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Mortal Intimacies: Transgender Funerals, Mourning and Caring for the Dead in Turkey
Abstract
Family, gender, and sexual difference play a significant role in the organization of Muslim rituals of death, practices of mourning, and discourses of grief in Turkey – in ways similar and dissimilar to other Muslim majority countries in the Middle East. In these ritual practices, members of kin and family hold the obligations and rights to the deceased, such as washing, shrouding, burying and praying for the dead body, which I characterize as “care for the dead.” The practices of care represent the deceased body in strictly gendered ways. For instance, the coffin design, the prayers at the mosque, the washing ritual prior to burial and the rites of inhumation are different for women and men. However, when the deceased is a transgender person, their/her/his body may open an intimate social field for negotiating and contesting these practices of care. Focusing on Sunni Muslim transgender people’s funerals and burial practices in Turkey, this paper discusses the relationship between mourning, intimacy and gender/sex transgression through the lenses of care for the dead. Specifically, I examine the intimate economies of touch that take place while preparing the deceased body for a religious afterlife. Bringing together the accounts of two Sunni Muslim corpse washers and those family members who denied to touch the sex/gender transgressive body of the deceased, I show the limits of gendered and sexual belonging in the family and the practices and discourses of mourning and grief in Turkey.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Queer/LGBT Studies