Description
Price: $34.95
(as of Apr 12, 2025 22:00:17 UTC – Details)
La Santa Muerte becomes a lens for understanding how Oaxacans relate to saints, loved ones, and other “special dead.”
In Oaxaca, images of saints and loved ones, as well as of victims of political or criminal violence, are seemingly everywhere. While Oaxacans relate to all sorts of “special dead,” they are particularly devoted to La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), a female reaper-like figure whose popularity has risen in tandem with violence throughout Mexico.
The Intimacy of Images recontextualizes Oaxacans’ relationships with their “special dead” through the lens of La Santa Muerte, examining how devotees closely interact with what Lamrani terms “intimate images”: not only devotional effigies but also photographs, films, tattoos, and murals, and even dreams and visions. Though Mexicans have a well-known cultural familiarity with death, Lamrani argues that devotion to La Santa Muerte builds upon this intimacy even as it also participates in the production of terror and reflects political and criminal violence. Ultimately, Lamrani finds that these human-image interactions represent more than Catholic devotion; they reveal the secrets of Oaxacan political, religious, and social life, embody changing relationships to mortality and violence, and even offer insight into the practice of anthropology itself.
Publisher : University of Texas Press (May 13, 2025)
Language : English
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 147733002X
ISBN-13 : 978-1477330029
Item Weight : 1 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.