The ultimate intimacy

Abstract

ABSTRACTDeath—the image of the skeleton—has long been the symbol of a strong Mexican state. But, like most symbols, it has many faces. Nowhere is this more evident than in Oaxaca, where tourists flock to attend joyful Day of the Dead celebrations while the cult to La Santa Muerte, a sanctified death, is growing strong. Through the ethnographic lens of this image, I approach other representations of the slain body to reassess the country's intimacy with death against a backdrop of violence. This analysis unveils different scales of intimacies (from devotion to the nation), reckoning with how these images straddle the boundaries between politics, criminality, and religion. Ultimately, I offer the concept of transintimacy, proposing that the transintimate collapses well‐known anthropological dichotomies, for it is not only a feature of how people relate with these images, but it is also at the very heart of our discipline. [transintimacy, images, anthropological theory, nationalism, death, violence, Santa Muerte, Oaxaca, Mexico]