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Mirrors of Passing

Mirrors of Passing

Sophie Seebach | Rane Willerslev

(2018)

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Abstract

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.


“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


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.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Mirrors of Passing iii
Contents v
Illustrations vii
Introduction 1
Part I. Death’s Time 13
Chapter 1. The Time of the Dead 15
Chapter 2. Orpheus in Love, Death, and Time 33
Chapter 3. Death before Time 57
Chapter 4. When Bad Places Turn Worse 74
Chapter 5. Narratives of Ebola 90
Part II. Materialities of Death 105
Chapter 6. “Saving the Dead” 107
Chapter 7. Death, Rebirth, Objects, and Time in North American Traditional Inuit Societies 123
Chapter 8. Transforming and Creating Multiple Worlds 145
Chapter 9. The Dead among the Living 166
Part III. Life after Death 185
Chapter 10. Making Presence 187
Chapter 11. The Multiple Identities of Aslak Hætta and Mons Somby 202
Chapter 12. Media, Ritual, and Immortality 218
Chapter 13. The Temporality and Materiality of Life and Death in a Sepik Village 233
Part IV. Exhibiting Death, Materiality, and Time 251
Chapter 14. The Wonderful Exhibition That Almost Was 253
Index 289