Death Is a Festival
Death Is a Festival

Author: João José Reis

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-11-20

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 080786272X

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This award-winning social history of death and funeral rites during the early decades of Brazil's independence from Portugal focuses on the Cemiterada movement in Salvador, capital of the province of Bahia. The book opens with a lively account of the popular riot that ensued when, in 1836, the government condemned the traditional burial of bodies inside Catholic church buildings and granted a private company a monopoly over burials. This episode is used by Reis to examine the customs of death and burial in Bahian society, explore the economic and religious conflicts behind the move for funerary reforms and the maintenance of traditional rituals of dying, and understand how people dealt with new concerns sparked by modernization and science. Viewing culture within its social context, he illuminates the commonalities and differences that shaped death and its rituals for rich and poor, men and women, slaves and masters, adults and children, foreigners and Brazilians. This translation makes the book, originally published in Brazil in 1993, available in English for the first time.

The Forgiveness to Come
The Forgiveness to Come

Author: Peter Jason Banki

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0823278662

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This book is concerned with the aporias, or impasses, of forgiveness, especially in relation to the legacy of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Banki argues that, while forgiveness of the Holocaust is and will remain impossible, we cannot rest upon that impossibility. Rather, the impossibility of forgiveness must be thought in another way. In an epoch of “worldwidization,” we may not be able simply to escape the violence of scenes and rhetoric that repeatedly portray apology, reconciliation, and forgiveness as accomplishable acts. Accompanied by Jacques Derrida’s thought of forgiveness of the unforgivable, and its elaboration in relation to crimes against humanity, the book undertakes close readings of literary, philosophical, and cinematic texts by Simon Wiesenthal, Jean Améry, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Robert Antelme and Eva Mozes Kor. These texts contend with the idea that the crimes of the Nazis are inexpiable, that they lie beyond any possible atonement or repair. Banki argues that the juridical concept of crimes against humanity calls for a thought of forgiveness—one that would not imply closure of the infinite wounds of the past. How could such a forgiveness be thought or dreamed? Banki shows that if today we cannot simply escape the “worldwidization” of forgiveness, then it is necessary to rethink what forgiveness is, the conditions under which it supposedly takes place, and especially its relation to justice.

The Festival of Bones / El Festival de Las Calaveras
The Festival of Bones / El Festival de Las Calaveras

Author: Luis San Vicente

Publisher:

Published: 2014-09-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781941026038

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Thirty thousand hardbacks sold On Mexico's Day of the Dead, the skeletons jump for sheer joy. And no wonder: they've been cooped up the whole year and now they're ready to party. Watch the calaveras shake, rattle, and roll as they celebrate the biggest event of the graveyard's social calendar

This Party's Dead
This Party's Dead

Author: Erica Buist

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1783529555

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What if we responded to death... by throwing a party? By the time Erica Buist’s father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies. While her husband maintained a semblance of grace and poise, Erica found herself consumed by her grief, descending into a bout of pyjama-clad agoraphobia, stalking friends online to ascertain whether any of them had also dropped dead without warning, unable to extract herself from the spiral of death anxiety... until one day she decided to reclaim control. With Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world – one for every day they didn’t find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia – with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one – Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety. This Party’s Deadis the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.

Festival of Death
Festival of Death

Author: Laurence Anholt

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2020-11-05

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1472130022

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'Quirky, compelling and thoroughly enjoyable' Kate Ellis 'A super start to the series' Frances Brody 'An entertaining murder mystery . . . witty' L C Tyler Live music... and explosive death in front of an adoring audience - welcome to the world of the Mindful Detective . . . When Ethan Flynn, charismatic vocalist of supergroup Stigma, is electrocuted by his own guitar in front of 175,000 witnesses on the Pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Festival, suspicion falls on his tyrannical twin, Tyrone. Leading the murder investigation is Buddhist detective, Vincent Caine, and his partner, DI Shanti Joyce. To Shanti's consternation the pair have become known as 'the go-to team for weird stuff in the West Country' and few crimes come weirder than this. Amidst the pulsating beats of the festival, the unlikely duo struggle to untangle the wildly conflicting statements of minders, lovers, drug-fuelled roadies, and dodgy divas. Against the mystical backdrop of Glastonbury Tor and the tiny Somerset village of Kilton, the terrifying trail leads Shanti and Caine from clairvoyant Tarot readings to the cryptic lyrics of a lost song, cunningly concealed by the tragic superstar. Can the unlikely mix of Shanti's down-to-earth pragmatism and Caine's intuitive sleuthing skills solve this most singular of murders? Is the future of the world's greatest festival in peril? And what happens when two consummate professionals are forced to share a tent in the steamy heat of summer?

The Art of Death
The Art of Death

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1555979696

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A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the bestselling author of Claire of the Sea Light Edwidge Danticat’s The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses,” Danticat notes in her introduction. “I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing.” The book moves outward from the shock of her mother’s diagnosis and sifts through Danticat’s writing life and personal history, all the while shifting fluidly from examples that range from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to Toni Morrison’s Sula. The narrative, which continually circles the many incarnations of death from individual to large-scale catastrophes, culminates in a beautiful, heartrending prayer in the voice of Danticat’s mother. A moving tribute and a work of astute criticism, The Art of Death is a book that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

Author: Dan Egan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0393246442

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New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

Day of the Dead in the USA, Second Edition
Day of the Dead in the USA, Second Edition

Author: Regina M Marchi

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2022-08-12

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1978821638

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Examines how Day of the Dead celebrations among America's Latino communities have changed throughout history, discussing how the traditional celebration has been influenced by mass media, consumer culture, and globalization.

Sex, Death and Witchcraft
Sex, Death and Witchcraft

Author: Douglas Ezzy

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-22

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 147252201X

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Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, 80 people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia's rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants' own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people's experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.