Abstract
What is death? This is a question that has plagued diverse cultures for centuries and an answer is still yet to be found. Death becomes an inordinately significant tool for analysing social constructions. While the nature of death might still be incomprehensible to the human mind, one can focus on the historical and social meanings attached to death for they hold up a mirror reflecting the society, its social distinctions, notions of the ‘self’ and ‘identity’, the perceptions surrounding the body and its culture of remembrance. The rituals that various cultures across time and space have whipped up, when confronted with death’s dark shroud may even involve a certain degree of performance which may in turn be a part of the commemorative tradition a particular culture follows, for it is through performance and repetition that memories and death and life persists. The culture of death comprises the whole assemblage of norms surrounding bereavement, representation of death in literature, art and the like and even the means by which death often becomes political. This research paper focuses on the notions surrounding death and women’s experience of death in nineteenth century Bengal. The primary sources consulted include autobiographies of women and literary texts belonging to the nineteenth century in Bengal, India.
Presenters
Sohini MukhopadhyayStudent, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cultural History, Gender History
