Introduction
In 1843, Thérèse Delveaux, a free woman of color in New Orleans, received a première classe enterrement, a first-class Catholic funeral. The funeral registers of the Archdiocese of New Orleans reveal that she was the only non-white individual that year to receive this highest-tier funeral, an honor otherwise reserved for free white elites. Her funeral, which included a full spectrum of ritualized sound—chants, bells, and sung liturgies—raises critical questions about sonic hierarchy, liminality, and the politics of ritual sound in death.
Victor Turner’s (1995 [1969]) work on liminality provides a starting point for analyzing Delveaux’s exceptional funeral, but also requires complication. Turner described liminality as a state of ambiguity, transition, and dispossession, a threshold condition between two structured realities. While modern scholarship offers a critique against Turner's structure-transition binary, Delveaux’s funeral challenges this model in another way. While funerary rites are inherently liminal, Delveaux was not stripped of status in death. Instead, through the classe enterrement system, ritual sound functioned as a means of structuring liminality, reinforcing distinctions even in death. In other words, ritual sound in classe enterrement did not simply accompany funerary rites but actively structured the social hierarchy of death, ensuring that some were audibly memorialized while others were rendered silent. This system reinforced distinctions even in the liminal state of dying. Furthermore, the fact that her funeral was funded by a Catholic priest rather than by her own family suggests that not only wealth but ecclesiastical networks played a role in securing ritualized sonic privilege. This paper argues that Catholic funerary sound operated as a form of posthumous social organization, determining whose presence was amplified and whose was rendered silent. By analyzing classe enterrement through the lenses of liminality and sound studies, this paper reveals how ritual sound was a mechanism of power, exclusion, and in the case of Delveaux, a rare exception.
Liminality, Sound, and Ritualized Passage
Delveaux’s case suggests that ritual sound itself functions as a counterpoint to Turner’s notion of liminality, transforming what might otherwise be a moment of dispossession into an audible assertion of presence. In Catholic funerary traditions in New Orleans, death itself is a liminal passage, physically moving the deceased from earthly existence to the afterlife by way of funeral processions and corteges through the streets of the city. The classe enterrement system structured this transition by organizing ritual sound into a sonic hierarchy, ensuring that some deaths were publicly amplified while others remained sonically absent. Unlike Turner’s initiates, whose liminality is marked by silence or a stripping of identity, Delveaux’s funeral suggests that sound could intervene in the liminal process, shaping the way the dead were perceived and remembered. Rather than erasing distinctions, funeral sound functioned as a mechanism of stratification, reinforcing preexisting hierarchies even in liminal spaces.
Sound studies deepens our engagement with Turner’s liminality. If liminal subjects exist in a threshold state, then sound shaped that threshold experience, determining who was audibly mourned, who was sonically erased, and who was ritually amplified. For example, Timothy Power (2019) argues that ritual sound in sacred settings serves as a means of both divine presence and communal bonding, shaping transitional states by lending them structure and significance. Similarly, Sarah Nooter (2019) highlights how sonic elements evoke emotional and spiritual transformations in ritual practice, reinforcing the notion that sound is central to the experience of liminality. In this context, Delveaux’s funeral was not simply an economic privilege but a ritualized assertion of presence through sound, ensuring that her transition was distinctly marked within the Catholic sacred soundscape.
Beyond structuring liminality, ritual sound in funerary practices also functioned as a mechanism of social stratification. Dylan Robinson’s (2020) work on sound as a site of negotiating power and positionality in rituals aligns with the way classe enterrement reinforced racial and economic distinctions in death. Likewise, Ana María Ochoa Gautier (2012) discusses how sonic recontextualization in rituals creates aural modernities and mediates social hierarchies, supporting the argument that funerary sound was not neutral—it was an instrument of inclusion and exclusion.
Beyond Turner: Liminality as Abundant Betweenness
While Turner’s model provides a useful foundation, contemporary critiques offer an expanded view. For example, Jack David Eller (2024) argues that liminality is not a temporary threshold between fixed states but a continuous condition of negotiation, hybridity, and relationality. Drawing on ontologies such as Aztec nepantla and Aboriginal Dreaming, Eller challenges Turner’s assumption that liminality must resolve into structured reintegration.
Delveaux’s case aligns more with Eller’s critique than with Turner’s framework. Her status was never fully resolved—she was neither fully incorporated into white society nor confined to the status of most free women of color. Her funeral was an exceptional, one-time event rather than a sign of structural change. If we apply Eller’s abundant betweenness, Delveaux’s entire life—and posthumous existence—remains in a state of negotiation.
Additionally, the role of sound in her funeral reinforces Eller’s processual model. Sound was not merely an intervention against disappearance—it was a site of continuous reconfiguration, reflecting the tensions between privilege, exclusion, and contested memory.
By placing Turner’s liminality in conversation with Eller’s abundant betweenness, this paper argues that ritual sound was both a structured mechanism of social distinction and a dynamic force in shaping posthumous belonging. The classe enterrement system was not just economic but acoustic, determining who was ritually heard in death. Delveaux’s case shows that ritual sound was not a fixed determinant of status but an evolving medium of power. Unlike Turner’s rigid state-transition ontology, funerary sound both reinforced hierarchy and allowed rare moments of disruption. Rather than viewing Delveaux’s funeral as a singular counterpoint to Turner, we might instead see ritual sound as a processual force in posthumous negotiation. Liminality here was not a resolved passage but a continuous sonic process—one in which power, privilege, and exclusion remained in flux. Delveaux’s case leads to a broader question: If liminality is not a fixed transition but an ongoing negotiation shaped by sound, how might this reframe broader discussions of ritual, memory, and belonging in religious studies?
In 1843, Thérèse Delveaux, a free woman of color in New Orleans, received a première classe enterrement—the most sonically elaborate Catholic funeral available. She was the only non-white individual that year to receive this highest-tier funeral. This paper examines classe enterrement as a sonic hierarchy of death, in which ritual sound—chants, bells, preaching, and liturgical singing—functioned as both a marker of social status and a form of religious capital. Engaging Victor Turner’s conception of liminality alongside sound studies, I argue that ritual sound functioned as a mechanism of posthumous transition, complicating Turner’s view that liminality is characterized by dispossession. Drawing on contemporary critiques of Turner's work, I propose that Delveaux’s case aligns more closely with what one scholar calls "abundant betweenness," where liminality is not a fixed threshold but a continuous process of negotiation. This study reveals how Catholic funerary practice mediated racial and economic distinctions in death.