ABSTRACT
Death, dying, and dead bodies can inspire sentiments of wonder, awe, fear, or horror. The sublime or uncanny may, in turn, infuse personal encounters with the known dead, experiences that assume an astonishing array of forms cross-culturally. This chapter proposes ways to think more seriously about what might variously be described as the talking or sentient dead, and how such dead delineate a productive analytical category of cross-cultural worth. It shows how the sentient dead define an important, comparative analytical category. The chapter discusses the interplay of three domains ripe for crossover analysis: trauma, memory work, and the dead as sentient beings who enrich social life and reorder private experience. In many regions of Madagascar, the living share social space with a wide assortment of spirits. Spirits are widely regarded as capricious creatures, unexpectedly asserting their troublesome presence. The sentient dead emerge only under special asserting traumatic circumstances.
