Paper short abstract:

Prosociality is not an abstract thing. In order to experience the world we require the full range of the body. Capitalism and market integration on the other hand are huge machines, depending on the retreat from the body and from lived intersubjectivity.

Paper long abstract:

Using the theme of women's ritual dance in certain Central African egalitarian societies, this paper will examine a different kind of politics to that common in societies in which property, corporative power and social hierarchy have become the dominant structural principles. During spirit performances known respectively as mokondi massana or molimo Mbendjele and Mbuti dancers organise into formal gender groups. These impromptu coalitions distribute social power by literally dancing it out. Crucial here is the fact that nothing settles in the hands of any one group or individual. "Play" in this context is a potent communal tool used to facilitate social motion. This paper will argue that the immediate somatic power expressed through Mbendjele or Mbuti dance collectives, and central to egalitarian sociality, is the antithesis of capitalism. Using ethnography on several Yaka and Mbuti public dances I will show that the equilibrium managed by gender groups during these performances is part of a sophisticated political dynamic: Visceral, kinetic, a live power produced by bodies acting together and upon one another. Assumptions about the political as "invariably centred on coercive power" (Gledhill) have traditionally obscured our appreciation of systems such as these, in which power is continually funnelled back and forth between coalitions. I conclude that the most collectively empowering societies are those in which the negotiation about and distribution of power remains in the hands of the people. Where power settles with one elite, becoming a fixed and abstract fact, prosociality is undermined.