Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire - Brossura

Fabian, Johannes

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0299125149 ISBN 13: 9780299125141

Casa editrice: Univ of Wisconsin Pr, 1990

Riassunto

In 1985 Johannes Fabian, while engaged in fieldwork in the Shaba province of Zaire, first encountered this saying. Its implications—for the charismatic religious movements Fabian was examining, for the highly charged political atmosphere of Zaire, and for the cultures of the Luba peoples—continued to intrigue him, though its meaning remained elusive. On a later visit, he mentioned the saying to a company of popular actors, and triggered an ethnographic brainstorm. “Spontaneously, they decided it would be just the right topic for their next play. On the spot they began planning—suggestions for a plot were made, problems of translating the French term ‘pouvoir’ were debated, several actors cited sayings and customs from their home villages. . . .”

Power and Performance examines traditional proverbs about power as it illustrates how the performance of Le pouvoir se mange entier was created, rehearsed, and performed. The play deals with the issue of power through a series of conflicts between villagers and their chief. Both rehearsal and performance versions of the text of this drama are included, in Swahili and in English translation.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Johannes Fabian is professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Non-Western Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. His many publications include the influential Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object

Product Description:

"Power is eaten whole" ("Le pouvoir se mange entier"). In 1985 the distinguished anthropologist Johannes Fabian, engaged in fieldwork in the Shaba province of Zaire, first encountered this saying about power. Its implications - for the charismatic religious movements Fabian was examining, for the highly charged political atomosphere of Zaire, and for the culture of the Lub peoples - continued to intrigue him, but its meaning remained elusive. On a later visit, he mentioned the saying to a company of popular actors, and triggered an ethnographic brainstorm. They decided it would be just the right topic for their next play. This book examines traditional proverbs about power. Above all, it relates how the performance of "Le pouvoir se mange entier" was created, rehearsed, and performed by the Troupe Mufwankolo. The play deals with the issue of power through a series of conflicts between villages and their chief. Both rehearsal and performance versions of the text of this drama are included, in Swahili and in English translation. Observation, to Fabian, is itself a social process so throughout, he and the actors worked together to enact, analyze, interpret, and concretely "unpack" the meanings of the saying. The result is a book containing reflections, asides, evocative descriptions of settings and events, yet with a continuing concern for the limitations of the ethnographer's perspective and of the power relations that are never absent from ethnographic works. Much of what ethnographers study as "culture" is performance, says Fabian, and his work is an attempt to redirect the anthropologist's work from "informative" to "peformative" ethnography. His discussions of collaborative strategy of "performance" vs "text" as goals, of translation, and of a host of other issues will enrich current theoretical debates about power, representation and the dialogues of ethnography that go well beyond the immediate African context.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of Wisconsin Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0299125149
• ISBN 13: 9780299125141
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 320