Reflexivity in festival and other cultural events

Don Handelman*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is those meta-messages which arise within the world of play, and which in turn comment on ordinary life (or on another reality of reference), that make the reality of play a medium of self-reflexivity. Given the nature of play, its premises of make-believe and pretense, it is a medium particularly suited to doubt and to question the routine postulates of other realities. Thus it is this negation of the taken-for-granted exigencies of routine life, and this dissolution of necessity in the means-ends relationships of causal epistemologies, which make those messages that arise in play such acute commentaries on the realities of reference within which the world of play arises. Unlike, for example, ritual and ceremony which ‘discourage untrammeled inquiry1 (Moore and Myerhoff 1978: 14) into the phenomenal coherence of cosmic and social order, the messages of play do exactly the converse. They take apart the clock-works of reality, and question their organization, and indeed their very validity as human and as cultural constructs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEssays on the Sociology of Perception
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages162-190
Number of pages29
Volume8
ISBN (Electronic)9781134557431
ISBN (Print)9780415291118
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2013

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© introduction and editorial matter Mary Douglas 1982.

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