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- Convenors:
-
Nataliya Tchermalykh
(University of Geneva)
Maya Avis (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Bodies, Affects, Senses, Emotions
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel analyses disruptive responses to injustice from a range of subjects: activists, artists and ordinary citizens. These public actions, staging self-inflicted harm or risky exposure demonstrate the metaphoric reach of the body which enacts and interrogates injustice, making it visible.
Long Abstract:
In recent years instances of dissent and resistance have been increasingly permeated by performative gestures which stage self-inflicted harm or risky exposure for political purposes. For instance in 2019, a Syrian Kurdish refugee set himself ablaze in front of the UNHCR in Geneva in protest against the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria. Several months later, a French student self-immolated in front of Lyon University in protest of the neoliberal policies, associated with Macron's presidency. There is an obvious continuum that connects these actions with carceral hunger strikes, collective self-mutilation, public suicides of unpaid employees or self-immolations by Tibetan monks. These actions of ordinary subjects demonstrate the extraordinary metaphoric and affective reach of the suffering or 'misbehaving' human body which simultaneously enacts and interrogates injustice, making it public.
This panel brings together reflections about performative responses to social suffering from a wide range of subjects: activists, artists and vulnerable populations. What do these seemingly irrational gestures of denunciation and despair mean in the contemporary culture? What are they symptoms or metaphors of, not only individually, but also socially? What are their direct and tangible legal and social consequences?
As legal anthropologists, we argue that these performances belong to the universal grammar of justice-making. We suggest that they should be seen as socially meaningful avenues of making injustice visible. These are actions that break the rules of political enunciation within the liberal public sphere which normally only attributes political voice to citizens acting as 'rational' subjects.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
By using their bodies to create works of art, female artists present themselves as vulnerable, as depending on their relations with others. They distinguish themselves radically from the modern all-powerful creator, thus challenging both the legal notion of author and of an autonomous legal subject.
Paper long abstract:
This paper stems from my PhD dissertation on law and body art. As a legal scholar, I examined the way bodies used in contemporary art performances challenged legal rules and categories.
Body art as a medium of expression has been, since its apparition in the 1960s, specifically used by female artists, either as a way to directly express political (feminist) claims or, indirectly, as a mean to explore their position as female creative subjects. By using their bodies to create works of art, these women present themselves as vulnerable, as depending on the relationship they hold with others (and here specifically with the audience) in their creative process and sometimes literally for their lives – since body art often entails extreme actions that can put the performer in real physical danger.
By doing so, they relinquish power and distinguish themselves radically from the modern all-powerful (and disembodied) artist of the preceding decades. They also challenge the legal notion of author (as defined in copyright law) and, consequently, question the idea of an autonomous subject upon which our modern legal systems are built. These practices thus allow us to rethink the legal subject critically, to better encompass the complexity of our embodied, vulnerable selves.
Paper short abstract:
Drag-queers are identified as studied transgressive militant performers who tend to break the rules of mainstream drag, heteronormativity and binarity, by opposing themselves to biopolitical norms with the feminist and intersectionnal use of hybridity, queer identity, and scenological empowerment.
Paper long abstract:
The popularization of these queer practices in France questions the way in which performative cross-dressing is a reflection of a society rich in social transformations. Founded by Michel Foucault, the term "biopower" focuses on the "controlled","constrained" body. The political and institutional dimensions that relate to the emerging experiences, resistances and performative counter-powers of groups targeted and minimized by biopower will be analyzed. Through the drag-queers, it will be necessary to study their capacities of diversion and how they reappropriate the European biopower with extra and intra-community transgressions.
The research will show the epistemological bounds between the queer community and academic fields through the concept of legitimacy to queer identity. It is therefore possible to consider a disciplinary intersection between ethnoscenology and gender studies.
The ethnographic methodology consists in a field survey located in France and tends to understand the power of artivism. Artivism is “a neologism made up of the words art and activism. It concerns the social and political engagement of militant artists but also the art used by citizens as a mean of political expression” (Salzbrunn, 2019). In this context, performances performed in plural contexts can be exercised in an artistic, political, and militant way.
In order to participate in the development of new fields of study nowadays, this research will focus on the growing artivism of queer and feminist circles in France. The use of photography will also contribute to archival work on the performing arts. It will therefore reflect on the renewal of contemporary scenic aesthetics.
Paper short abstract:
In Muslim majority countries, especially conservative ones, participating in certain musical genres can be very dangerous. This paper explores how extreme heavy metal music constitutes a form of religious and political resistance in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Paper long abstract:
Nikan "Siyanor" Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani, members of Iranian extreme heavy metal band Confess, were arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on November 9, 2015. The band faced severe charges on accounts of blasphemy, propaganda against the system, and conducting interviews with foreign media. On July 2019, Khosravi was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison and 74 lashes, and Ilkhani to 2 years in prison. Both escaped and are now living in Norway as political refugees. The anti-Islamic black Metal band Al-Namrood, whose lyrics condemn organised religion, breaks the Saudi law simply by existing.
Nevertheless, a common premise in the study of extreme metal music is that while the purpose of the extreme metal scene is to produce transgression, most participants do not live transgressive lives(Kahn-Harris, 2007). This applies to Western, mostly secular, societies. In Muslim majority countries, especially conservative ones, heavy metal musicians are often persecuted as "devil worshippers"; thus, resistance becomes part of their life.
In this paper, I will discuss how Muslims metalheads are finding a community through music, where they can experience some autonomy, share their wishes for change and find the courage to resist social expectations. Furthermore, I will offer critical insights into important issues such as freedom of expression, censorship and anti-authoritarian identities.