Imago crítica. Revista de Antropología, Comunicación y Estudios Culturales

An ethnohistorical look at «traditional» flamenco performance

2023-10-09T08:02:19+00:00

This article highlights, in a first part, how the scenographic and aesthetic evolutions that flamenco performance underwent as it was incorporated into the Spanish and international entertainment industry, underpinned the structuring of a popular and intellectual movement to safeguard the old flamenco songs. I then show how the intersecting actions of intellectuals, artists and aficionados contributed to the process of invention of "traditional" flamenco, as well as to the development of an intimate, participatory and non-spectacular conception of performance. Conceptions that are also situated at the frontiers of the family and professional spheres, which the flamenco peñas appropriate and transmit. Then, based on an ethnographic study dedicated to the flamenco scene in Cádiz, the second part highlights how the forms of social interaction specific to the world of the peñas and their aesthetic and intimate conceptions of performance adapt to the local consequences of the internationalisation of flamenco.

Cine-Essay, a place for audiovisual anthropology

2023-10-03T15:30:05+00:00

Within audiovisual anthropology, different modes of production have been developed according to different theoretical frameworks. The idea is to find a method of audiovisual writing that corresponds to a certain way of thinking about the discipline. For example, for a positivist way of thinking, a cinema of objective enunciation should be made. In this way, form and substance go hand in hand both to research and to disseminate anthropological knowledge from audiovisual writing.

What we intend to discuss in this paper is to resolve what kind of cinematographic enunciation would fit for a hermeneutic anthropology. According to this theoretical framework, the focus should be placed on the person who practices anthropology and not on the cultural fact itself. The latter would be a sort of translator who interprets a given culture in his own way as if it were a text. Therefore, the information is not in the translation but in a contextual framework that the translator-anthropologist must describe - as Geertz says - in a dense manner.

The method of film writing that we advocate in accordance with this theoretical framework is the film-essay. Based on Montaigne's Essais, this form of enunciation does not focus on the object but on the measure of the eyes of the beholder, that is, in this case, on the translator-filmmaker. It is very difficult to systematize the film essay, since there will be as many forms as there are filmmakers who practice it. However, it is possible to sketch certain lines that make us think about the relationship between film-essay and anthropology.

Islam and Art. The symbolism of the microcosmic temple in the caliphal maqsura of al-Hakam II

2023-09-16T11:28:02+00:00

In this article we will delve into the aesthetic and symbolic links offered by the al-Hakam II´s maqsura -10th century- with the structure of the microcosmic temple. This model of temple was developed in the Mediterranean due to the different ways of understanding the concept of the sacred, in an abstract sense, in the period of Late Antiquity. The most illustrative example of the microcosmic temple is Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. But here we are interested how this way of understanding the cult space, associated with the Christian world, could fit into an Islamic context such as the Umayyad Córdoba of the 10th century. Based on previous research carried out by Ruiz Souza, Dodds, Ewert or Calvo Capilla on al-Hakam II´s maqsura, an exhaustive work of analysis of the late ancient religious architecture has been carried out in order to compare it with the new Islamic places of worship, specifically, from the Umayyad period. As a result, important visual parallels have been found, better known, but also symbolic, which lead us to think that al-Hakam II recovered in his enlargement of the Mosque of Córdoba a whole series of iconographic elements that related this space to the microcosmic temple. In this way, the second caliph of al-Andalus legitimized his power linked with the Eastern Roman emperors and with the monarchs of the West

Liberated Imaginaries. The syncretic work of Rachid Koraïchi between hybridizations and resignifications

2023-11-09T08:53:51+00:00

In every culture there are flows of images and ‘imaginaries’ that belong to the collection of local cultural symbols and are created over time. In this increasingly interconnected and globalised world, cultural influences happen at a faster rate, and symbols are mutant, hybrid and syncretic. Rachid Koraïchi, algerian sufi artist, defines himself as a nomad. He is a man suspended between worlds: an in-between, a man in transit, between the north and the south of the Mediterranean, between east and west, between the ancient and the modern. His family name El Koraïchi, whose genealogy dates back to the Quraish tribe, a tribe to which the prophet Muhammad himself belonged, is from an ancient Sufi family. His artistic research intertwines the weave of visual art with Sufi mysticism in a process of rediscovering memory—a living, reinterpreted memory. The imaginary, receptacle of the stereotypes of the colonizers, is liberated through his art, which is inspired by calligraphy and frees symbols and concepts to recreate an "alphabet of the memory". The connections with the past that shape his work are syncretic, linked with themes of deconstruction of colonial discourse, presenting a critique of the dominant European narrative in which Islamic roots have been forgotten.

Thinking the image

2023-10-05T07:56:58+00:00

In the medieval Christian world, pictorial representations helped the faithful to experience the sacred. Thus, reflecting on the uses and manipulation of images is not only a theoretical question, but also a concern with their modes of operation and reception. Indeed, the aim of our article is to analyze the importance of the image as a means of expression, communication and aesthetic mechanism in medieval Christian society. To do so, we will review the concept of image in the Middle Ages in order to understand the decisive role of the articulation between texts and images for the success of the pedagogy of the good to die at the end of the 15th century. Finally, we will reflect on the particularities of the use of engravings in the medieval religious experience.

Are museums non-places?

2023-11-14T21:27:26+00:00

Touristification, as well as other derived phenomena, brings museums closer to the typology of non-places described by Marc Augé in 1992, emptying them of the meaning associated with identity places and, instead, providing them with new ones, whose main characteristics are being configured in typologies that are globally agreed, which, in a certain way, promote a symbolic loss.

Twenty-five years of anthropology of Iberoamerica at the University of Salamanca

2023-10-25T10:02:49+00:00

The main milestones of the last twenty-five years of the specialty of "Ibero-American Anthropology" at the University of Salamanca are summarized in the article. The beginnings of the discipline, in which it served as a privileged academic “bridge” between Latin American countries and Portugal, with the Salamanca Studies, an institution that, in the last decades of the 20th century, underwent an evident process of internationalization. The intercampus programmes, the established academic networks, the international congresses, the publications and especially the teaching programmes, first for doctorates and later also for masters, greatly helped to achieve exchange, work and fluid contact between professors and students of both sides of the Atlantic. In this task, we believe that the Anthropology of Ibero-America was a pioneer and played, in conjunction with some other specialties, a very important role for the University of Salamanca, which continues today, even expanding its action to Asian countries, without ever neglecting Portugal. In collaboration with institutions such as the Anthropological Research Institute of Castilla y León, the Center for Brazilian Studies or the Hispano-Japanese Cultural Center, among others, and with the help of famous Iberian and Ibero-American anthropologists, the Anthropology of Ibero-America brought together multiple academic initiatives, social, teaching and research, which are specified in detail, taking account of what has been carried out and a prospective of what, especially after the onslaught of the covid 19 pandemic, can be undertaken in the future.

The indianity of the Mexican Septentrión through the prism of history and national anthropology

2023-10-10T09:12:51+00:00

The article introduces a series of data and reflections on the role that the concept of Indian has had in the context of Mexican anthropology and the official history of the country. Especially, at the conjuncture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where the formal birth of anthropology and the crystallization of the creation of the Mexican national identity converge. Highlighting the predominant role of the Indian as a subject and object of reflection in the anthropological tradition in Mexico, as well as the intentional management that throughout history has occurred around the figure of indigenous peoples. This text emphasizes the existence of a general tendency to exclude from this universe of reflection and analysis the history and present of the indigenous peoples of northern Mexico, and shows some of the reasons that explain this phenomenon

The Anthropologies of the South in Venezuela

2023-09-16T10:31:44+00:00

This article aims to trace a genealogy of southern anthropologies in Venezuela and their relationships with other currents of critical anthropological thought. The main themes and ideas regarding southern anthropologies are discussed, as well as those of other Latin American critical anthropologies with which they are in dialogue. Likewise, the incorporation of these within the Venezuelan anthropological institutional framework is addressed, and we analyse the transnational dynamics and synergies that have been generated as a result of the creation of the Network of Anthropologies of the South in 2015.

Ibero-American Anthropology in Northeastern Brazil

2023-10-31T09:44:35+00:00

The article is a historical and analytical approach, with a critical evaluation of Brazilian anthropology, from a specific point of view in the North-east of the country. It focuses on anthropology from its beginnings to the present day, highlighting some of the most prominent authors and institutions that, over time, and according to changes in mentalities and scientific conceptions, have been building and moulding cultural and academic thinking. Anthropologists such as Nina Rodrigues, Gilberto Freyre, Arthur Ramos and others have their contribution to anthropological knowledge revisited. It concludes with the most recent initiatives promoted within the framework of academic cooperation between Spain and Brazil, with emphasis on the anthropology postgraduate programmes at the University of Salamanca.

Confluences between anthropology and law in Ibero-America

2023-10-15T05:26:43+00:00

This article tries to establish the main points of convergence between law and anthropology, especially in the Ibero-American context. We analyze various authors and works, in the same way that we establish the relationship between concepts related to both sciences. In the conclusions we try to demonstrate that law and anthropology are complementary sciences and that they can be supported in a way to enrich and facilitate the work of jurists and anthropologists as well as bring the law closer to citizens.

From proverbial style to gestural proposition

2023-10-09T07:55:45+00:00

This article summarizes some results of a project of research and revaluation, in Spanish, of the work of the French anthropologist and linguist Marcel Jousse (1886-1961). Jousse's teaching was mainly oral, his writings were published in French. Translations into English and Italian have appeared in recent times. Jousse's anthropology had its greatest boom in the author's lifetime. Subsequently, the Joussian anthropology of gesture disappeared from the academic scene. Today it is virtually unknown in the research field of anthropological theory. In this paper I want to offer an updated vision of the Joussian theory and method, which allows us to revalue their unique contributions to the science of man.

Participant observation. A problematic methodological topos

2023-10-23T11:05:03+00:00

While it is well known that fieldwork started long before Malinowski, it is equally well known that the ethnographic method based on participant observation has been, since the 1920’s, taken as a foundation for anthropological research and for the scientific status of the knowledge acquired by its means. This essay has some purposes: highlighting some issues related to Malinowski’s theory and practice of research, which are full of implications not always grasped in their theoretical and methodological complexity; recalling some criticisms that have been put forward in the anthropological debate towards the notion of reflexive observation; discussing some uses and abuses of ethnographic practice in disciplinary domains other than anthropology

The reaper

2023-10-03T18:41:21+00:00

Focussing on the harvest, this study deals with the development of rural landscape in Catalonian painting from Realism to Novocentismo, through the works of Martí i Alsina, Joaquim Vayreda, Dionís Baixeras and Joaquim Sunyer, and later in the XXth century the interpretation of this subject by Picasso and Joan Miró. (1860-1937). As is seen in these works, there are several regionalist archetypes; landscape themes such as the Mountain and the Mediterranean, and the consideration of the peasant and more specifically of the Harvester as a symbol of the volksgeist or national spirit. These works found in the rural culture and in the Catalonian landscape an expression of Catalonia’s identity.

Photography and visual anthropology

2023-10-23T18:09:55+00:00

Interview conducted on December 19, 2021, with the American anthropologist Stanley Brandes, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In this interview, he discusses his interest in visual anthropology, specifically focusing on documentary photography.

Anthropology at the Crossroads of post-humanity

2024-03-19T19:25:48+00:00

In the editorial, the editor-in-chief raises the dilemma of the posthuman for anthropology, which has traditionally focused on the human as the object of its studies and methodology. This is done through various domains such as the relationship with automatons or with the animal world. It is questioned whether the triumph of the posthuman could lead anthropology to an undesirable end.

Review of Tenatsali ou l’ethnologue qui fut transformé en indien, by Frank Hamilton Cushing

2023-10-23T17:40:49+00:00

Tenatsali ou l’ethnologue qui fut transformé en Indien is for multiple reasons a wonderous and welcome publication. This book contributes significantly to anthropological knowledge in at least two ways: first to a scholarly and balanced biography of Frank Hamilton Cushing as ethnologist; and second to detailed sociocultural information about Zuni in the late nineteenth century. The heart of Tenatsali consists of some twenty-five wide-ranging essays by Cushing, all of which provide a solid historical and descriptive examination of Zuni society and culture. These essays, mainly published in specialized journals during the 1880s and 1890s, are beautifully translated into French by Éléonore Devevey. They represent a broad range of subject matter, starting with Cushing’s memoirs of his frequently difficult experiences as a white man living among the Zuni, continuing with accounts of Zuni social and religious beliefs and practices, and ending with technical and aesthetic considerations of Zuni material culture, principally of arrows, copper, and pottery.