"<i>Passages and Afterworlds</i> embraces a range of religious traditions that includes Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and a variety of Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." - R. Berleant-Schiller (Choice) "In <i>Passages and Afterworlds</i>, editors Yanique Hume and Maarit Forde have assembled a compelling set of essays on Caribbean deathways-mortuary ritual, memorialization, and the colonial and postcolonial management of beings alive and dead in the Greater Caribbean world. Across diverse contexts, the chapters do an excellent job of examining the ways in which communities use separations between those dead and alive to come closer together, making new life from death (including living well with the dead)." - Alexander Rocklin (Reading Religion) "<i>Passages and Afterworlds</i> deftly examines death, dying, and afterworlds in the Caribbean region. Chapters-written in accessible language and in vivid detail-evidence a deep appreciation of the region's history, a history characterized by violent encounters and exploitation. This is an extraordinary book." - Stephen D. Glazier (Religion) “<i>Passages and Afterworlds</i> is a hugely important volume to the study of life and death in the circum-Caribbean.... This volume brings together groups from the Caribbean that are rarely placed in the same collection, which provides an innovative approach to Caribbean studies....” - Alejandro Escalante (Anthropology Book Forum)

The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.

Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen
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Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction / Maarit Forde  1
I. Relations
1. "The Dead Don't Come Back Like the Migrant Comes Back": Many Returns in the Garifuna DÜgÜ / Paul Christopher Johnson  31
2. Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities / George Mentore  54
3. The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society / Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen  80
4. Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle / Yanique Hume  109
5. Mortuary Rights and Social Dramas in LÉogÂne, Haiti / Karen Richman  139
II. Transformations
6. From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology / Donald Cosentino  159
7. Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde  176
8. Death and the Problem of Orthopraxy in Caribbean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual / Keith E. McNeal  199
9. Chasing Death's Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Caribbean / Richard Price  225
Afterword. Life and Postlife in Caribbean Religious Traditions / Aisha Khan  243
References  261
Contributors  283
Index  287
 
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478000143
Publisert
2018-12-14
Utgiver
Duke University Press
Vekt
431 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
312

Biografisk notat

Maarit Forde is the Head of the Department of Literary, Cultural, and Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and coeditor of Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, also published by Duke University Press.

Yanique Hume is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, and coeditor of Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics, and Performance.