COVID-19 has led to unprecedented health and social measures in several countries, including major restrictions on funeral rituals. These restrictions concerned pre-mortem, peri-mortem and ...post-mortem rites. Based on a longitudinal study of 955 French-speaking Canadians bereaved of a loved one during the pandemic, this article describes the reality of these impediments. Through an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data collected, it is possible to identify the gap between desired and realized funeral rituals during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show important hindrances to the various desired rituals, yet some ritual and symbolic creativity by the bereaved.
Notwithstanding that any allusion to ghosts raises eyebrows, the term congruently evokes metaphysical and existential questions, concepts, and paradigms: death, hauntings, exorcism, healing, and ...mourning. It may speak to traumatic events--manifested spectrally--that leave an imprint on the psyche. The expression "to lay the ghost to rest" alludes to hauntings and processes of exorcism and healing. This article investigates how these processes condition and define identity politics in the Black and transatlantic world. It taps into contemporary African literature in an attempt not only to map out the literary and social functions of ghosts--as metaphors for historical traumas--and their impact on discursive identity formation but also to probe the role of mourning in healing the haunted. It calls for a critical and sustained evaluation and even denunciation of the historical and traumatic events of slavery and colonialism to avoid a repeat, for the benefit of humanity.
The wound and the opening Farneth, Molly
Cultural dynamics,
11/2021, Volume:
33, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Joseph Winters’s Hope Draped in Black insists on the ethical imperative of resisting closure. Drawing on examples from Black literary and artistic traditions, Winters describes an ethos of ...“melancholic hope” that dwells in loss while remaining vulnerable to others and an unknowable future: a wound and an opening. Winters is captivated by the repetitions and ruptures that frustrate easy assumptions about healing or progress. In these reflections on Winters’s work, I consider the ambivalent role of repetition in practices of mourning untimely and unjust death, and suggest the possibility of rituals that create and perform melancholic hope.
ABSTRACT
The Family of the Prophet Muhammad holds a central position in Shiʿi Muslim religiosity. As immaterial beings able to intercede in this world, they are said to be witnessing and co‐present ...in the lives of Muslims. Anthropology has neglected relations with immaterial more‐than‐human beings like these. Instead of regarding them merely as symbols or moral exemplars, this essay focuses on the cultivation of relations of intimacy with them through the devotional practice of vocal recitation. In eastern Turkey, gatherings of celebration and mourning are held throughout the year to commemorate the earthly deaths and birthdays of these figures. The climax of such occasions is marked by the recitation of various genres of lament or praise. This essay uses audio examples and focuses on these recitations to demonstrate how their vocal and discursive features offer ways for Muslims to cultivate love and intimacy to live life alongside these immaterial more‐than‐human beings.
ÖZET
Hazreti Muhammed'in ailesi (Ehl‐i Beyt), Şii mezhebi inancιnda merkezi bir konuma sahiptir. Bu dünyada şefaat edebilecek gayri maddi varlιklar olarak, Müslümanlarιn hayatlarιna tanιk olduklarι ve onlarla birlikte bulunduklarι söylenir. Ne yazιk ki antropolojide, bu gibi gayri maddi ve insan‐ötesi varlιklarla ilişkiler ihmal edilmektedir. Bu makale, insan‐ötesi varlιklarι sadece birer simge veya ahlâki model olarak görmek yerine, onlarla ilahi ve mersiye okumanιn aracιlιğιyla kurulan yakιnlιk ilişkilerine odaklanmaktadιr. Türkiye'nin Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi'nde, Ehl‐i Beyt İmamlarιn şehadet ve doğum günlerini anmak için yιl boyunca kutlama ve eza meclisleri düzenlenmektedir. Bu tarz merasimlerin zirvesi ise çeşitli ağιt veya ilahi türlerinin okunmasιyla gerçekleşir. Bu makalede sesli örnekler kullanιlmaktadιr ve kayιtlara odaklanιlmιştιr. Bunlarιn yanι sιra mersiyelerin ses ve söylemsel özelliklerinin, Müslümanlarιn Ehl‐i Beytin yanιnda yaşamak, onlarla sevgi ve yakιnlιk ilişkileri geliştirmek için ne tarz yollar açtιğι tartιşιlmaktadιr.
In the midst of the tumultuous Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, in-depth, conversational podcasts often addressed the ambiguities in this moment of grief and collective loss. Through an ...analysis of several podcast episodes, this article examines how the hosts engage with the flexible structure, intimate style, and vulnerability of podcasts to address the messiness of grief. While digital mourning studies have focused on the benefits of grieving lost loved ones online, this article argues that the malleability and openness of this particular genre of meaning-making podcasts cultivates an immersive space for listeners to reflect on their own profound feelings of grief. Therapeutic, self-care podcasts move away from easy solutions and instead focus on how to ride the waves of uncertainty; the long-form conversation show, WTF, reveals the unfiltered grieving process; and the experimental podcast, The Liturgists, creates a ritualistic space for listeners to reflect on emotions of loss.
This essay meditates on multimedia and sound artist Pablo Francisco Morales's solo exhibition La Memoria es un Pájaro at the Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (IMAC) in Tijuana during early ...summer 2022. Morales' work opens the social and psychic experience of mourning through mediatic dispersal across audio, video, photography, dramatising how mourning's demands on signification unsettle material and perceptual reality. The exhibition also invites a hemispheric and regional approach to sound art rooted in the borderlands, which links Morales' decidedly semiotic and transmedial conception of sound art to broader questions about social and political genealogies for its theory and practice.
In this article, I analyze the representation of mourning and melancholia in Jorge Luis Borges’s “Emma Zunz” and “El Aleph.” First, I propose a reconceptualization of mourning and melancholia. ...Starting from Freud’s premises, I rethink both concepts to argue that mourning is a social activity anchored on social frames and that melancholia comes from the impossibility of the social frame of mourning to carry and signify a loss. Then, I discuss how the short stories represent mourning processes that, in both cases, are difficult to achieve since the social conditions do not allow the mourner to grieve.
The death of a parent or caretaker presents children, adolescents, and young adults with an immense loss and challenge. Youth grieving and mourning requires review and reexamination from the ...perspective of our current times. Many youth have lost parents during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Their parents' deaths stem from various causes of mortality, both related and unrelated to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A parental death by COVID-19 presents a unique situation that contains elements which can lead to traumatic grief and disrupted mourning. Social distancing, travel restrictions, and shifts in funeral and memorial practices all affect avenues for successful mourning. Economic, social, and educational changes and family dysfunction associated with the pandemic have altered the normal supports available to a child in the process of mourning a parent. Knowledge of childhood grief and mourning are reviewed and revisited in light of these pandemic challenges. Opportunities for clinical interventions, both in traditional psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well as parent work and consultative roles to schools, hospitals, and other institutions, are discussed.
According to ancient authors, casualties of war play a significant part in the memory of the military disasters. However, the historiography has hardly studied the trauma of slaughters suffered by ...the Romans in the perspective of collective memory. That’s why this article aims at analyzing the human losses as a key to Roman memory of military disasters. From the Second Punic war to the end of the first century AD, we shall see how the reactions of the community are the very basis for the production of a traumatic memory and influence its processes of fixation. Then we can note that the narratives keep the hint of three acceptable forms of collective mourning and broadcast the idea of a very efficient roman resilience. In the end, these findings make a case for a reappraisal of the particular cases of the roman “war memorials”.
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