of, the life online, which we describe as a second death. Reflecting on the relational boundaries of where self ends and others begin, we ask ‘Who owns the life?’.