Myth, Representation, and Identity ― An Ethnography of Memory in Lipsi, Greece

Lipsi is a small Greek island in the southeast Aegean Sea. There, the local oral tradition weaves the island's history from the mythical Calypso to this day, relating stories of people from a distant past and of those who are still leaving their mark, until the day they become memories and stories as well. This eternal time of an endless repetition, as perceived by today's inhabitants, is projected onto space making a narrative landscape through material constructions, collective bodily movements, and supernatural apparitions. The result of long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this book refers to the community of Lipsi as an example of the correlations between popular cosmologies, official religion, and the development of a symbolic landscape, along with the formation of collective identities and representations in the context of a "cultural and social experience of the world."

Marilena Papachristophorou is Assistant Professor of Folklore at the University of Ioannina, Greece, and former Researcher at the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre of the Academy of Athens (1997-2009). She obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France.