Full Description
Periods of transition are often symbolically associated with death, making the latter the paradigm of liminality. Yet, many volumes on death in the social sciences and humanities do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these "ultimate ambiguities," assuming they can pose a threat to social relationships because of the disintegrating forces of death, but they are also crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life. Contributors explore death and liminality from an interdisciplinary perspective and present a global range of historical and contemporary case studies outlining emotional, cognitive, artistic, social, and political implications.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
Peter Berger
PART I: RITUALS
Chapter 1. The Ambiguity of Mortal Remains, Substitute Bodies, and other Materializations of the Dead among the Garo of Northeast India
Erik de Maaker
Chapter 2. Structures and Processes of Liminality: The Shape of Mourning among the Sora of Tribal India
Piers Vitebsky
Chapter 3. Liminal Bodies, Liminal Food: Hindu and Tribal Death Rituals Compared
Peter Berger
Chapter 4. The Liminality of "Living Martyrdom": Suicide Bombers' Preparations for Paradise
Pieter G. T. Nanninga
PART II: CONCEPTS
Chapter 5. Disappearance and Liminality: Argentina's Mourning of State Terror
Antonius C.G.M. Robben
Chapter 6. Three Dimensions of Liminality in the Context of Kyrgyz Death Rituals
Roland Hardenberg
Chapter 7. Death, Ritual, and Effervescence
Peter Berger
PART III: IMAGERIES
Chapter 8. Hungry Ghost or Divine Soul? Post-Mortem Initiation in Medieval Shaiva Tantric Death Rites
Nina Mirnig
Chapter 9. Between Death and Judgement: Sleep as the Image of Death in Early Modern Protestantism
Justin Kroesen and Jan R. Luth
Chapter 10. Body and Soul Between Death and Funeral in Archaic Greece
Jan N. Bremmer
Chapter 11. Death, Memory and Liminality. Rethinking Lampedusa's Later Life as Author and Aristocrat
Yme B. Kuiper
Notes on Contributors
