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- Convenors:
-
Åsa Ljungström
(Uppsala University, Dept. AnthropologyEthnology)
Natasa Polgar (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
- Stream:
- Body/Embodiment
- Location:
- A209
Short Abstract:
Every body flounders in gendered structures, more or less consciously. This panel analyses bodily experiences of emotion, verbally or nonverbally, recognised and interpreted by fellow-beings in archival documentation, oral records, performance of resistance, healing practice.
Long Abstract:
Body and mind are engaged in emotional memories that are not only personal but can be recognised by fellow-beings in various arenas of culture. Emotions are powerful instruments in the hands of those who want to change the world - not only for those in contemporary power. When presented, body memories are often painful, being a driving force in political resistance, defining the suffering of minorities when the experience is used by the individuals themselves or by the recorders interpreting their experiences. There are arenas that are obviously regarded as part of the cultural heritage and there are others hardly represented, so whose emotions did count in the past and how can this representation be changed. It takes a gender aspect to recognise the cultural heritage that is common to men and women of a local group or internationally. Issues of gender and heritage explore how gender identities, norms and values are constructed across the globe in various contexts and settings, some obvious, some unnoticed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Åsa Ljungström (Uppsala University, Dept. AnthropologyEthnology)
Paper short abstract:
To reach beyond the script of life history little narratives (petits récits) triggered by artefacts are analysed. Once the frame of materiality was set by the inventory of crafted artefacts, their mind was open to the scope of family stories of cultural heritage, gender, values of life.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution lies in the crossroads between the study of artefacts and of verbalizations, materiality and narrativity. Its purpose is to investigate how objects of the house inspired their owners to narrate and interpret values, life contexts and moral problems connected with the transformation of the twentieth century society. The informants related incidents from their lives, illuminating questions of identity, views of morality, gender roles, class relations, sense of place, and historical preservation. They answered questions around artefacts with little narratives about life. Their memories spanned the period of a century: from the visible divisions of the old class based society to the hidden differences of a welfare state. The links between artefacts, the art of verbal presentation and personal experience narratives, established by North American folklorists, gave impetus to this study. Paul Ricoeur shows how narration establishes connections between time, objects and values. Objects can give rise to narratives about significant experiences. Ricoeur's perspective is used to reconstruct phases in the historical constructs of the informants. Narratives about food proved to be about class diversities. Textiles in the linen cupboards triggered narratives about death, marriage, childbirths, the upbringing of girls in the art of weaving and of work ethics. Dependence and subjugation as a result of gender, age and family also surfaced in front of the linen cupboard. Women openly revealed their powerlessness.
Natasa Polgar (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Paper short abstract:
An effort will be made in this paper to introduce the Lacanian categories of language, unconcious and affects in reading witch-trial records as main source for reconstruction of public emotions of fear, resentement and hysteria in 17th and 18th century Croatia.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of affects/emotions together with the concept of representation are essential constituents of Freud's theory on the psychic apparatus, so it seems quite unavoidable to explore manipulations of emotions in some arenas of culture without the aid of psychoanalytic theory, namely that of Jacques Lacan, one of Freud's most prominent successors. For Lacan affects and signifiers are inextricably interwoven in the unconscious, which is articulated in the language or is the language itself. An effort will be made in this paper to identify the frameworks within which it is possible to introduce the Lacanian categories of language, unconcious and affects in reading witch-trial records as main source for reconstruction of public emotions of fear, resentement and hysteria in 17th and 18th century Croatia. The psychological dimensions of the construction of witches have not been properly taken into consideration, although court records and narratives about witches would allow such an analysis. Hence the main focus will be put on the process of manipulation of individual emotions/affects and their representations in a public discourse about witches as beings who undermine social order. In this context, it will be shown how manipulation of emotions can lead to re-establishing and preserving cultural norms.
Jasmina Katinski (Institute for Literature and Art)
Paper short abstract:
Demonological legends offer an insight into the attitudes to the body, physical anomalies and defects. The symbolism and the variety of meanings ascribed to certain body parts indicate the importance which this passing human part had in tradition and beliefs.
Paper long abstract:
In a tradition and a culture where the polarisation of the physical and the spiritual part of human being is a given premise, and the spiritual, eternal side of existence is primary, the attitude towards the body and the physical has remained sketchy. Demonological legends offer an insight into the attitudes to the body, physi- cal anomalies and defects. The symbolism and the variety of meanings ascribed to certain body parts indicate the importance which this passing human part had in tradition and beliefs.
Marina Mladenović (Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper theories on nonverbal communication will bi applied to bugaršticas (long verse epic poems which are considered to be the older layer of South Slavic oral tradition) for the first time in order to show how these theories correspond with well-known theories of their feudal origin.
Paper long abstract:
Bugaršticas are a long verse epic poems which are considered to be the older layer of South Slavic oral tradition, that disappeared a century before they were even published. Many scholars who have studied them have agreed on theories of their feudal origin (Schmaus, Soerensen, Lalević). In this paper, these theories will first be presented and then the knowledge on nonverbal communication and emotional manifestations will be applied to bugaršticas in order to show how it corresponds with mentioned theories. The paper represents a new, additional view on bugaršticas poetics in the context of previous studies, which, in socio-cultural sense, contributes to the understanding of social structures that are manifested in these poems, as well as their cultural heritage.
Tanja Bukovcan (University of Zagreb) Zeljko Dugac
Paper short abstract:
Based on the archival accounts from the 1930s on instances of physical abuse of women and children in many families at the time, this paper argues for cultural, historical and political conditioning of individual emotions.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses historical accounts of domestic violence which were documented by medical nurses who were doing house calls in Zagreb suburban areas during the 1930s. Instigated by their own horror over the common and horrific physical abuse of women and children in many families, the nurses were noting down the physical wounds but also the tolerated pains and the ignored sorrows which were too common in everyday family life of the time. Based on those accounts, this paper argues for cultural, historical and political conditioning of individual emotions and asks whether and in which way the similar instances of ignored individual suffering are (re)created in today's world.
Rashmi Upadhyay
Paper short abstract:
This paper based on empirical research will try to analyse Nepalese migrant workers lived experience of fear while living and working in the coal mining area of Meghalaya, India.
Paper long abstract:
In the present paper I will write about the Nepalese coal mine workers lived everyday fear in the coal mines of Meghalaya, India. During fieldwork, not only participant observation and interviews provided me to understand the lives of the Nepalese migrant workers but it was the continuous exposure to fear which helped me understand their life, work, violence and fear with different situation and incidents, of which I was a part of it. The Nepalese migrant workers often use the word fear in most of their daily talks. I put my argument that Nepalese migrant workers fear is based on the experience of the violence they had faced in the past and which is continued even in the present. Thus the violence reflects and produces a day to day fear in the work life of the Nepalese migrant workers. For most of them their heightened fear is understood in their insecurities of losing the work of the coal mines.
Vedran Obućina (University of Rijeka)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explains the notion of good female citizen and the trajectories of changes in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Paper long abstract:
Fatemeh Zahra (s.a.), daughter of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), is embodiment of pure and moral Islamic woman, and especially venerated in Shi'ite Islam. She forms one of five most important persons for world Shi'ism (next to the Prophet, her husband Ali, and her two sons Hassan and Hossein). After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian officials promoted the symbol of Fatemeh as a model for contemporary Iranian woman. It involves compassion, sharing, suffering, weeping, and piety. She is often pictured in chador, long black cover for women in Iran. As such, Fatemeh Zahra is a symbol for many conservative women in Iran and source of strengthening the symbolic capital of the Islamic Republic.
However, although the chador was also a symbol of resistance to the Shah's oppression, many women in Iran refuse to wear chador, focusing primarily on wearing a simple scarf (rusari) and overcoat (manto). This paper follows the trajectories of changes occurring from the symbol of Fatemeh to the symbol of non-traditional women, seeking body liberation and restrain from the official mourning. At the same time, the paper is looking how traditional women regard this issue.
The paper is part of the PhD work on the symbolic capital of the Islamic Republic and is consequence of primary research in Iran.