Monday, August 9, 2010

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Of Love and Other Demons .- García Márquez, Gabriel

armenza Kline - Notes on Colombian Literature (ed.)

Of Love and Other Demons: tragedy inquisitorial Of Love and Other Demons: Incinerate the colony

<> <> Isabel Rodríguez Vergara was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He did his undergraduate studies at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he received his degree in Philosophy and Languages. He made both his expertise as a PhD in Literature at Cornell University. Isabel belongs to the Association of Colombian "and is currently the editor of" Studies Colombians. " She teaches courses in American literature at George Washington University in Washington, DC His publications are devoted to various Latin American writers, particularly their book The satirical world Gabriel García Márquez.

This paper will discuss the latest historical novel by Gabriel García Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons (1994) with its nuances magical-realist and self-conscious, that is, that while exposing a story, discuss the process creativo.1 The friction between the texts 'original' of Colombian history and the fictional novel, is matter for meditation in this work. The speech she interpreted as an exploration of Latin American identity in the English colonial system that is built and destroyed at a time by exposing the central character, Mary Servant of All Angels, twelve year old girl (daughter a mestizo and a English marquis), metaphor of the colonized.

Exposing the 'ser'bajo colonialism will be examined by ethnicity, and family, the physical, mental and moral of this young woman, that is, their status as sick and crazy, Santa and a prostitute, characteristics that place it in geographical, medical and moral limits. Servant Mary is located in an undefined border between two worlds: black and white American Indian and European: the world healthy and sick world, the moral and amoral world. María Mandinga disease, his madness (presumably caused by a dog bite), will be seen as political and historical metaphor in Love and Other Demons, while the exorcism and the Inquisition, will be presented as the means of repression to silence the colonized.

Under the apparent story of the brief and intense love story between Mary Servant Angeles All twelve years of age with the priest of the Holy Ghost Alcino Cayetano and Escudero Delaura, 36 years, the discourse of the novel complex debate symbolic systems, during the English colonial period, including the language, rules of marriage and love, economic relations, art, science and religion as the most important feature. Aware of the inability cultures to give all humans the same way into the symbolic order, the discourse of the novel focuses on a woman - usually located at an intermediate point between culture and nature at a level lower than the man to spread its cultural significance. Hence the importance of the role of Mary as transgressive Servant of the colonial order.

the fruitful and ambiguous title of the novel suggests the state of love (between two offenders in a colonial system) as a demon again, while the narrator identifies several times in fiction the "demon" as the number of prejudices aroused in Maria Servant repressed instinctual drives that projects to the outside world (seizures obscene, idolatrous jargon barking, screaming, aggression against others, etc), interpreted as disease. 2

The novel opens with two introductory pages untitled} ra Mane prologue (gesture similar to the volume of Strange Pilgrims, 1992) emphasize two relevant events to the creation of the novel: first, the prominent position the narrator as a reporter who witnessed, in the year 1949, witnessing the emptying of the burial crypt of the former convent of Santa Clara, sold and to build a five star hotel. There he found "the news", ie the body of Mary Servant of All Angels, with long hair "twenty-two meters eleven inches, (11) (referring to the hair under the heading of Santo Tomas in the novel) protagonist of the story, in the midst of disorders of the bones of three generations of bishops and abbots, among others. The event will witness the "news "gives authority to the narrator, while the speech is identified with the group of writer-historian and archaeologist, rescuing all subjects (bodies), classifying information (bones) and identifying the objects (words) .3

The second event announced in the prologue, which calls into question the authorship of the novel, is the happy coincidence to have found the body of Servant Maria de Todos los Angeles with his splendid and magical hair, the source of the legend that her grandmother had as a kid home turn, the text of the novel. An elusive legend (oral), a budding archeology (nasal bones in wrong) and an autobiographical episode, are cited as sources of the novel that he began to build in 1949, three centuries later events have happened and published in 1994 forty-five years after the dismantling of the cripta.4

However, García Márquez does not count in his introduction, which in addition to oral legend that her grandmother passed, Servant Mary exists in the 'Official Story' of Cartagena Indian texts, which by its open 'Coincidences' and knowing the investigative rigor Colombian writer, surely consulted. I refer to the 'witch' Lorenza Acereto, tried by the Tribunal of the Inquisition in 16135 García Márquez then, would be rewriting the text of a historical case of a victim of the Inquisition in Cartagena de Indias in the seventeenth century (which exceeds the mere legend in detail) as an excuse to recreate the cultural conflicts dramatize a colony situation, akin to the fictional anthropology and psychoanalysis as hermeneutic disciplines (since they all revolve around the study of meanings). The narrator-analyst, serves as a kind of interpreter establishing communication between the various sectors of power (the state, church, text), the loyalty of García Márquez here do not seem inclined towards the discourse of colonial power and not the central character searches for a position 'culturally acceptable', but rather, a fair acceptance of the culture of 'other' (the colonized).

's speech rightly novel dramatizes the intricate process of cultural interpretation in both anthropology and in history, a process that ultimately dissipates in the fictional language signs. The famous commentary of the controversial anthropologist Clifford Geertz, which states: "Cultures can not be seen through objective truths. They must register and be seen as a novel. Societies and lives, contain their own interpretations "6 -, is comparable to the contradictions of interpretation and historical imprecision of language, unaware of the exact sciences research, which alerted and Hayden White. 7 García Márquez also confuses history and novel to the point of declaring that he wrote, The General in His Labyrinth (1989), a novel about Simon Bolivar, "write the true story of Colombia ... not the official story, to tell us in one volume how that country into a novel. "Adds that estimates that he wrote the true story Bolivar. 8 And as it happened that the passage of the slaughter of the banana workers in One Hundred Years of Solitude fiction went to the official story, no surprise that the novel of Bolivar and the Acereto Lorenza Distinguished acquire the range of 'stories'. García Márquez, following a framework of cultural anthropology, (defined it in situations of colonial power), finds the behavior of a community, explains his actions and attitudes to understand and classify them in the light of wider contexts and more specific time and space that is more historical. However, the text of the novel, like history, can not be objective or scientific, is interpretation and therefore ideological.

The text of the 'official' story and the fictional are discussed creating friction, overlaps and contradictions, and ultimately, fiction-making, and painting by Botero, ideological twists predictable with knowledge of the writer's previous work Colombia. As the novel Servant Maria Lorenza (the witch) was born in Cartagena de Indias, the first daughter of a English marquis and a mestizo, the second daughter of a Genoese adventurer and one English. The Acereto down in Cartagena de Indias for the year 1585 and Lorenza born in 86, the parents of Mary Servant, Ignacio Alfaro de Dueñas, second Marquis of Casalduero and Lord of Darien and Bernarda Cabrera, living in the seventeenth century. The family unit of two girls is lacking for several reasons: Servant Mary, for lack of love between parents, in Laurence, due to the death of his mother and dedication to the business of his father. The first falls in love at twelve years of a priest and poet called the Holy Spirit Alcino Cayetano and Escudero Delaura 36 years of age. The second marriage at the age of eleven years with a 38. Servant Mary confronts the English culture to fall in love with a priest, speaking African languages \u200b\u200band dress like black, Lorenza, in turn, marries out of love with a man who is unfaithful on numerous occasions and have children with him, until, tired of his abuse decides to have a lover and make use of the witch to get rid of her husband, according to the interpretation of historians who have written about his case. The time in two different stories: the 'story' of Lorenza covers up years of his adult life, but focuses on the inquisitorial process, the Handmaid of Mary tells about five months of his life, accumulated details of his illness, exorcism, imprisonment, being in love and death. Both suffer the process of the Inquisition, charged with similar offenses relating mainly against the Catholic faith: for using magic, superstitions use a mixture of sacred matters profane and invocations of the devil in pursuit of the future 'belongs to the operator', as the inquisitors Lorenza is accused particularly well, having been dishonest life and undermining the integrity of her husband. The indictments Sierva Maria, although similar to those of his double, poeticized appear in the discourse of the novel, however, García Márquez interfere to add your own, or exaggerate the existing against the settlers, bringing the discourse of the novel to limits. We could condense these 'fluoride concentration' in two outstanding features: first, the relationship of Mary Servant, culturally black African, a white priest, and second, their disease (invented by settlers). The end of the two 'stories' asymmetrically also marks the conviction of the narrator, the colonial system. Lorenza While in the original story, ironically received a mild sentence of two years of voluntary exile in the city of Cartagena, some penance and the payment of four thousand crowns of Castile, (due to the weight of the family that had three Acereto family in the Holy Office) Mary Servant self-condemnation of suicide after losing his love and to their inability to survive the Colonial system. Gesture is meant as an indictment of that system García Márquez.

The narrator usurps the role of the analyst in this novel, and deconstructs his 'subject' of analysis through complex processes of meaning. There is therefore an absolute inseparability between the terms 'subject' and 'speech', the human subject is the subject of semiotics connected with psychoanalysis, the significance occurs only through discourse. 9 The 'subject' is here a woman, Servant María de Todos los Angeles, defined by your subconscious and cultural determination (conscious) woman 'exposed' as a product of colonial historical speeches, including ethnography and psychoanalysis.

Summarize the characteristics of the subject Servant of All Angels Mary or Maria Mandinga, and see how to 'build' its reality, ie its significant activities, culturally specific and generally unconscious. His birth, physical appearance, children, location and language, their tastes and inclinations, the perception of others towards her, and her status as "sick" put this character in the border in permanent borders between the two worlds: black and white European American, the world healthy and the world of madness.

The description of the family and Mary Servant language will be vital for the formation of their subjectivity and cultural field. Born in a position limit, bottlenecks, undersized and unloved: English father, with features some mental retardation, and rejected by his mother mestiza.10 The name, children and the cultural and geographical environment of this character are also border: thesubject its English name without a surname with the African name of Mary invented Mandinga, this character is Double also by its environment culturally English (daughter of the Marquis de Casalduero, and the plebeian, Bernarda Cabrera) and African (nursed, reared and made baptized under the tutelage of the black yuruba-Catholic Sunday of Advent, a symbol of "liaison the two worlds. "However, Servant Mary recognizes Sunday as his mother and chooses to sleep with the slaves, dancing and dominates several African languages, dress in African clothes and necklaces familiar with them and celebrate with fireworks and music, his twelve years. Servant Mary chooses and builds their African identity as Maria Mandinga: yuruba speak the language, refuses to learn English mainland, to read and write and take lessons in arithmetic.

well as its origin and rearing two-color stain, physical space fluctuates between displacements of both worlds: that of the masters (the home of their biological parents and white) and the slaves (the yard and buffer zones ) they inhabit the rest of blacks and Dominga, her "mother's milk '(not biological, questioning the family and cultural heritage). Three

'failures' in Servant Mary activate the condemnation of exorcism and the process of the Inquisition: a social, moral and kinship. His 'missing' social, lack of English surname, the apparent illegitimacy, denies the father's presence and marks its lack of power against the settler. Instead, it independently, replaced the white with African identity under the name Maria Mandinga, at its option and in defiance of the colonial laws of kinship. The second 'missing' is moral: to be questioned also on their moral integrity in the future, located on the border between holiness and prostitution, according to the wishes of Domingo Sarmiento (stating that it would be a saint) and his father Ignatius Alfaro Dueñas, segundo marqués de Casalduero y señor del Darién (al afirmar que sería puta) (59-60). La tercera 'falta' es física: María Mandinga tampoco es 'normal', padece de alguna enfermedad, ante los ojos de los blancos: la rabia, la posesión demoníaca y la locura, se confunden en una sola, en una época en que medicina-religión y superstición estaban indiferenciadas, como bien nos lo recuerda Michel Foucault. 11 Dicha dolencia físicamente marcada por la leve señal en su tobillo izquierdo, de mordedura causada por un perro supuestamente rabioso, enfatiza una funesta 'diferencia' que la conducirá a la muerte; psíquicamente, su comportamiento abierta y malsanamente African daughter of a noble white and mestizo ruling threatens the cultural order and therefore should be checked by legal means of the Inquisition.

And so Maria Mandinga, on suspicion of demonic possession dictated by the Bishop for "obscene seizures and barks in Slang idolaters" (76) is intemal to the Convent of Santa Clara, where the lead symbolically dressed Juana Loca on Palm Sunday, to "disappear in the flag of the buried alive" (84). Take it to the last cell, next to the flag that served as a prison of the Inquisition, "a ninety-three days after being bitten by the dog and no symptoms of rabies "(87), while it is called" spawn of Satan "by the nuns, but encouraged by the black slaves who guard the prison. From this moment, anger (virulent disease transmitted by animals) and possession of demons (illness fabricated or 'interpreted' by the Church) will merge into one in this character should be submitted to exorcism (ceremony used by the Catholic Church to cast out demons from people who have fallen under his power), as ecclesiastical law which follows the European rules of the Inquisition.

In an environment intimidated by the Holy Office, the discourse of the novel debate the meaning of 'encounter of two worlds': the black African in America (product of the slave trade) and the English white (which dominates the government and legal institutions), underscores the fine line dividing practice (black) black magic and rituals (white) exorcism favoring the former, since it is slaughtered animals, while the exorcists and the "Holy Office is pleased (n) butchering innocent people in the rack or roasting alive in public entertainment" (98). It contrasts the effectiveness of the medicine-blacks to Europe; questions English cultural values \u200b\u200band attitudes such as persecution and prejudice against Jews and the importance of honor, noted that the Inquisition 1300 was sentenced to medical or related professions, to different terms or the bonfire, in fifty years.

Abrenuncio is intentionally a Jewish doctor, jealously guarded by the Holy Office, who exposed and revealed in all its scientific authority, the unfortunate examples where rabies had been confused, the possession by the devil, as some forms of madness and other disorders of the mind (155). Denies privately, in turn, the supernatural powers of the child (levitation or fortune-telling and holiness), impotent and painfully convinced that no one would decide against the popular credulity. In terms of authority spiritual turn, the priest and poet of the Holy Spirit Alcino Cayetano and Escudero Delaura, is not demonic possession but identifies and explains the reason (that Garcia Marquez wants to lead readers) of the reactions of Servant: "I think what seems demonic are the customs of the blacks, that she has learned from the neglect of parents "(124). It is then that black culture is on trial for the Europeans and should be exorcised, and Servant Mary serves as a scapegoat. However, the text claims and accuses the black culture to Europe, destroying the values \u200b\u200bof the settler, saying the same Delaura referring to the Abbess Josefa Miranda: "If someone is possessed by demons is Josefa Miranda, "he said." demons of hatred, intolerance, stupidity. It is detestable! "(128). 12

García Márquez is doubly articulated in this novel the history of individuals on the unconscious of culture and the historicity of the cultures on the unconscious of individuals, opening undoubtedly the wider issues that may arise in relation to the name.

And finally, talk of love, as another demon from the European point of view, is also a cause of transgression in this novel. Love, partly unconscious partly cultural construction, between the girl and the priest, allows the narrator explore theological dogmas and principles of the Catholic faith (such as the idea of \u200b\u200bsin, the institution of marriage, the lack of soul in the Indians, and animality of blacks, the origin of serious racial prejudices prevalent in the twentieth century) , much debate and dialogue.

With the emerging passion and love between Delaura Servant Mary, the priest, whom the bishop describes love as a feeling, against nature ', transfers to and contact time, the love language of the Gospels to Neoplatonic Garcilaso de la Vega in the many instances in which targets worshiping Mary Servant: "For you I was born, I have a life for you, for you I die and you die "(119). 13 He confessed that" he had a moment without thinking about it, that the eating and drinking tasted it, that life was her all the time and everywhere, as only God had the right and power seriously, and that the supreme joy of his heart would die with it "(169). Love, an issue that dominated the sixteenth century English literature, is recreated in this novel transplanting Europe two literary topics beautifully expressed: the courtly love and the locus amoenus. 14 That love affair between Monsignor Cayetano Delaura at thirty-six years old and twelve Servant Mary, born in prison as a healer-patient relationship, through a language that is appropriate and corrupts both the medieval and Renaissance topic of courtly love, whose expression is the struggle of a woman unattainable lover. The discourse of the novel is imbued with voices of troubadours, in which mostly hear the song of the lover Delaura (trans-clay by the interruption female Servant Mary) of love poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega (1501? - 1536), who recite live lovers and misrepresent offenders, set in a prison garden and dreamed of literary self-creation constant (Eternal Spring).

As courtly lover, Delaura sees love as a desire that grows and is never satisfied, as a force ennobling, which pays homage to the beloved, while Servant Mary used to watch the free love of the black, is surprised by the tortuous suffering of his beloved. In the novel, the two lie alongside each other without making love, but their fill of talk about the evils of love: "wallowed in the swamps of desire but the limit of his strength, exhausted but virgins. For he had decided to keep his vow to receive the sacrament, and she shared "(172). Over time, the passion of Delaura will become, according to him, confesses to demonic possession after undressing Bishop, Brown, and self-flagellation, "It's the devil, father o. The most terrible of all "(159). Delaura erotic love can only be synonymous with the devil, his honest confession to the bishop was more like a judicial proceeding, after which Delaura is sentenced to serve nurse lepers in the hospital of Love God, where you can not return to see Mary Servant.

The theme of the locus amoenus is part three times in the novel through successive Delaura dreams and Servant Mary. While Archbishop Cayetano Delaura investigates demonic possession of Servant Mary Dreaming about:

Servant Mary sat at the window of a camponevado, plucking and eating them one by one the grapes from a bunch that were in his regazo. Cada uva que arrancaba retoñaba en seguida en el racimo. En el sueño era evidente que la niña llevaba muchos años frente a aquella ventana infinita tratando de terminar el racimo, y que no tenía prisa, porque sabía que en la última uva estaba la muerte (102).

En la cuarta parte de la novela, ante el asombro y temor de Delaura, Sierva le relata haber soñado el mismo sueño (144). En la escena final de la novela, surge una fatal variación: en lugar de arrancar Sierva las uvas de una en una lo hace "de dos en dos, sin respirar por las ansias de ganarle al racimo hasta la última uva" (198), y así, queda muerta de amor. García Márquez ha transgredido el tópico del locus amoenus, the fertile literary renaissance garden constant self-generating life, this novel becomes a garden of death. Prisoner of the Inquisition and away from their African identity, losing his love, the only existing bridge with colonial culture, Maria Mandinga, chooses to die (a death that yuruba white and continues to live another life) 15 Al become aware of their status "scapegoat" of the colonial system to punish the 'demons' Hispanic Americans repressive means of exorcism and the Inquisition, Servant Mary chooses to let himself die as a sign of defeat and protest to the European world. Their "being" lost in the politics of colonialism. America for Manding-European girl has ceased to be the intended and Renaissance literary paradise dream to become a tomb where the only thing left is to hasten his death: suicide.

And thus ends the legend of love that the author once heard him tell his grandmother.

1. Gabriel García Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons (Bogotá: Norma, 1994). I will quote from this edition. The concept of historical novel in Latin America has been recently studied by Seymour Menton in Latin Amethyst New Historical Novel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993). Back


2. Sigmund Freud, "A demonic neurosis in the seventeenth century" 1992. Quoted in Moses Lemlij, "what about the nuns of the Convent of Santa Clara: a look psicoamlítica" in Luis Millones and Moses Lemlij, ed. In the name of the Lord (Lima: Biblioteca Peruana de Psychoanalysis, 1994). The demonjio for Fred} you could be a figuera peterna, and demonic possession would be what today means neurosis, disguised as organic diseases. The Devils would be repressed instinctual drives and projected abroad, as Lemlij says. Back


3. The rudimentary nature of archeology in the novel reads: "The foreman was copying data in a cuademo tombstone of school, he ordered the bones in separate piles, and put the sheet with the name on each one so as not to confuse. So my first sight on entering the temple was a long row of mounds of bones, warmed by the barbarous October sun that got into a jet by the breaches of the ceiling, and no more identity than the name written in pencil on a piece paper. Half a century later I still feel the wonder that testimony that caused me terrible overwhelming passage of the years. "(10).
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4. The text says:" To me, however, did not seem so trivial, because My grandmother told me about the legend of a boy of twelve marquise whose hair you like a tail swept a bride, who had died of rabies from the bite of a dog, and was worshiped in the Caribbean peoples for his many miracles. The idea that the tomb could be yours was my story that day, and the origin of this book. "(11).
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5. In Manuel Roof Femández, aspects of social life in Cartagena de Indias ( Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano, 1954). Chapter H (1945-1979), tells the story of the witch Lorenza Acereto. Events in life are taken by Roof Fernández National Historical Archive, part of the Inquisition. So today do not know any critic who has made this assumption that interpretations of love and other demons as historical novel basada en el 'caso' de Lorenza de Acereto.
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6. Véase, Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). La traducción de la cita es mía; la original de Geertz reza así: "Cultures were not to be seen through for the objective truths undemeath. They had to be entered and understood, like a novel. Societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations," (New York Times Magazine ,April 9,1995, 46).
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7. Hayden White, "The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact" en The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding. Edit. Robert A. Canary and Henry Kozicki (Madison: University of Wisonsin Press, 1978), (41-62). Back


8. In Maria Elvira Samper, "Interview with Gabriel García Márquez", Semana, 14 March 1989, pp. 27-33, p. 28. For a discussion of this novel see my book, the satirical world of Gabriel García Márquez (Madrid: Sheets, 199 1). Back


9. For an analysis of the relationship between semiotics and psychoanalysis, see Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1983. Back


10. It is interesting as the text describes his birth on the verge of death. Servant says Mary was close to the physical constriction by the umbilical cord and survived miraculously. Appearance of "tadpole colorless, and the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck was about to strangle" (59). Back


11. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Random House, 1965, 1988). Referring to life in asylums in the eighteenth century in France, Foucault points out the indefinite and confusing the concept of madness, much like the confusion between anger, demonic possession and madness in the love and other demons. Says, "between madness, false madness, and the simulation of madness, the indistinct-identical limit Symptoms WAS confused to the point WHERE transgression Replaced unity; weitere Still, medical identification thught finally Effected all over Which all Westem Thought Since you Hesitate Greek medicine: the identification of madness with madness That is, of the concept with the critical medical] concept of madness. "(276-77).
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12. The section of love is part of a paper read in Vienna, Austria in the "Third Meeting of Latin American writers," 8 to 12 October, 1994
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13. In many instances represents the courtly love love poetry not only of Garcilaso de la Vega, but the tradition of Italian Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) considered the first great Renaissance humanist whose influence was decisive in poetry English, especially their songbook and wins their love inspired by Laura de Noves. García Márquez reinterpreting, adapting the idea of \u200b\u200b"Sonnet X" Garcilaso speaks of the beloved garments. Al took the suitcase to Servant that his father had sent Delaura "put things one by one on the table. The known, the avid desire smelled a body, the Arno, and spoke with them in hexameter obscene, until could no longer "(159). The tone of love beyond death Delaura transmits it was sure who "had no heart for Servant Mary, and yet not enough. I was convinced there would be no oceans or mountains, or laws of the land or sky, no power of hell that could separate them "(165)
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14. For a definition of courtly love, see Ed Alex Preminger, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (New Jersey: Princeton , 1965). pp. 156-159. Deyermond In AD, History of English literature. The Middle Ages, (Barcelona: Ariel, 1973) discusses the locus amoenus, the prairie like a traditional mole Latino rhetoric, represented as a clear forest or garden often is the setting for amorous events. Gonzalo de Berceo, born in the late twelfth century, in the Miracles of Our Lady is honored tradition in medieval English development of this topic, a topic that continued in the Renaissance (109-123). Back


15. The Yoruba believe in reincarnation. Death, for them, marks the transition towards the 'other life', the majority of Yoruba symbolism of the rituals of burial, revolves around a journey. See JS Eades, The Yoruba Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 118-143.


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Of Love and Other Demons: incinerating the colony
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