Publication

Among the Sakalava people of northwestern Madagascar there is an intimate relationship between the vegetal materials used to build the sites dedicated to ancestors, especially royal ones, and the memory devoted to them. Both the sites where these ancestors reside and their memory need to be preserved against oblivion and deterioration. More generally, we can consider oblivion as a manifestation of the degenerative power of time, just as organic decomposition is the physical equivalent of the loss of memory. For this reason, in various human societies, memory and death are often opposed and at the same time closely linked…