Devouring the Mother: A Kleinian Perspective on Necrophagia and Corpse Abuse in Mortuary Ritual

This article argues that the ethnography of corpse abuse and mortuary cannibalism takes on new significance in the context of a Kleinian psychoanalytic paradigm. Kleinian theory suggests that such practices are not merely culturally approved outlets for aggression but explicable in terms of the mourning process itself which involves a complex interaction between unconscious guilt and the need to make reparation. From this perspective, one can understand why the body of the deceased provokes powerful cannibalistic urges; why it is transformed, literally and symbolically, into gifts to be eaten by others; why the corpse may be subjected to multiple constructions and deconstructions; and why a compulsive repetition seems to characterize many of these mortuary rituals.