Myriam Lamrani is an Associate in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where she previously served as Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow from 2021 to 2024.
Description
Introduction. The Intimacy of Images Part I. On Images and Saint Death Chapter 1. The Oscillating Image: The Saints Misunderstood Chapter 2. The Souls of the Dream: Oneiric Images Part II. On Intimacy and Devotion Chapter 3. Intimate Aesthetics: On Closeness with the Images Chapter 4. Intimate Constellations: The Living, the Dead Part III. Beyond Intimacy and the Image Chapter 5. Transcendent Images: Saints on the Move beyond the Mexico-US Border Chapter 6. Transintimacy: The Ultimate Intimacy Concluding Remarks. Transintimacy: Kindred Images Acknowledgments Notes References Index
Lamrani offers rich insights into the spiritual landscape of Oaxaca, exploring how La Santa Muerte, religious icons of saints and virgins, photos of ancestors on altars, public murals, and tattoos work the magic of transintimacy-connecting images to the physical and spiritual realms they traverse in order to act upon human imaginaries. The Intimacy of Images illuminates the complexity of Mexicans' relationship with death and how the current context of violence is layered upon a long history of intricate networks of meaning and connection across colonial, cultural, geographical, and spiritual boundaries. - Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon, author of We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements Lamrani grounds the symphonic dissonance of her multi-scalar ethnography in a scintillating vortex of images. Scales mean slippages; and slippages reveal an intimacy that transcends scales. Lamrani adroitly navigates this seismic voyage through trauma and tragedy under the grim grin of a sacralized mortality. Her gripping but nuanced narrative transcends the tyranny of categories and borders, revealing how intimacy simultaneously acknowledges and resists the variegated violence that bedevils human existence everywhere. - Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University, author of Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society