Unmaking the Anthropology of Mourning in a Psycho Analytical Perspective

Death often raises questions that science is unable to answer. Science may delay death, but it cannot stop it. Death is marked by grief and mourning. Mourning serves in a smooth transition, such as a liminal ritual of grief serves as a rite de passage between loss and re-enactment to the routine life. Generally, mourning or grief is described as a very private, personal emotion which is characterized by social withdrawal and shutting oneself off from the world. However, mourning also serves as an overt and public expression of grief whereby it serves as an identity marker to a community. The paper attempts to present a cross-cultural account of mourning and presents a psychoanalytical perspective of mourning with special emphasis on azaadari. The study presents an ethno theory on grief and reflections of mourning from a cross-cultural perspective.