Why is death a cause for celebration?
...ath, both physically and socially, the passing on of the man’s status and re-ordering of society, even though the dying man may still be lingering on. There is a period of mourning that includes the burial of the body; death dances by the males that symbolically express the re-organisation of the lineage; while the females mourn with wailing, shaving their heads and marking themselves with chalk and ash to express pollution. This is a time of freedom from normal social rules and young people often engage in sexual intercourse with clan siblings, out in the fields- normally strictly forbidden acts. This account is of the practice observed when a normal clan member died, men of different status have slightly different ritual performances at the time of their death, and the length of the mourning period varies too, depending upon the individual’s status. In Irish society today, the funeral process is very similar. The family are called to a dying person’s bedside to pay their respects and offer support at this time of transition (from earthly existence to a heavenly one). After the biological death of the person, the death is publicly announced in the paper, the body is ‘waked’ for up to three nights (where the family and close friends stay with the body throughout this period) and normal social activity (work, social commitments) is suspended. Then the body is buried after a church ceremony and the family/friends resume social life. There is still a period of sensitivity around the closest kin for some time, and a month after the death there is a church ceremony to remember the deceased and acknowledge his departure from the physical world and pray he is accepted into heaven. Many celebrations of death from different societies display similar features. Why do human groups display this behaviour? Malinowski finds that we perform rituals at times of life crises and that the ‘supreme and final crisis of life – death – is of the greatest importance’ (Malinowski, B. 1974, p566). When we have experiences that overwhelm us, we express our difficulties socially, through ritual. We have all, on occasion, felt the grief that arises when a loved one dies. Malinowski observes the ‘spontaneous outburst of grief and wailing in sorrow’ (Malinowski, B. 1974, p567) across many cultures at this time. He reasons that dying is transformed into a public, tribal event and that the wailing is dramatised (Ibid.), but attributes these acts to the powerful emotional forces evoked by experiencing immediate contact with death. He would argue that we comfort ourselves from the fear of annihilation with the belief in spiritual continuity after death (Malinowski, B. 1974, p 569). In performing ritualised grief and exhibiting their emotions, the Lugbara are supporting each other at a time of trauma. Similarly in Ireland, the public announcement of a person’s death, and the practice of a funeral rite is a medium through which grief of the relatives can be expressed. There is a relationship between ritual and emotion (Metcalfe, P. Huntington, R., 1991, p2). For Malinowski the death ritual (funeral) is a functional act within the social group, to reassure the kin group of life after death and re-establish social morale, and the impulse for ritual is born out of the emotional state of the individuals. In contrast Durkheim finds that it is the social ritual, not the individual, which generates a response: ‘society and its collective representations govern the individual’s responses, and not the reverse’ (Metcalfe, P. Huntington, R., 1991, p4). For him the ritual practices of the Lugbara are prescribed, and not developed out of the emotional states of the individuals. Like Malinowski, Durkheim finds ritual to be of functional value within a society, to promote social solidarity and to reaffirm religious beliefs, but to Durkheim the social body is of primary importance, not the individual. The theory that rituals dictate social behaviour is more apparent in societies where death rites are drawn out over long periods of time. Hertz speaks of the taboos observed by primitive cultures in Borneo and the Andaman Islands (Hertz, 1960). In these societies possessions of the deceased cannot be touched or used, except for purposes connected with funeral rites, without causing pollution. Tribes are even known to desert their villages every time someone dies, because the pollution of death is so dangerous. In these situations people’s actions are clearly prescribed by ritual. They practice the ceremony regardless of their true emotion and observe taboos that last for many months. One dying Maori chief told his son: ‘For three years your person must be sacred and you must remain apart from the tribe…for during that period…my mouth will feed constantly on worms…then, when my head falls upon my body and when your fourth year has come, waken me from my sleep, show my face to the light of day…you will be free’ (Hertz, 1960, p50). In this tribe the relationships between fathers and sons are so close they are almost the same person, they play the same social role, and what the dead chief experiences affects the life of his son. Their notion of personhood extends beyond an individual body and this is reflected in their ritual practice. Where death ritual is practiced over a long period of time, the journey from life to death can be seen as a three part process: life – dying – death. This is how van Gennep interprets the event. ‘The life of an individual in society’, he writes, ‘is a series of passages from one stage to another’ (van Gennep, A., 1908 in Morris, B., 1987, p246). He closely examined ritual behaviour and found a universality of three ritual phases: separation, liminal, and postliminal (or re-aggregation). In my examples of death rites, the separation stage is the time of the death of the individual, where the dying person leaves his social role. The liminal is that phase where normal social conventions are suspended and the postliminal is the re-ordering of society and individuals are accepted into their new roles. Another aspect of the postliminal phase in death rituals is the acknowledgment of the soul’s...