Cinema and ritual: New perspectives through Kubrick’s 2001

Abstract:
The aim of the seminar is to open a discourse on the nature of ritual and to challenge the hegemony of the performance/theatre metaphor in ritual analysis. This will lead into a consideration of certain of Gilles Deleuze's observations on Cinema - a general contention being that the volumes on Cinema constitute the ethnographic basis for his particular revolution in philosophy as it relates to the social sciences.  The importance of Kubrick's 2001 is that in my interpretation it constitutes an exploration of the technology of the cinematic and in many respects is a demonstration of many features of the complex discussion of Deleuze. So 2001 is a critical reference for the seminar. Overall the presentation is intended as a prolegomena to a prolegomena on the rethinking of the anthropological analysis of ritual. 

Bruce Kapferer is a professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, UoB. Among a wide range of topics, he has worked extensively on ritual, cosmologies, folk dramas and healing systems. His publications include Aesthetics and Performance: Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience (2005, ed. with Angela Hobart), Beyond Rationalism: Sorcery, Magic and Ritual in Contemporary Realities (2003, ed.), The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power (1997) and A celebration of demons: Exorcism and the aesthetics of healing in Sri Lanka (1983).



All interested are welcome!