The Ethics of Antiphony: The Social Construction of Pain, Gender, and Power in the Southern Peloponnese

Abstract

This paper explores the relation between gender identity and death in Inner Mani of the Southern Peloponnese. My focus is on the improvised performance of laments by Maniat women in mortuary ceremonies. The narrative content, aesthetics, and performative dynamics of the Maniat lament engage issues and concepts pertaining to the social constructions of the self and emotions. I understand these laments as fragments of women's self-reflexivity and as metacommentaries on the relations between the self and the social and cosmological orders. From the 18th-century gentlemen traveler accounts to the rare histories, folklore collections, and community studies of Inner Mani in this century, outside observers have agreed on the centrality of mortuary in that region and on the pivotal role of women in these