I volti molteplici della consuetudine. vol. 2

Abstract: In the folk tradition of Sardinia, ‘Accabadora’ means a figure charged with killing the dying. It is also the title of a novel published in 2009 by Michela Murgia, which offers a peculiar look at euthanasia, showing that the meaning we give to this term today is inadequate to express the meaning of death in the Sardinian community rule system. The novel reveals that between 'dying' and 'killing' there is a vast unexplored territory, populated by customs and meanings that make up a system of unwritten rules, unspoken, and sometimes not even thought of. Literary invention shows the forms and degrees of normativity that make up this regulatory system, in which even law is part of a tacit knowledge that is learned like language, through imitation and repetition, in which knowing how one should behave matters more than knowing why one should follow that rule.