Mirrors of Passing: Unlocking the Mysteries of Death, Materiality, and Time

Published by Berghahn Books 2018

Mirrors of Passing

Unlocking the Mysteries of Death, Materiality, and Time

Edited by: Sophie Seebach and Rane Willerslev

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785338953

Overview
Contents

About this book

Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.

Author / Editor information

Sophie Seebach holds a doctorate from Aarhus University. Her recent publications include pieces in the edited collection Mortuary Rites, Memory, and Authority/Agency: The Anthropology of Death in the Early Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and, with Lotte Meinert and Rane Willerslev, in the journal Africa.

Rane Willerslev holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. His numerous books and publications include On the Run in Siberia (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Taming Time, Timing Death: Social Technologies and Ritual (edited with Dorthe R. Christensen, Ashgate, 2013), and Transcultural Montage (edited with Christian Suhr, Berghahn, 2013).

Sophie Seebach holds a doctorate from Aarhus University. Her recent publications include pieces in the edited collection Mortuary Rites, Memory, and Authority/Agency: The Anthropology of Death in the Early Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and, with Lotte Meinert and Rane Willerslev, in the journal Africa.

Reviews

“In Mirrors of Passing, Seebach and Willerslev have successfully revealed novel ways of approaching death from the perspectives of time, materiality and the social role of the dead. While, as they admit, no final concluding statement about the relationships between death, materiality and time appear possible, this edited collection does not require one. The value of this text comes not from any one particular statement, but from the range of perspectives it offers and what these perspectives can themselves offer those persons wishing to understand death beyond the assumptions about it that are hidden in modern life. This volume is highly relevant for anyone interested in cultural anthropology, social anthropology, museum studies, religious studies or sociological studies of death.” • JASO

“This volume is especially relevant for scholars and students concerned with the ethical role of museums as caretakers of our religious material and physical (human) remains as well as for those interested in broader questions of how death, time, and materiality impact human conceptions of spirit and place. Its value for scholars of religious studies lies in its non-Western focus, as it provides—in one volume—a significant contribution to the scholarship on death and conceptions of the afterlife from contemporary indigenous cultures around the world.” • Reading Religion

“Ambitious and engaging, the essays in this volume demonstrate how diverse conceptions of time, in relation to death, are present across history, geography, and media. Beginning with the first chapter’s enchanting examination of a James Joyce story, and continuing through the various ethnographies, the contributors have provided us with new ways of engaging with some familiar themes.” • Barbara Graham, author of Death, Materiality, and Mediation: An Ethnography of Remembrance in Ireland

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction. Mirrors of Passing Sophie Seebach and Rane Willerslev Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. Death’s Time
Chapter 1. The Time of the Dead: Anthropology, Literature, and the Virtual Past Stuart McLean Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
Chapter 2. Orpheus in Love, Death, and Time Marina Prusac-Lindhagen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
Chapter 3. Death before Time: Mythical Time in Ancient Egyptian Mortuary Religion Rune Nyord Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Chapter 4. When Bad Places Turn Worse: The Necropolitics of Death Sites in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Per Ditlef Fredriksen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
Chapter 5. Narratives of Ebola: Temporal and Material Changes of Social Riverscapes Theresa Ammann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
Part II. Materialities of Death
Chapter 6. “Saving the Dead”: Fighting for Life in the Siberian North Rane Willerslev and Jeanette Lykkegård Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Chapter 7. Death, Rebirth, Objects, and Time in North American Traditional Inuit Societies: An Overview Matthew J. Walsh and Sean O’Neill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
Chapter 8. Transforming and Creating Multiple Worlds: Strange Attractors in the Mongolian Landscape Malthe Lehrmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Chapter 9. The Dead among the Living: Materiality and Time in Rethinking Death and Otherness in Lowland South America Clarissa Martins Lima and Felipe Vander Velden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	166
Part III. Life after Death
Chapter 10. Making Presence: Time Work and Narratives in Bereaved Parents’ Online Grief Work Dorthe Refslund Christensen and Kjetil Sandvik Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Chapter 11. The Multiple Identities of Aslak Hætta and Mons Somby: The Case of the Sámi Skulls Susan Matland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Chapter 12. Media, Ritual, and Immortality: The Case of a Masculine Hero Johanna Sumiala Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Chapter 13. The Temporality and Materiality of Life and Death in a Sepik Village Christiane Falck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Part IV. Exhibiting Death, Materiality, and Time
Chapter 14. The Wonderful Exhibition That Almost Was Alexandra Schüssler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 326
Keywords: Anthropology (General); Cultural Studies (General); Anthropology of Religion

eBook

Published: August 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781785338953