Ultimate ambiguities : investigating death and liminality

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. The Ambiguity of Mortal Remains, Substitute Bodies, and other Materializations of the Dead among the Garo of Northeast India / Erik de Maaker Structures and Processes of Liminality : The Shape of Mourning among the Sora of Tribal India / Piers Vitebsky Liminal Bodies, Liminal Food : Hindu and Tribal Death Rituals Compared / Peter Berger The Liminality of "Living Martyrdom" : Suicide Bombers' Preparations for Paradise / Pieter G. T. Nanninga Disappearance and Liminality : Argentina's Mourning of State Terror / Antonius C.G.M. Robben Three Dimensions of Liminality in the Context of Kyrgyz Death Rituals / Roland Hardenberg Death, Ritual, and Effervescence / Peter Berger Hungry Ghost or Divine Soul? : Post-Mortem Initiation in Medieval Shaiva Tantric Death Rites / Nina Mirnig Between Death and Judgement : Sleep as the Image of Death in Early Modern Protestantism / Justin Kroesen and Jan R. Luth Body and Soul Between Death and Funeral in Archaic Greece / Jan N. Bremmer Death, Memory and Liminality : Rethinking Lampedusa's Later Life as Author and Aristocrat / Yme B. Kuiper. Title Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Part I. Rituals The Ambiguity of Mortal Remains Shape of Mourning among the Sora Liminal Bodies, Liminal Food Liminality of "Living Martyrdom" Part II. Concepts Disappearance and Liminality Three Dimensions of Liminality Death, Ritual, and Effervescence Part III. Imageries Hungry Ghost or Divine Soul? Between Death and Judgment Body and Soul in Archaic Greece Death, Memory, and Liminality Index Although dying can be seen as the paradigm of liminality, because periods of transition are often associated with death, many volumes on death in the social sciences do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these "ultimate ambiguities" as crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life.