that are important for the history of religions. In a pedantic
sense, tears are a human universal, for all healthy persons
have the ability to shed tears. Yet, in the study of tears in the
history of religions, not all tears are identical; the meaning
of specific tears is culturally and historically negotiated and
renegotiated over time and space. The meaning attributed
to specific tears depends upon a number of situational ele-
ments and specific sociocultural expectations. Local con-
structions of gender, class, age groupings, and occupational
roles, for instance, can all affect the meaning of tears, as well
as the value and appropriateness of specific acts of crying
tears. For a supposedly dispassionate Buddhist monk, for in-
stance, crying over a death might be considered inappropri-
ate, whereas this would not bring any censure for a lay
person.
The following basic phenomenological characteristics
are worthy of note:
- tears are a salty liquid;
- tears flow from the eyes down the face;
- tears are an extruded bodily product;
- tears cross the bodily boundary of inside/outside;
- tear-filled eyes produce blurred vision; and
- tears are often, but not always, unwilled and uncon-
trolled.
Because they are liquid, tears often are associated with water,
as well as with other bodily fluids such as blood and milk;
because they flow downward, they are associated with
streams, waterfalls, and rain; and because they are saline,
sometimes they are associated with the sea or ocean. In this
manner, tears are connected to broader symbolic complexes.
Yet, it is difficult to imagine disembodied tears because of
their immediate association with the human body and, more
specifically, with the head and the body. Marcel Mauss
(1872–1950), one of the leaders of the Durkheimian school
of sociology, first pointed out that in societies and religions
around the world, the human body is a primary site of sym-
bolization and social control (Mauss, 1935, 1979). The
human body as a whole, specific body parts (e.g., the head,
arms, feet, stomach, genitals), body orifices, and bodily prod-
ucts often become religiously or ideologically over-
determined signs. That is, the names of body parts meta-
phorically come to refer to more than their physiological re-
ferents, while they also carry positive or negative
connotations. As such, they are discursive sites of multiple,
competing, and even contradictory ascriptions of meaning
and valuations. In addition, the body is frequently a physical
site of ritual work designed to transform it, enculturate it,
or otherwise control it.
Tears are a bodily product that is extruded from the
body, like blood, sweat, urine, feces, vomit, mucus, spittle,
mother’s milk, and seminal fluids. All of these are symboli-
cally charged substances. However, the specific cultural and
historical understanding of the human body as such, the dif-
ferences posited among specific kinds of bodies, and the cul-
tural valuations that are attached to specific body parts and
bodily products all help to determine how these symbolically
charged things are viewed (positively or negatively) and how
they are related to each other. Less often noticed are the ways
these and related social factors affect how the human body
and its products are subjectively experienced by individuals.
Mary Douglas famously argued that “the body can
stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent
any boundaries which are threatened and precarious” (Doug-
las, 1966, p. 115). As an extruded liquid, tears cross the bodi-
ly boundary of inside and outside. They flow from the realm
of the invisible to that of the visible, and from the hidden
or private sphere to the public sphere. As Arnold van Gennep
noted many years ago, liminal states, sites, and activities, in-
cluding the crossing of boundaries, are ambivalent and inher-
ently dangerous (Van Gennep, 1960). When the boundary
is bodily, issues of purity and pollution arise almost inevita-
bly. Thus, in an important sense, tears are liminal; they move
and exist betwixt and between two distinct states or spaces,
and therefore they are “natural symbols” of transitions or
passages. These passages may be spatial or temporal, or both.
Not surprisingly, ritual tears are often shed at important rites
of passage, such as weddings and funerals, as well as on more
common occasions of parting or reunion.
The liminal nature of tears enables them to serve as a
symbolic means of mediation between persons (living or
dead), between an individual and society, between the inner
world and the outer world, and so forth. In this sense, tears
play an important sociopolitical function in mediating (and
potentially transforming) power relations between humans,
divine and human beings, and the dead and the living. In
crossing the boundary of the body, bodily products have a
transgressive potential that often makes them dangerous,
polluting, or disgusting. The ancient Indian text The Laws
of Manu includes tears in a long list of bodily products that
are polluting. In many cultures blood becomes polluting
when it flows outside a body (e.g., as menstrual flow), but
in other instances—or, better, in the case of other bodies—
blood may be said to have positive power, as in the ritual
bleedings the Aztec and Mayan kings performed on them-
selves in order to reinvigorate the cosmos. Unlike most other
bodily products, though, tears are usually considered to be
polluting. Indeed, perhaps because of the function they play
in washing the eyes, they are widely believed to be purifying
and even to possess healing powers.
In many cases, instead of becoming a polluting sub-
stance by transgressing the boundary of the individual
human body, tears function as a sign of a problem with the
social body. Seemingly uncontrolled weeping produces a di-
sheveled body, which itself symbolizes a disordered or chaot-
ic social body. Thus, tears may imply that proper social
boundaries have been transgressed, or that a desired interper-
sonal relationship has been ruptured. At the same time, tears
can function as an invitation to the other party to repair a
9024 TEARS