' … in The Spirit of Mourning, [the author] successfully elucidates that 'culture happens as and in the lived body'. This book is definitely worth reading and it is of great use to researchers and students in anthropology.' Polina Tserkassova, Slovene Anthropoligical Society

How is the memory of traumatic events, such as genocide and torture, inscribed within human bodies? In this book, Paul Connerton discusses social and cultural memory by looking at the role of mourning in the production of histories and the reticence of silence across many different cultures. In particular he looks at how memory is conveyed in gesture, bodily posture, speech and the senses – and how bodily memory, in turn, becomes manifested in cultural objects such as tattoos, letters, buildings and public spaces. It is argued that memory is more cultural and collective than it is individual. This book will appeal to researchers and students in anthropology, linguistic anthropology, sociology, social psychology and philosophy.

1. The birth of histories from the spirit of mourning
2. Seven types of forgetting
3. Silences
4. Spatial orientation
5. Tradition as conversation and tradition as bodily re-enactment
6. Tattoos, masks, skin
7. Emphatic, mimetic and cosmic projection.

Subject Areas: Memory [JMRM], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology [JHB], Social issues & processes [JFF], Philosophy [HP]