Suspension in funeral rites

Just as during crisis normal social structures can collapse, and social functions and roles break down to the point where behaviours and customs are overlooked, so are periods of mourning characterised by an alteration and, in fact, suspension of all social relations. "All societies are constructed in the face of chaos. The constant possibility of anomic terror is actualised whenever the legitimations that obscure the precariousness are threatened or collapse" (Vernsel, 1980) Not only does Vernsel explain the state of exception to public mourning, but that the ultimate reason for this resemblance is sought in the idea of "terror" said to characterise the human societies as whole. The feelings of grief and disorientation and individual, collective expressions are not restricted to one culture or type of cultural pattern.

Seston seems to be aware of iustitium as public mourning as he stages and dramatises the funeral of the sovereign as a state of exception: "In imperial funerals survives the memory of mobilisation... Framing the funerary rites within a sort of general mobilisation, with all civil affairs stopped and normal political life suspended, the proclamation if the iustitium tended to transform the death of a man into a national catastrophe, a drama in which each person was involved, willingly or not". (Seston, 1962) The political significance of public mourning lies not in the presumed character of mourning but in the uproar that the sovereign's funeral can cause. Is it possible that the public mourning is nothing but a sovereign's attempt to appropriate the state of exception? It coincides with the death of the sovereign, while the suspension of the law is integrated into the funeral ceremony. It is as if the sovereign became unbound by laws at the moment of his death. In binding together norm and anomie, law and exception, one ensures the relation between the law and life/ death?