Archive pour mars 2010

La Fabrique des images

Mardi 30 mars 2010

fabrique_imagesL’équipe ANR “Art Rituel Mémoire” vous invite à un débat autour de l’exposition La Fabrique des images (musée du quai Branly)

avec la participation notamment de Tim Ingold, Carlo Severi, Denis Vidal, Claude Imbert, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Thierry Dufrêne, Yolande Escande, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Giovanni Careri

et les commissaires de l’exposition, Philippe Descola et Anne-Christine Taylor

le 6 mai 2010, de 10h à 13h

à la Maison Suger (16-18, rue Suger. 75005 Paris).

Cognition et représentation chimérique

Mardi 30 mars 2010

Dans le cadre du séminaire “Anthropologie de la mémoire” de Carlo Severi,

Baptiste Gilles présentera une communication intitulée:

Cognition et représentation chimérique. Une nouvelle perspective.

le mercredi 5 mai 2010 de 14h à 16h au musée du quai Branly (salle de cours 2).

Le perspectivisme en question

Samedi 27 mars 2010

animationDans le cadre du séminaire “Anthropologie de la mémoire” de Carlo Severi,

Charles Stépanoff (EPHE) présentera une communication intitulée

Le perspectivisme en question

le mercredi 31 mars 2010 de 14h à 16h au musée du quai Branly (salle de cours 2).

On peut télécharger l’article “Devouring Perspectives: On Cannibal Shamans in Siberia” sur son site (cliquez ici).


Throughout Siberia, shamans are suspected of ‘devouring’ other humans. This article, based on ethnographic literature about Siberian peoples and on fieldwork conducted in Tuva, examines different theoretical interpretations of this conception. A ‘perspectivist’ approach explains that shamans become cannibal because they see humans as prey animals. The paradoxes of this interpretation lead to a critical discussion of the philosophical premises of the perspectivist theory. Another approach is then proposed: Siberian traditions demonstrate two distinct understandings of the kinds of body connected with different pragmatic contexts. Legendary narratives elaborate a definition of the body by its position in an interaction. The logic of practices is ruled by distinctly more essentialist schemas. The theme of shamans’ cannibalism contributes convincingly to broader hypotheses about the internal properties of the shamanic bodies which are necessary to their ritual practices.

Morphologic Tradition and German Anthropology

Mercredi 10 mars 2010

Paulina Alcocer & Johannes Neurath

Preuss’ philologic anthropology is situated between two radically different strands of humanist science: Seler’s Mexican Studies are based on positive archaeological and philological methods, limiting themselves to deciphering and the edition of primary sources. Usener’s comparative philology is defined as anthropology and its aim is the reconstruction of the whole spiritual and material life of a given people. During his lifetime Preuss was recognized as an ethnographer, but his contributions to theory have been rarely acknowledged. We want to point out that his originality is the transposition of German morphologic tradition to the study of ritual practice on an intermediate level between ethnographic particularism and then fashionable anthropological universalism.

Searching for an explanatory principle of religious conceptions, Preuss focussed on the comparative study of ritual expression and developed a set of theoretical tools –like and “magic mode of thinking”—which combine a genuine interest in native theories on the power of ritual enunciation and an appreciation of the transformative capacity of Amerindian deities. Many of his insights can be philosophically grounded in Humboldt’s Sprachdenken and in what is here called the Humboldtian tradition. At the same time we can discover their potential for contemporary debates in anthropology.

Preuss felt attracted to the field of Americanist studies because he perceived the possibility to trace back the ritual origins of drama. He documented rituals dealing with their own origin and featuring all kind of playful mimetic elements that coexist with complex cosmic symbolisms. It is in this field he had a brief encounter with Aby Warburg who published one of Preuss books in his series Vorträge aus der Bibliothek Warburg. The two scholars shared common influences (Usener) and many interests — above all, the conviction that the materiality of gesture and aesthetic expression is much more than an epiphenomenon or embellishment, but a necessity for the existence of culture. The Kreuzlingen lecture makes evident that Warburg actually was inspired by Preuss at developing his ideas on art.

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