Soul of Dandelion Religion, Death and Politics in the “Seeing off” of the Body and Funeral of Patriarch Pavle

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the issues of religion, religiousness and the phenomenon of death in modern Serbian society. My research is aimed at analysing a relatively recent event: the death, seeing off of the body, and funeral of Patriarch Pavle, the 44th patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. This event fits into wider models of the ideological use of religious discourse on the phenomenon of death. However, I believe that a deconstructivist approach – significantly different from those prevailing lately in anthropological analyses – may be applied to this event (and also to others). Moreover, by widening the focus of our analysis from the final image conveyed by a certain social ritual, to incorporate the bottom-up processes underlying the ritual, we should be able to address a wider range of questions, extending beyond the anthropo-political significance of the event itself. Thus, the final goal of this research – rather than illuminating the implicit ideological messages of the ritual – will be to answer the question: Which particular systems of individual and collective values are applied to the shaping of the ritual, and in which way?