Rite, Flesh, and Stone

Rite, Flesh, and Stone
Author: Antonio Córdoba
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0826502202

Forensic science provides information and data behind the circumstances of a particular death, but it is culture that provides death with meaning. With this in mind, Rite, Flesh, and Stone proposes cultural matters of death as its structuring principle, operating as frames of the expression of mortality within a distinct set of coordinates. The chapters offer original approaches to how human remains are handled in the embodied rituals and social performances of contemporary funeral rites of all kinds; furthermore, they explore how dying flesh and corpses are processed by means of biopolitical technologies and the ethics of (self-)care, and how the vibrant and breathing materiality of the living is transformed into stone and analogous kinds of tangible, empirical presence that engender new cartographies of memory. Each coming from a specific disciplinary perspective, authors in this volume problematize conventional ideas about the place of death in contemporary Western societies and cultures using Spain as a case study. Materials analyzed here—ranging from cinematic and literary fictions, to historical archives and anthropological and ethnographic sources—make explicit a dynamic scenario where actors embody a variety of positions toward death and dying, the political production of mortality, and the commemoration of the dead. Ultimately, the goal of this volume is to chart the complex network in which the disenchantment of death and its reenchantment coexist, and biopolitical control over secularized bodies overlaps with new avatars of the religious and non-theistic desires for memorialization and transcendence.

Rite, Flesh, and Stone

Rite, Flesh, and Stone
Author: Daniel García-Donoso
Publisher:
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780826502186

How death has been conceived of and represented in Spanish culture since the second half of the twentieth century

Patriarchy’s Remains

Patriarchy’s Remains
Author: Erin K. Hogan
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2024-05-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0228021472

Something is rotten in the state of Spain. The uninterred corpse of a patriarchal figure populates the visual landscapes of Iberian cinemas. He is chilled, drugged, perfumed, ventilated, presumed dead, speared in the cranium, and worse. Analyzing a series of Iberian cinematic dark comedies from the 1950s to the present day, Patriarchy’s Remains argues that the cinematic trope of the patriarchal death symbolizes the lingering remains of the Francisco Franco dictatorship in Spain (1939–75). These films, created as satirical responses to persisting economic, social, and political issues, demonstrate that Spain’s transition to democracy following the Francoist period is an incomplete and ongoing process. Within the theme of patriarchal decay, the significance of the figure differs across cinematic representations, from his indispensability to his obstructionism and exploitation. Erin Hogan traces the prevalence of patriarchal death by analyzing its relationship with the surrounding characters who must depend on the deceased. Hogan demonstrates how the patriarch’s persistence in film both reveals and challenges an array of discriminations and inequalities in the cinematic grotesque tradition, in Iberian cinemas more broadly, and in Iberian society as a whole. Despite Spain’s ongoing transition towards democratic pluralism, Patriarchy’s Remains serves as a reminder that the remnants of an entrenched although not interred patriarchal culture continue to haunt Iberian society.

The Soul of the Nation

The Soul of the Nation
Author: Gregorio Alonso
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2024-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1805395998

Religion and politics have historically clashed in modern Spain but the complexity of the controversial and sometimes violent relationships between Catholic values and modern political regimes continue to ride a precarious line of spiritual accommodation versus public policy. Leading experts on religious Spanish tradition and recent historiographic findings set out to define and interrogate grey areas in the last two centuries beyond the reductive conventional notion of an ever-warring "Two Spains." The Soul of the Nation unravels the role of religion in the country's public life following the imperial crisis of 1808 when the Catholic Monarchy put the role of the Church at heart of political and cultural debates.

Digestible Governance

Digestible Governance
Author: Eugenia Afinoguénova
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2024-08-30
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0826507107

The term “gastrocracy” refers to the appropriation of discourses and practices related to the sourcing, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food for political purposes. The intersections of gastronomy and governance, dating in Spain to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, have become highly visible over the past decade, when political debates around nationalism in its different forms have taken the guise of discussions about regional and local cuisines. Concomitant with the rise of the “slow food” movement and following UNESCO’s addition in 2011 of “Gastronomic Meal of the French” to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, public and private associations all around Spain have been established with the goal of achieving recognition by UNESCO for Spanish, Catalan, and other national cuisines. In 2016, Gastro Marca España—an association and a web portal—was launched to raise the profile of food in Spain’s national brand. Eliciting wide public participation, co-opted for political purposes, regarded as a factor of economic development on any scale, and integrated into every so-called banal nationalism, the production, distribution, and consumption of food are highly relevant for historical analysis. Seeking to encourage a broader discussion about Peninsular gastrocracies, this book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from different sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific who have spearheaded research on gastronomy and governance in Spain.

The Sacred Rite of Magical Love

The Sacred Rite of Magical Love
Author: Maria de Naglowska
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 94
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1594777063

The first English translation of Maria de Naglowska’s sexually magical novella, Le rite sacré de l’amour magique • Contains autobiographical material from Maria de Naglowska’s life • Continues, in symbolic story form, the sexual initiatory teachings expounded in Naglowska’s The Light of Sex and Advanced Sex Magic • Includes a summary of Naglowska’s religious doctrine in her own words Available for the first time in English, The Sacred Rite of Magical Love is a mystical, sexually magical novella written by Maria de Naglowska--the Russian mystic and esoteric high priestess of 1930s Paris. Her religious system, called the Third Term of the Trinity, taught the importance of sex for the upliftment of humanity. A natural continuation of Naglowska’s The Light of Sex and Advanced Sex Magic, this volume also contains autobiographical material from Maria de Naglowska’s life. Full of symbolic language and hidden meanings, the story follows a young woman named Xenophonta as she experiences the apparition of a dark force, whom she calls the Master of the Past and to whom she dedicates her heart and her service. En route to a midnight rendezvous with him, Xenophonta encounters a young Cossack, Micha, who sexually accosts her. Telling Micha that she already belongs to another, she escapes to keep her rendezvous. Micha, now jealous, follows her and ends up taking part in a strange, mystical ceremony that transforms him, through the magic of word and flesh. With a preface discussing the Sacred Triangle and the magical symbol of the AUM Clock, both central symbols in Naglowska’s religious system as well as in the story, the book also includes a summary of the doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity in de Naglowska’s own words--important to any student of the Western Mystery tradition.

Améfrica in Letters

Améfrica in Letters
Author: Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2022-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0826505155

Traditional histories of Black letters in Latin America have delimited their geographic scope to the Caribbean while also omitting intertwined Afro-Indigenous discourses. Inspired by the legacy of Amefrican thinker Lélia Gonzalez, Améfrica in Letters highlights the Black poets, songwriters, novelists, essayists, and bloggers who have created a counter-multiculturalist literary history on the Latin American mainland. To capture a sense of the variety of their contributions, this book spans Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Southern Cone—highlighting the transcontinental nature of the legacy of Black writing and its impact beyond national boundaries. The writers examined in the volume engage with regional intellectual frameworks while putting into circulation a demand for a recalibration of the Hispanophone and Lusophone contexts in which they and other Afrodescendants reside.

Faking Death

Faking Death
Author: Penny Cousineau-Levine
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2003
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9780773528260

In Faking Death Penny Cousineau-Levine examines the work of over 120 Canadian photographers, revealing important aspects of Canadian identity and imagination. Contrasting Canadian photography with American and European traditions, she shows that Canadian photographers are often preoccupied with a place that is "elsewhere," a doubling and duality that also occurs in Canadian literature, film, and political life. Subverting the documentary tradition and other stylistic idioms for their own distinctive ends, Canadian photographers exhibit an ambivalent preoccupation with death and dying, bondage, and entrapment. Cousineau-Levine argues that this is characteristically a 'faked' death that expresses a collective Canadian wish for a symbolic passage to national maturity. Faking Death includes 16 colour reproductions and 150 duotones by artists such as Raymonde April, Jeff Wall, Lynne Cohen, Charles Gagnon, Evergon, Michel Lambeth, Thaddeus Holownia, Geoffrey James, Geneviève Cadieux, Shelley Niro, Diana Thorneycroft, Jin-me Yoon, Ian Wallace, and Ken Lum. By bringing together this many Canadian works Faking Death provides a compelling visual introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media. It is an invaluable tool for curators, artists, teachers, students, and scholars in art history, fine arts, Canadian studies, film, communications, literature, and cultural studies.

Jackals: Travellers on the War Road

Jackals: Travellers on the War Road
Author: John-Matthew DeFoggi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2022-11-24
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1472852656

A supplement for Jackals, introducing new rites, talents, and virtues for players as well as an exploration of the history and cultures of the Zaharets. Jackals: Travellers on the War Road is a supplement exploring the regions of the Zaharets and the cultures established in Jackals. It expands the lore for each of the four cultures introduced in the core book – Luathi, Gerwa, Melkoni, and Trauj – describing their various tribes, clans, and city-states, their beliefs, strongholds, and day-to-day lives, adding more nuance and depth to the world and giving players more ways to personalize their characters. New rites, virtues, and talents provide further customization options, while adventure hooks scattered throughout the book hint at new menaces to be battled, new challenges to be overcome... and new glories to be won!