Tension-Thick Description (Descrição tensa): Geertz, Benjamin and Performance

Authors

  • John Cowart Dawsey Universidade de São Paulo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2013.82470

Keywords:

Tension-Thick Description, F(r)iction, Body Indexes, Mimesis, Performance.

Abstract

While Clifford Geertz, one of the anthropologists who made the performative turn, in the 1970s, proposes a form of “thick description” by which one may distinguish a twitch from a wink, Walter Benjamin, who also speaks of historical and cultural expressions of social life as texts to be read, seeks to find in dialectical images the ways in which “tension-thick description” – charged with tension – is capable of provoking in readers a shutting and reopening of eyes, with a shudder, an experience of astoundment in face of estranged daily life – a wakening. This article explores in benjaminian fashion the thresholds, folds and bottom regions of Geertz’ essay on balinese cock fights. Within these interior marginal areas, where Geertz may be most suprising, some of the ideas of anthropology of performance are rehearsed and rethought. During the course of the article, traces of bodies, or body indexes, are followed.

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Published

2013-12-12

Issue

Vol. 56 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Special Number: Anthropology and Performance

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Revista de Antropologia

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How to Cite

Dawsey, J. C. (2013). Tension-Thick Description (Descrição tensa): Geertz, Benjamin and Performance. Revista De Antropologia, 56(2), 291-320. https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2013.82470