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Dossier Hertz revisité (1907-2007) : Objets et changements dans les rituels funéraires

Parallel journeys in Korafe women’s laments (Oro Province, Papua New Guinea)

Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone
p. 21-32

Abstracts

This paper concerns Korafe mortuary rituals and practices, it emphasises the role of key female relations of the deceased in the hope of contributing to the growing body of literature in which the ritual roles and relative status of Melanesian women is being reevaluated. The complex and negotiated relationships between these practices with the ideologies concerning magic and Christianity are also considered. With their laments women start, pace, and end the procedures that are necessary to turn a corpse into relics, and an angry and sorrowful spirit into an ancestor whose powers may be tapped by the living. These parallel physical and spiritual processes are accompanied by a series of re-adjustments among the living, who must elaborate grief, replace key figures in their social ambit and recreate those ties that were forged through the deceased. The women who had a pivotal role in the deceased’s social network are crucial for these procedures. Mourning and widow seclusion are necessary for the reconstitution of the social roles and networks of the bereaved, ensuring the deceased’s spiritual transformation, and allowing time for the decay of the deceased’s soft body parts. This last process is significant for Korafe magic traditions as bony remains were traditionally recovered and used for tapping the magical powers of ancestors. Thus widows have culturally recognised roles in the reproduction of society and of the cosmological system as a whole, a role that is not easily renounced despite contemporary commitment to Christianity.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone, “Parallel journeys in Korafe women’s laments (Oro Province, Papua New Guinea)”Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 124 | 2007, 21-32.

Electronic reference

Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone, “Parallel journeys in Korafe women’s laments (Oro Province, Papua New Guinea)”Journal de la Société des Océanistes [Online], 124 | Année 2007-1, Online since 01 June 2010, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/724; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/jso.724

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About the author

Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone

Università di Milano Bicocca, libigr@libero.it

By this author

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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