Anthropology 371 - Transgression and Sacred Laughter

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

Full course for one semester. Subversions, resistances, deviances, and other destabilizations of social order are commonly linked with laughter and with the sacred in societies of diverse morphological kind and condition. Initial readings will focus on multidisciplinary characterizations of humor, sacredness, and assorted subversions, the latter in relation to existing theories of structural, systemic, and normative social order. The course then takes up a range of ethnographic and historical materials to explore the affinities among subversion, laughter, and sacredness; this in cases exemplifying different combinatorial pairings of the three and, especially, in cases where all three coincide. Topics include countercultures of diverse kinds (Cynic primitivism, Greenwich Village in successive phases, devalued subcultures in the Fourth World), clowns and fools, comic blasphemy, inversionary ceremonial occasions (Carnival[s], Feast of Fools, mock-potlatches), and mythological "trickster" characters. Readings will be exceptionally diverse but include Bakhtin, Foucault, Kristeva, Erasmus, Hebdige, Terry Southern, Victor Turner, and James Frazer. The course concludes with critical appraisal of existing theoretical accounts of these linkages and of their imputed conservative or transformative social effects. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211 or consent of the instructor. Not offered 2009-10.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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