Rite as narrative: autoethnography in a local healer in Bulgaria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/cra.v26i2.97369Abstract
This article aims to reflect on the idea of rite as a narrative construction based on an autoethnography carried out with a “local curator”, a resident of a community in Bulgaria that brings together populations of Turkish, “gypsy” and Bulgarian origin. The theoretical basis of this research is based on anthropological, historical, and psychoanalytical knowledge. It was carried out through a re-reading, not an application, of the methodological apparatus developed by Ernesto de Martino regarding ritual practice as a de-historicization of subjective pain, and in the symbolic tool of the speech act and the narrative construction of suffering as developed by Michel de Certeau. In this way, the ritual comes to be understood not as a magical offer to solve problems for those who seek it, but as a joint narrative and subjective construction involving all the participants.
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