Short Abstract:

The panel critically examines theories, policies, and research methodologies regarding (multi)sensory and experiential perspectives on masks and masking. It aims to go beyond established approaches and contribute to new frameworks for analyzing their cultural, social, and symbolic dimensions.

Long Abstract:

Although masks are widely recognized as a crucial element in the construction of cultural values, narratives, and identities, and play a significant role in ritual and heritage studies, gender analysis, semiotics, art and visual anthropology, their exploration from a multisensory perspective and focused on the experience of masking remains an under-researched area. Masks are not merely objects meant to be seen, but to be heard, touched, smelled and above all, they must be worn (Le Breton 2006). Masking, as a practice, engages participants in a multisensory experience that not only involves the wearer and the community, but also continuously interacts with various forms of authority and alterity whether religious, economic, social, political, or scientific (Maertens, Debilde 1978; Napier 1986). They possess the capacity to ‘create agency’ (Gell 1998), defining liminal times and spaces, often representing the unseen, unheard, and untouched (Padiglione 2016, 2017). We believe this approach, centered on the senses of masks and experience of masking, and strengthened by ethnographic practice, has the potential to mediate and renegotiate the terms of analysis across multiple traditional perspectives. We should also consider, rethinking, how the power of writing has influenced the narrative and interpretations of masks and masking, relegating them within certain interpretative paradigms and crystallizing their representations, in order to push the boundaries of anthropological analysis and confront various forms of hegemony present in anthropological discourse. Within this panel we challenge researchers to unwrite methodological, theoretical or applied studies centered on masks and masking as a multisensory and experiential practice.

This Panel has so far received 1 paper proposal(s).
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