The ‘Casser Maison’ Ritual

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between mobility, ageing and death in an urban housing market from a material culture perspective. It examines a divestment ritual performed by elderly people in Montreal (Canada) on the occasion of a move from a home on their own to a care environment. This move which is often a move into a smaller place and a smaller set of things is also accompanied by the compulsion for the people to divest themselves of some of their belongings, a process that is called ‘ casser maison’, literally ‘breaking the house’. This ethnographic paper reveals that ‘ casser maison’ is not only a matter of getting separated from some, if not most, of one’s possessions, however. It is also a matter of placing those possessions among the kin or other potential recipients. In this respect, ‘ casser maison’ pertains to a ritualized form of construction of the self through the emptying of the place. It proceeds from the wish to ancestralize oneself; the capacity to place one’s possessions is taken to guarantee the survival of the subject and of his or her memory. As such, this paper demonstrates that, through the use of personal belongings, the divestment of the self becomes a form of investment.