At South Indian village funerals, women cry and lament, men drink and laugh, and untouchables sing and joke to the beat of their drums.
No One Cries for the Dead offers an original interpretation of these behaviors, which seem almost unrelated to the dead and to the funeral event. Isabelle Clark-Decès demonstrates that rather than mourn the dead, these Tamil funeral songs first and foremost give meaning to the caste, gender, and personal experiences of the performers.
विषयसूची
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. A Different Grief
2. Songs of Experience
3. Why Should We Cry?
4. Life as a Record of Failure
5. Between Performance and Experience
Appendix A: Four Abridged Versions of the Virajampuhan Story
Appendix B: The Story of Virajampuhan in Tamil
Glossary
References
लेखक के बारे में
Isabelle Clark-Decès is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the author of Religion against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals (2000).