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Ritual, Stories, and the Poetics of a Journey Home Among Latino Catholics
Author(s) -
SANDELL DAVID P.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
anthropology of consciousness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1556-3537
pISSN - 1053-4202
DOI - 10.1111/j.1556-3537.2009.01010.x
Subject(s) - poetics , representation (politics) , politics , sociology , aesthetics , anthropology , gender studies , history , literature , art , poetry , law , political science
This essay centers on a storyteller's performance of ritual in stories to draw associations between the life of the Biblical Mary with her son Jesus and the subjectivities and dispositions of people living in impoverished conditions. The storyteller explores these subjectivities and dispositions, characterizing the exploration as a journey. She also defines an ethical position where the self meets otherness—both sacred and cultural—to engender positive human relations. The essay combines the storyteller's performance with the author's to reproduce the effects, advance the ethics, mitigate the politics of representation, and provide an understanding of the journey's end—a place called home.