ABSTRACT
Burials in the Christian tradition create boundaries between the material world and the soul, the living and the dead, the earth and the sky. To the contrary, in Central East Madagascar, the matter of bones and the spirit of souls are reunited to regenerate ancestral relations during a second burial. In these second burials the dead no longer remain far beneath the ground but are brought back to the surfaces of everyday life. This chapter explores surfaces in the light of polar interfaces that appear during second burials to argue that – for the inhabitants of West Bezanozano – life and death dialogue through light and shadow as a complementary pair.
