No One Cries for the Dead: Tamil Dirges, Rowdy Songs, and Graveyard Petitions

New
Abridged
2005
$33.73

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-Deces 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.

Synopsis

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-Deces 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.

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More Information

Format: Abridged
Pages: 254
Edition: Abridged
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 22 Feb 2005
ISBN 10: 0520243145
ISBN 13: 9780520243149

Media Reviews

In this book, isabelle Clark-Deces gives us a clear-eyed view of the bond between the state of untouchability in India, and the pain of death and irretrievable loss. This is not a distanced work: the reader is always right there with the people Clark-Deces writes about; one can see them and hear their voices as one reads. The author also achieves some powerful theoretical insights that go beyond the words and other communicative acts of her informants. - Margaret Trawick, Professor of Social Anthropology, Massey University, New Zealand

Author Bio

Isabelle Clark-Deces is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the author of Religion against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals (2000).