{"product_id":"9781890951542","title":"Death and the Idea of Mexico","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe history of Mexico's fearless intimacy with death — the elevation of death to the center of national identity.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eDeath and the Idea of Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican-American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz's innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico's rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico's national identity. \u003ci\u003eDeath and Idea of Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e focuses on the dialectical relationship between dying, killing, and the administration of death, and the very formation of the colonial state, of a rich and variegated popular culture, and of the Mexican nation itself. The elevation of Mexican intimacy with death to the center of national identity is but a moment within that history — within a history in which the key institutions of society are built around the claims of the fallen. Based on a stunning range of sources — from missionary testimonies to newspaper cartoons, from masterpieces of artistic vanguards to accounts of public executions and political assassinations — \u003ci\u003eDeath and the Idea of Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e moves beyond the limited methodology of traditional historiographies of death to probe the depths of a people and a country whose fearless acquaintance with death shapes the very terms of its social compact.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47033210208496,"sku":"9781890951542","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781890951542_p0.jpg?v=1763608205","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781890951542","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}