Embodiments of Cultural EncountersThe meeting of members of different cultures, frequently conceptualized in abstract terms, always involves the meeting of human bodies. This volume brings together contributions by scholars of various disciplines that address physical aspects and effects of cultural encounters in historical and present-day settings. Bodies were and are not only markers of cultural identity and difference, endlessly inscribed and represented as the 'body politic' or 'the exotic other'; as battlegrounds of cross-cultural signification and identification bodies are also potential agents of change. While some essays address the elusiveness of the 'real' or material body, forever lost behind a veil of textual and visual representation, others analyze the performative effect of such representations - their function of disciplining colonized bodies and subjects by integrating them into Western systems of cultural signification and scientific classification. Yet, as the volume also shows, formerly colonized people, far from subjecting themselves completely to Western discourses of physical discipline, retain traditional body practices - whether in food culture, religious ritual, or musical performances. Such local reinscriptions escape the grip of Western culture and transform the global semantics of the body. |
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African Pentecostal-type Christianity American Andean Anishinaabe anthropology Arabic archival Bali Balinese banjar Berlin born-again Cabri Carabuco century collection colonial colonists comida concept contact zone context cultural contact cultural encounters demonic devil diorama discourse display Doņa Magdalena early embodiment English ethnic shows ethnographic ethnological museums European evil example exhibition facial Felix von Luschan Foreign Legion Franz Boas French French Foreign Legion gamelan gender German Ghana global Guatemala Hagenbeck Hamburg homosexuality human body Ibn al-Nafis images Indians indigenous Infierno island knowledge Legionnaires living London Luschan Massasoit material milk missionaries modern musicians native nineteenth Nuku Hiva Nyoman objects painting Pentecostal Pentecostal-type churches performance physical Plymouth practices protein religious representation represented ritual Satan scene scientific racism sexual social Spirit studies Taman Sari tattooing texts theology Thilenius Thode-Arora tion traditional translation troupe members University Press village visual Western Winslow women Yate Zorita