Todas as pessoas activas e com alguma "obra feita" neste país são mais ou menos "assediadas" com convites/solicitações vindas dos mais diversos pontos, às vezes sobre a hora, no pressuposto ingénuo ou distraído de que uma pessoa está sempre disponível para isto ou para aquilo.
O tempo que nos resta livre das "obrigações contratuais" com o empregador (no meu caso, essas obrigações são ensinar, investigar e contribuir para a vida corrente da minha escola na minha esfera de responsabilidade) tem de ser muito bem gerido (temos de ter uma "targeting strategy"), por forma a não romper um equilíbrio emocional mínimo e a manter um "tonus de criatividade" mínimo também. Esta "folga" é essencial para o bem-estar do indivíduo, para a sua saúde, para a sua sobrevivência. Cada um de nós procura-o como uma necessidade vital.
Quando as pressões sobre nós são muitas, o cálculo das "escapadelas" ao constrangimento sufocante tem de ser mais cuidado, visando sempre algo de ontologicamente essencial, para cada um de nós como indivíduos: o atingir de determinados níveis de performance e de auto-realização que não nos desiludam no nosso íntimo, isto é, que mantenham a nossa auto-estima num nível adequado ou pelo menos suportável. Nesse aspecto, o re-conhecimento dos (a certificação pelos) outros é evidentemente crucial, porque nenhum de nós vive num vácuo, apesar do individualismo contemporâneo. Por exemplo, teoricamente, quanto maior é a minha margem de escolha de gerir o meu tempo livre maior é também a minha dependência dos outros, que eu pressuponho estarem entretanto a realizar tarefas que são essenciais ao enquadramento da minha própria vida, à manutenção do colectivo.
Nada disto é totalmente pacífico, como é óbvio, mas sim um equilíbrio que se consegue tenazmente semana a semana, dia a dia, mês a mês, através de mil negociações. Tornou-se complicado viver na sociedade altamente "sofisticada" (??) actual, em que a componente fundamental é a atenção vigilante ao exterior (de cada indivíduo), necessidade particularmente constrangedora quando a actividade criadora é essencialmente individual, estando no seu cerne a desatenção (temporária) em relação a qualquer constrangimento.
Na verdade, para se atingir um alvo é preciso muito tempo e o justo equilíbrio (que cada um tem de encontrar para si) entre sonhos e realidades. Sobretudo tem de haver uma gestão do tempo contínua, hora a hora, para tentar optimizar o equilíbrio entre o que realmente se é obrigado a fazer (as tarefas que de facto são esperadas de nós, depois de peneiradas algumas "pseudo-obrigações") e o que cada qual tem obrigatoriamente de fazer para se sentir bem (gestão da imagem própria). Digamos que uma sociedade mais "livre" é aquela em que eu me posso "distrair" mais vezes e mais tempo, sendo sancionado positivamente pelos resultados dessa "distracção" (a obra produzida, que nunca é de interesse meramente individual, se atingir ou ultrapassar certos standards; escusado será dizer que essa "obra" não precisa de ser do nível do tangível ou imediatamente reconhecível - a "obra" de uma pessoa pode resultar do sentimento, sempre evidentemente interessado, porque movido pelo desejo, de um "trabalho" voluntário e "desinteressado" junto dos outros).
O facto de existirem hoje muitas pessoas frustradas, ansiosas ou deprimidas tem também a ver com o facto de não conseguirem (por qualquer motivo, que pode ser o de não lhes serem "dadas", ou de não serem capazes de criar, condições mínimas) esboçar e /ou imaginar poder atingir "targeting strategies" profissionais e emocionais que pudessem considerar para si mesmas satisfatórias.
Silenciado dentro da sua concha de frustração, o indivíduo transforma-se numa "panela de pressão" que pode rebentar em eclosões de violência (doméstica ou pública), ou assumir a feição hedonista do frustrado que tenta sempre mostrar-se publicamente muito satisfeito, "indo na maré" (assim pelo menos tem o reconhecimento - uma espécie de "solidariedade na penúria" - diário dos outros como ele, ou seja, o clube extenso - e em ampliação - dos que desistiram de produzir seja o que for para além do estritamente obrigatório, para não falar já de todos os "excluídos").
Cada um de nós faz continuamente balanços e projecções.
Por mim, tenho estas tarefas até ao fim do ano (dois meses e meio), desde que a doença ou a "pouca sorte" (todo o espaço imaginário onde arrumamos o acaso) não me atinjam (outro pressuposto necessário e evidentemente o mais imprevisível).
O tempo que nos resta livre das "obrigações contratuais" com o empregador (no meu caso, essas obrigações são ensinar, investigar e contribuir para a vida corrente da minha escola na minha esfera de responsabilidade) tem de ser muito bem gerido (temos de ter uma "targeting strategy"), por forma a não romper um equilíbrio emocional mínimo e a manter um "tonus de criatividade" mínimo também. Esta "folga" é essencial para o bem-estar do indivíduo, para a sua saúde, para a sua sobrevivência. Cada um de nós procura-o como uma necessidade vital.
Quando as pressões sobre nós são muitas, o cálculo das "escapadelas" ao constrangimento sufocante tem de ser mais cuidado, visando sempre algo de ontologicamente essencial, para cada um de nós como indivíduos: o atingir de determinados níveis de performance e de auto-realização que não nos desiludam no nosso íntimo, isto é, que mantenham a nossa auto-estima num nível adequado ou pelo menos suportável. Nesse aspecto, o re-conhecimento dos (a certificação pelos) outros é evidentemente crucial, porque nenhum de nós vive num vácuo, apesar do individualismo contemporâneo. Por exemplo, teoricamente, quanto maior é a minha margem de escolha de gerir o meu tempo livre maior é também a minha dependência dos outros, que eu pressuponho estarem entretanto a realizar tarefas que são essenciais ao enquadramento da minha própria vida, à manutenção do colectivo.
Nada disto é totalmente pacífico, como é óbvio, mas sim um equilíbrio que se consegue tenazmente semana a semana, dia a dia, mês a mês, através de mil negociações. Tornou-se complicado viver na sociedade altamente "sofisticada" (??) actual, em que a componente fundamental é a atenção vigilante ao exterior (de cada indivíduo), necessidade particularmente constrangedora quando a actividade criadora é essencialmente individual, estando no seu cerne a desatenção (temporária) em relação a qualquer constrangimento.
Na verdade, para se atingir um alvo é preciso muito tempo e o justo equilíbrio (que cada um tem de encontrar para si) entre sonhos e realidades. Sobretudo tem de haver uma gestão do tempo contínua, hora a hora, para tentar optimizar o equilíbrio entre o que realmente se é obrigado a fazer (as tarefas que de facto são esperadas de nós, depois de peneiradas algumas "pseudo-obrigações") e o que cada qual tem obrigatoriamente de fazer para se sentir bem (gestão da imagem própria). Digamos que uma sociedade mais "livre" é aquela em que eu me posso "distrair" mais vezes e mais tempo, sendo sancionado positivamente pelos resultados dessa "distracção" (a obra produzida, que nunca é de interesse meramente individual, se atingir ou ultrapassar certos standards; escusado será dizer que essa "obra" não precisa de ser do nível do tangível ou imediatamente reconhecível - a "obra" de uma pessoa pode resultar do sentimento, sempre evidentemente interessado, porque movido pelo desejo, de um "trabalho" voluntário e "desinteressado" junto dos outros).
O facto de existirem hoje muitas pessoas frustradas, ansiosas ou deprimidas tem também a ver com o facto de não conseguirem (por qualquer motivo, que pode ser o de não lhes serem "dadas", ou de não serem capazes de criar, condições mínimas) esboçar e /ou imaginar poder atingir "targeting strategies" profissionais e emocionais que pudessem considerar para si mesmas satisfatórias.
Silenciado dentro da sua concha de frustração, o indivíduo transforma-se numa "panela de pressão" que pode rebentar em eclosões de violência (doméstica ou pública), ou assumir a feição hedonista do frustrado que tenta sempre mostrar-se publicamente muito satisfeito, "indo na maré" (assim pelo menos tem o reconhecimento - uma espécie de "solidariedade na penúria" - diário dos outros como ele, ou seja, o clube extenso - e em ampliação - dos que desistiram de produzir seja o que for para além do estritamente obrigatório, para não falar já de todos os "excluídos").
Cada um de nós faz continuamente balanços e projecções.
Por mim, tenho estas tarefas até ao fim do ano (dois meses e meio), desde que a doença ou a "pouca sorte" (todo o espaço imaginário onde arrumamos o acaso) não me atinjam (outro pressuposto necessário e evidentemente o mais imprevisível).
Outubro
15
Apresentação na FNAC (Santa Catarina, Porto) do livro de poemas “Novo Florilégio. Contributos para uma Extática Botanica” (ed. Afrontamento, Porto), pela Prof.ª Dra Maria João Reynaud, da FLUP. 18,30 h.
23
Reunião com elementos da direcção regional do Norte do IGESPAR.
Novembro
14-16
Participação, com comunicação, no Colóquio organizado pela FLUP (Centro de Estudos Germanísticos), intitulado “Representações da Família nas Ciências e nas Artes”. Título da comunicação (dia 14, às 10,30 h.):
“Como é que a nossa cultura inventou a “Pré-história” e por que é que a povoou com coisas familiares?”
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Resumo:
A ideia de pré-história traz no seu próprio nome o estigma que a acompanha desde a nascença. Pré-história seria um período anterior à história propriamente dita, ou seja, uma ponte entre a natureza e a cultura, entre a animalidade e a humanidade, entre nós (modernidade, ocidentalidade, centro do mundo) e o outro, entre a história propriamente dita (aquela em que acontecem coisas dignas de registo, interessantes) e uma espécie de passado remoto, primitivo, em que tudo o que aconteceu foi ao longo de muito tempo, e consistiu em consumar o aparecimento de nós próprios tal como somos (ou imaginamos que somos) hoje, isto é, nos últimos cinco mil anos, aproximadamente. Claro que essa centralidade, que deu origem à ideia no séc. XIX, está hoje muito posta em causa. Sabemos hoje que a nossa cultura é apenas uma entre milhares. Que o Estado é uma construção política recente. Que muitas das “instituições” que nos habituámos a considerar familiares, e portanto universais, susceptíveis de serem descritas na sua génese e nas suas tipologias de acordo com o tempo e o espaço, são tudo menos isso. Nada há de puramente natural, nem de puramente cultural, neste mundo. A realidade é muito mais complexa do que aquilo que não só o senso-comum imagina e toma por certo, como o que normalmente os colegas de outras disciplinas (incluindo a filosofia) aceitam como dado adquirido, elaborando os seus esquemas conceptuais e interpretativos a partir dessas pretensas evidências inquestionáveis.
O pré-histórico e o primitivo são uma invenção recente, que tem a ver com sociedade patriarcal cujo máximo apogeu se ligou à industrialização, à ideia de progresso, à concepção puritana de família monogâmica, e a uma série de valores do séc. XIX, inícios do séc. XX, que a própria evolução do capitalismo contemporâneo, ao dissolver barreiras e liquefazer fronteiras (na vida real e no seu programa, pois as barreiras são contrárias à livre circulação do capital) contribuíu para esbater. Ao domesticarem o passado, colocando lá a “origem da família, da propriedade e do Estado”, como já Engels intentou, os arqueólogos estão a fornecer às pessoas uma visão infantilizada da complexidade do real, que se ajusta bem às explicações facilmente entendíveis pelo turista, pelo visitante, porque lhe são familiares. Desfamiliarizar essas ideias, como já a vida desfigurou e continua a desfigurar a família, instituição imaginariamente universal, base do sistema de parentesco, de aliança e de “laço social”, é agora tarefa do “pré-historiador” (pós)moderno. O feitiço voltou-se contra o feiticeiro.
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Moderação de uma “mesa”: dia 15, início da tarde.
22
Apresentação, no Porto, do vol. 47 (2007) da revista “Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia”, publicada pela Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia.
Dezembro
14-17
Participação, na Universidade de York, no encontro TAG de 2007, na qualidade de investigador do CEAUCP. Co-coordenação de uma sessão de um dia, de colaboração com o arqueólogo Prof. Julian Thomas (Univ. de Manchester), e tendo como discussant o Prof. Colin Renfrew. Título da sessão: “Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context”.
Ver: http://tag07.york.googlepages.com/home
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Nosso planeamento actual:
Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context
Professor Vítor Oliveira Jorge (University of Porto) and Professor Julian Thomas (University of Manchester), vojorge@clix.pt
Archaeology is intimately connectd to the modern regime of vision. A concern with optics was fundamental to the Scientific Revolution, and informed the moral theories of the Enlightenment. And from its inception, archaeology was concerned with practices of depiction and classification that were profoundly scopic in character. In the 19th century, with the invention of photography and then of the cinema, a certain cultural order - based in the centrality of "civilized" Europe and at the same time in the centrality of male, patriarchal power reached its apogee. This had been grounded in the emergence of new class relations based on trade and the free circulation of commodities throughout the Earth, and in the ideology of progress and natural evolution.
To put reality at a distance, to observe, to see and to describe, to control and dominate all the planet, and at the same time to "bring it at home" under the form of the museum, the zoo, the international exhibition, the idealized "nature" were indeed two faces of the same coin. The "consumption of places" by travel and tourism (J. Urry) and the creation of "place-myths" are intimately tied to this transformation of the subjectivity of modern people. The "visual character" and also the desire for direct, sensorial experience of that consumption is obvious. The idealization of the "material" and the "visual", the notion that to a certain point the image replaced the idea, are widespread today. And both modernity and post-modernity are well -established notions too, in spite of the fact that the latter refuses be framed, self-defined, and has constant fluidity as one of its core characteristics.
But what is the role of archaeology in that changing context? Are we just one more kind of many workers in the machine of "heritage industry"? Is it still possible a reflexive, critical standpoint on a system that systematically divides rescue archaeology and academic research, melting at the same time the real and the virtual?
In this session we do not claim to have found any new means of redeeming a critical archaeology, nor do we offer an abstract programme for a cleansed and rejuvenated discipline. There can be no such thing; the very enunciation of the "new" has become a problematic rhetorical move.
Instead, we encourage the presentation of case studies which, taking particular experiences as a point of departure, may connect them to different kinds of approach and method, dissolving the gap (sometimes so great that it sounds like a sort of abyss) between "philosophic" and trans-disciplinary discourses and more descriptive/narrative ones.
Perhaps a good point of departure would be to use an imaginative scientific method a sort of anthropology, or sociology of our own practice to look upon our common sense and the "take for granted" concepts that we use in everyday archaeology. Using a politics of sight to focus in a more precise way our most current concepts and intuitions.
Speakers:
9 h Introduction by the coordinators
Professor Vítor Oliveira Jorge (University of Porto) and Professor Julian Thomas (University of Manchester), vojorge@clix.pt
9,10 h On the Ocularcentrism of Archaeology
Julian Thomas (Univ. of Manchester):
Archaeology is a product of the modern era, another aspect of which has been the identification of vision as the paradigm of knowing. Paradoxically, then, archaeology relies on the notion that new knowledge can be created from an engagement with material things, and yet it proceeds to apprehend those things through the visual sense. The problem of knowing the material world visually lies at the core of archaeological practice, and in this contribution I will seek to unravel some of the difficulties that arise as a result.
9,30 h Love in ruins, or why do we “see” couples in archaeological sites
Stelios Lekakis (Univ. of Athens)
The paper, based on the author’s previous fieldwork and visits to archaeological sites around the world, pertains to the common observation of people holding hands or kissing while walking through archaeological sites.
The former fact is approached via multiple interpretative angles (pragmatic, touristic etc.) and several conclusions are drawn; examining a parallel route, the romantic view (and its visual preconceptions in their diachronic development) is chosen as a central argument. It attempts to interpret the aforementioned observation, through the notion of Romanticism as formalized both in theories of architecture and restoration and in literature/poetry et al.
Thus, a philosophic tool -connected with less systematic, measurable, analyzable or “obvious” data- is incorporated in order to enlighten the theme. Without implying interpretative dichotomies, the “feeling” is employed as a sensor in conjunction with the “vision” of the classical archaeological scopic science. This atypical, “less scientific”, approach while clashing with modern notions of effective site interpretation and management, offers an alternative view towards a holistic perception of the site.
In general, the paper suggests a broad incorporation of alternative interpretative methods (re-examining former and present visual approaches of monuments), that will contribute to the more effective management of antiquities in cooperation with the local communities in a post-modern context.
9,50 h. Questioning an archaeology of vision: four dimensions of implicated discourse from past material culture
Keith Ray (Herefordshire Archaeology)
It is unquestionable that archaeology as a practice has habitually privileged the visual dimension of material culture. Indeed, arguably this is inevitable given the visible physicality of the objects, places and landscapes that are its arena of inquiry. This concern with the visual is however more subtly a product of a post-Enlightenment preoccupation with surfaces and appearances – an aspect that has been intensively explored in recent years by some art historians, for instance.
It would and will be a very worthwhile exercise to explore ‘visuality’ in reference to key categories of material, as Douglass Bailey has so effectively done in his recent volume on figurines. In this brief paper, what I want to introduce however is four alternative spheres of discourse where the visual is present but is not privileged. These spheres are the tactile, the substantial, the literary and the invisible, respectively. None of them are directly accessible through past material culture and residues. What it is necessary to do, therefore, is to discern how each is implicated through the visible and tangible remains that as archaeologists we routinely encounter, and is called into presence by deliberate material/visual referencing in some contexts. The aim in making this exploration is to broaden our repertoire of means to understand how material items and the living space of past communities has been used by them to shape both their experience of being in the world and also their interactions with one another and with the unseen.
10,10 h Additive subtraction: addressing pick-dressing in Irish passage tombs
Andrew Cochrane (Univ. of Cardiff)
I have been thinking for a while on themes of erasure and overlay in some Irish passage tombs – for instance, the occurrence of 'pick-dressing', often the last episode of 'decoration' or imagery on the stones. As a means of exploring this element of passage tombs (via the politics of spectatorship and application), I would draw on visual culture examples that would include: the defacement and then destruction of the B?miy? Buddhas, Afghanistan; the work of the contemporary artist Idris Khan ( e.g. every... page of the Holy Koran). I will also consider the works of Leonardo da Vinci (e.g. The Virgin of the Rocks) in discussing the effects or performances of superimposition, overlay and underlay. In a move away from textual and representational understandings of imagery, I will consider the works of Michelangelo's 'non-finito' pieces to discuss how unfinished/incomplete (?) sculptures/stones 'work' on a spectator (the creation of cognitive indecipherability) – the visual politics of what they do, as opposed to what they might mean.
10, 30 h Tea/Coffee brake
11 h Coming to Our Senses: Toward a Unified Perception of the Iroquoian Longhouse
Christopher Watts (Univ. of Toronto)
From early seventeenth century historical depictions through modern archaeological mapping regimes, the Iroquoian longhouse is recognized as the quintessential Aboriginal dwelling form of northeastern North America. In this paper, I argue that our understanding of the Iroquoian longhouse is, however, fundamentally constrained by a tyranny of the visual. So preoccupied are we with the visual recognition and reconstruction of longhouse features that we neglect to consider how the longhouse would have been experienced by Iroquoian groups as a sensuous whole. Drawing inspiration from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I look at how this lived space might have been disclosed as an ‘inter-sensory entity’ to its inhabitants. Concurrently, I also explore how such an approach impacts upon some commonly held beliefs regarding Iroquoian sociality.
11,20 h Seeing the Meaning Behind the Mask: examining the role that meanings play in social integration
Christopher M. Roberts (Arizona State University)
The katsina cult, a religious expression of the Pueblo peoples in the North American Southwest, has often been used as an explanatory framework for interpreting the striking changes in social organization during the Pueblo IV period (c. AD 1274-1540). In particular, some scholars link iconographic representations from the past to present ethnography, to suggest the katsina cult functioned as a means of integrating newly aggregated people. In so doing they apply a taken-for-granted concept in their research by assuming that ‘what you see is what you get’. They use past images to interpret social conditions by assuming that similarities between ancient and current iconography reflect common meanings between modern practices and ancient depictions. This assumption has been criticized by other scholars, who suggest that the Pueblo IV iconography is not identical to its modern manifestations and thus that the katsina cult cannot be applied to as an interpretive strategy to explain the social integration seen in the period.
I hope to move beyond both the assumptions of some scholars and the criticisms of others by explicitly examining how the meaning attached to images can function as an integrative mechanism in society through the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. I will demonstrate that the katsina iconography, rather than meaning exactly what we see, is actually an agglomeration of similar and different meanings at the same time. With this perspective it can be argued that katsinas, through their concurrent possession of dual meanings, could serve an integrative function by providing a common ground between agents of different social and geographical backgrounds. In so doing I hope to avoid the pitfalls of a purely analogical approach through the application of social theories.
11,40 h Archaeology’s ‘Scientific Vision’ and the ‘Local’: Salvage Work in Turkey’s G.A.P. Region
Laurent Dissard (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
The main point of this paper is: “marginalizing” the “local” is a necessary condition for a certain specific type of archaeological scientific knowledge to be produced. In order for archaeology to create accepted science, it must “marginalize” the “local”. It must “de-local-ize” itself, that is place the “local” people, “local” context, “local” politics outside of its scientific frame. As a consequence, the “local”, if not completely erased, has become almost invisible, placed on the margins of the photographic image, as a side-note to the practice of archaeological science.
12 h Learning to see through the 'Kilmartin Eye'
Aaron Watson
Archaeology envisions the past in its own image. The visual traditions of research, fieldwork and publication define boundaries within which the discipline's interpretations can take place. Interpretation occurs within maps, section drawings, artefact illustrations, site photography, and so on. In this paper I explore different visual spaces for interpretation that exist in-between archaeology and art, between method and imagination. The 'Kilmartin Eye' is a landscape installation set amidst the rich prehistoric archaeology of Kilmartin glen, Argyll. It was commissioned by Kilmartin House Museum, and opened to the public in spring 2007. The 'Eye' is not a reconstruction of a specific archaeological site, and does not contain explanatory text. Rather, it consists of a circle of large timber posts within which the visitors' view of the wider landscape is juxtaposed against a series of striking abstract paintings, inspired by my experiences of local prehistoric sites and their landscapes. I conceived the 'Kilmartin Eye' as a place within which the visitor might creatively participate in the interpretation of the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape. Like the ancient sites nearby its ambiguities demand explanation. Yet this new monument is not the exclusive preserve of either archaeology or the heritage industry, nor is the 'Eye' solely an artwork since its location and form reflect many years of archaeological research.
The 'Kilmartin Eye' does not simply deliver premeditated archaeological concepts, but is a means by which research and theory can inspire new interpretations that are actively realised and performed through the creative participation of the visitor. On one level this offers a challenging addition to heritage interpretation that has proved successful with both visitors and the local community. On another, the concepts that underlie the 'Kilmartin Eye' also offer a method for 'seeing' the archaeological record in ways that transcend the conventions of modern vision.
12,20 Discussant Colin Renfrew
13 h Lunch
14 h Aspects of the historiality of authoritative conceptions of perspectival (and a-perspectival) objectivity and conditions of possibility for plurality of archaeological research directions
Stephanie Koerner (Univ. Manchester)
Until quite recently, the historiography of science has paradoxically been the most and the least historicised of all humanities and human sciences: the most, because the history of science was assumed to be the fastest paced part of history and arguably (along with scinec based technology) the force of propulsion behind all other parts of history’; the least, because the history of science was written as if context and contingency, the marrow of history, were irrelevant” (Daston 2005: 529). The last decades have seen considerable conditions of possibility for change develop relating very directly to several themes of the session (cf. Stengers and Prigogene 1997; Latour and Weibel eds. 2002; J.L. Koerner 2004; Thomas 2004), including growth of interest in the historiality of authoritative conceptions vision and objectivity (Rheinberger 1997; Daston and Galison 2002; S. Koerner and Wynne 2007).
This contribution focuses on case study materials relating to themes of the session, which bear upon questions posed by the exhibition and edited volume, Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art (Latour and Weibel eds. 2002) was: under what sorts of circumstances have images become "the focus of so much passion? To the point that destroying them, erasing them, defacing them, has been taken as the ultimate touchstone to prove the validity of ones faith, of one’s science, of one’s acumen, of one’s artistic creativity? To the point where being an iconoclast seems the highest virtue, the highest piety... [the highest achievement] of intellectual circles"? (Latour (2002: 14).
I will conclude with some suggestions about the bearing these materials have upon the question in the session abstract about the impacts of the ‘heritage industry’ on archaeology, but especially about the relevance of the historiality of authoritative conceptions of ‘objectivity’ for developing critical and constructive approaches to archaeology’s roles in the dynamics of pedagogical institutions and public affairs.
14,20 h 'Now, I can see you' : bringing an archaeological sensibility to bear on digital media through the politics of presence.
Ian Russell (Univ. of Notre Dame)
As the desert of cyberia expands and more families are moving from communities into cyburbia, what can an archaeological sensibility offer in the form of reflexive criticism of the mediation of humanity? As the lines between human and media are becoming blurred, a recent call has been made by some archaeologists to bring the discipline's sensibility to bear on the documentation and interpretation of human agency in digital lifeworlds. When we enter into digitised mediation, what are the politics of presence? Through the development and maintenance of dispersed communities bound together by the web of digital intra-relationships supported by analogical keystrokes and mouse-clicks, what new presences are rendered? Do they also result in new absences? Can archaeological interventions into the politics of absence/presence provide a more nuanced appreciation of the traces of human enmeshment and participation in mediated lifeworlds. Building on critical steps taken by Stanford Metamedia, this paper explores an archaeological intervention into UK theatre company Blast Theory's virtual game-space of 'Can you see me now?' (http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html). This paper will question the assumption of the primacy of the visual in the graphic user interfaces (GUIs) of modern and post-modern media. When the virtual and digital-scapes of media are constructed through physical manipulation of plastics in order to render consumable, experience-able visuals, can digital lifeworlds be approached as purely visual composites, or is this only supporting an abstraction of (or an apprehension over) the practicable enmeshment of humans within the manifestation of digital and visual media?
14,40 h Aspects and icons of Portuguese nationalism in the period of the XXth century dictatorship
Sérgio Gomes (Univ. Porto)
Between 1926 and 1974 Portugal lived under a dictatorship named Estado Novo ( “New State”). This political period was very similar, in ideology and strategies, to other European dictatorship, as fascism in Italy or Franco's regime in Spain. It was a regime whose speech bases on the defence of a historicist nationalism and in a commemorativist spirit in which the government's calendar seeks the history of the nation to create a sort of legitimation link.
In this juxtaposition dynamics, between the Golden Ages and the political action, the Past emerges in the public space as a reason for new kind of sociabilities. In the slogan "material restoration, moral restoration, national restoration" proclaimed by Oliveira Salazar, lays several projects of restoring national monuments and rehabilitation of traditional habits which results in a new image of the country.
In this paper, I want to approach the way the regime has built a puzzle where images of a glorious past, of a rural way of life and of a colonial empire are summoned in the construction of an identity for the nation. However, I should argue that this puzzle, far away from constituting a sum of the several elements that the different realities provide, is the image of the ideology and projects of the regime.
15 h Deconstructing domestic views of the Copper Age monumentalized hills of Iberia: the case of Castanheiro do Vento in Foz Côa (NE of Portugal)
Ana Margarida Vale (Univ. Porto)
The history of archeological thinking is deeply intertwined with images naively used to describe an observed reality, but, in fact, creating that very reality they are supposed to represent. In the case of the Copper Age “hill settlements” of Iberia, the successive images produced about them, and included as illustrations in the publications, actually served as mythical demonstrations of an a priori idea about this kind of sites. Today, being aware of the complexity of these places and of the permanent actions of building and of deposition of things carried out inside and around these precincts, we try to create new images at different scales to illustrate that very complexity. Far from producing images connected to overwhelming and naive interpretations, we try to represent each context, each site, each landscape as a unique set of features in order to open our minds to the singularity of each context and to compare different contexts, sites and landscapes from a much more awareness of variability then the one used in the past. One of the aspects of this approach consists in avoiding simplistic functional explanations, like “fortified settlements”, or “dwelling units” (houses), or ritual depositions, or whatever. We know that the reality that we are dealing with is much more complex then these “classifications” would imply. Acting accordingly to these lines of enquiry, we try not to domesticate the past using categories that seem obvious and universal to us (domestic/ritual/burial places, etc., for instance), but, to the contrary, we focus our attention in relation to non-familiar images of what “was going there”.
15,20 h Tea/Coffee brake
16 h Archaeological excavation as performance: dissolving boundaries between art and science for the sake of knowledge
Vítor Oliveira Jorge (Univ. Porto)
Knowledge is not quantifiable or stable. It is embodied competence, everything that allows us to perform daily life and to keep ourselves as having a certain joy in our existence: it is in a process of constant transformation and unfolding. The forces that drive us into it could be called desire. We want to know, to understand more clearly, because we have the fantasy of explaining it all, with the power associated to that imagined state of fulfilment, which is unattainable by definition.
Archaeological knowledge is the conventional expression that we use to embrace the whole world around us, to which we belong, and where we detect traces of so to speak past performances.
Actually, these traces are everywhere, and ultimately they overlap our entire environment, our field of perception and action. So they are not so much traces of dead actions or people, but “present absences” like everything else. In fact, every object of our attention, be it a stone or a person, immediately after being framed, obscures its surroundings and creates its own “deep core” of inaccessibility. This is why the French philosopher and psychoanalyst J. Lacan spoke of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary as a triadic device to understand what we people are and how we perform, feel and think. It is probably a useful scheme, as many others, in the sense that it helps us to access the complexity of human action and motivations, not only the most visible, recognizable ones, but also the rest: and the “rest” could be compared to the submerged part of an iceberg. So as long as we try to understand what is “our business” as archaeologists, we need to improve our self-knowledge as persons; both things are one and the same.
An archaeological excavation is a theatre of tasks (a “taskscape” - Ingold) and hence a stage of interactions in a place often full of “traces” of former interactions. The reasons for what we are doing will be richer if the entire person - and not only just an external, abstract observer - coalesces into that action. A cold observer produces dead things. What we need is an engaged subject, capable or moving into the site all his/her experience, dissolving the traditional procedure of science into the movement of art, and vice-versa. In that sense, our embodied conscience as performers among other performers helps a lot. To make my point clearer, I will comment on some images of my own experience as a field archaeologist.
16,20 h Privileging the Visual at Chaco Canyon: A Case Study from the Southwest
U.S.
Ruth van Dyke, Colorado College, USA
Visual representations in archaeology are neither innocent nor transparent - rather, they are examples of LaTour's immutable mobiles. We manipulate maps, drawings, photographs, video footage, and other forms of graphic
representation to construct specific kinds of knowledge, and to market some archaeological interpretations at the expense of others. Ancient peoples also manipulated the visual for their own purposes, so that an examination of this process sets up a double hermeneutic. In this paper, I engage in a self-critical examination of the uses and abuses of visual media in the archaeology of Chaco Canyon in the Southwest United States.
16,40 h An Archaeology of Vision: Seeing Past and Present at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
Michael Ashley, Berkeley
Archaeology is a 'sensual' field practice, employing the senses of sight, touch and hearing - sometimes smell and taste - to bear on the problem at hand, be it excavation, survey or lab research. The visual archaeological environment is a place caught between present and past, experienced in the real by the archaeologist who is investigating it. An archaeology of vision calls for a focus shift, a restructuring of the visual and invisible in order to make it meaningful. A clear definition of the relationship between viewer, viewed and viewing environment is needed. By keeping this relationship multi-dimensional, it becomes apparent that a study of vision in archaeology requires us to define what exactly we are looking at and for. Namely, who is doing the looking, what are they looking at, under what viewing conditions? What becomes quickly apparent is that it is us who are doing the looking at present remains under a very different visual situation than originally experienced by the observers in the past. We use the evidence of archaeology, ethnography, history and human experience in order to fill in the 'blind spots' of our archaeological interpretation, but often this is done without considering the past viewer in context. This paper attempts to bring these sources for our imaginations into focus as tools for articulating the past-viewed world of viewers, viewed objects and viewing environments that maintains the complexity and depth of human vision.
17 h [or 17,20 h] Discussant : Professor Colin Renfrew
18 h. Session closed
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Conclusão, até ao fim do ano, do livro “Crenças, Religiões e Poderes”, coordenado por mim e pelo Prof. J. M. Costa Macedo, da FLUP, e editado pelas Ed. Afrontamento, Porto, 2007. A intenção é a de que seja lançado ainda este ano, ou o mais tardar no início de 2008. Está neste momento em adiantado estado de preparação.
Apresentação na FNAC (Santa Catarina, Porto) do livro de poemas “Novo Florilégio. Contributos para uma Extática Botanica” (ed. Afrontamento, Porto), pela Prof.ª Dra Maria João Reynaud, da FLUP. 18,30 h.
23
Reunião com elementos da direcção regional do Norte do IGESPAR.
Novembro
14-16
Participação, com comunicação, no Colóquio organizado pela FLUP (Centro de Estudos Germanísticos), intitulado “Representações da Família nas Ciências e nas Artes”. Título da comunicação (dia 14, às 10,30 h.):
“Como é que a nossa cultura inventou a “Pré-história” e por que é que a povoou com coisas familiares?”
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Resumo:
A ideia de pré-história traz no seu próprio nome o estigma que a acompanha desde a nascença. Pré-história seria um período anterior à história propriamente dita, ou seja, uma ponte entre a natureza e a cultura, entre a animalidade e a humanidade, entre nós (modernidade, ocidentalidade, centro do mundo) e o outro, entre a história propriamente dita (aquela em que acontecem coisas dignas de registo, interessantes) e uma espécie de passado remoto, primitivo, em que tudo o que aconteceu foi ao longo de muito tempo, e consistiu em consumar o aparecimento de nós próprios tal como somos (ou imaginamos que somos) hoje, isto é, nos últimos cinco mil anos, aproximadamente. Claro que essa centralidade, que deu origem à ideia no séc. XIX, está hoje muito posta em causa. Sabemos hoje que a nossa cultura é apenas uma entre milhares. Que o Estado é uma construção política recente. Que muitas das “instituições” que nos habituámos a considerar familiares, e portanto universais, susceptíveis de serem descritas na sua génese e nas suas tipologias de acordo com o tempo e o espaço, são tudo menos isso. Nada há de puramente natural, nem de puramente cultural, neste mundo. A realidade é muito mais complexa do que aquilo que não só o senso-comum imagina e toma por certo, como o que normalmente os colegas de outras disciplinas (incluindo a filosofia) aceitam como dado adquirido, elaborando os seus esquemas conceptuais e interpretativos a partir dessas pretensas evidências inquestionáveis.
O pré-histórico e o primitivo são uma invenção recente, que tem a ver com sociedade patriarcal cujo máximo apogeu se ligou à industrialização, à ideia de progresso, à concepção puritana de família monogâmica, e a uma série de valores do séc. XIX, inícios do séc. XX, que a própria evolução do capitalismo contemporâneo, ao dissolver barreiras e liquefazer fronteiras (na vida real e no seu programa, pois as barreiras são contrárias à livre circulação do capital) contribuíu para esbater. Ao domesticarem o passado, colocando lá a “origem da família, da propriedade e do Estado”, como já Engels intentou, os arqueólogos estão a fornecer às pessoas uma visão infantilizada da complexidade do real, que se ajusta bem às explicações facilmente entendíveis pelo turista, pelo visitante, porque lhe são familiares. Desfamiliarizar essas ideias, como já a vida desfigurou e continua a desfigurar a família, instituição imaginariamente universal, base do sistema de parentesco, de aliança e de “laço social”, é agora tarefa do “pré-historiador” (pós)moderno. O feitiço voltou-se contra o feiticeiro.
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Moderação de uma “mesa”: dia 15, início da tarde.
22
Apresentação, no Porto, do vol. 47 (2007) da revista “Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia”, publicada pela Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia.
Dezembro
14-17
Participação, na Universidade de York, no encontro TAG de 2007, na qualidade de investigador do CEAUCP. Co-coordenação de uma sessão de um dia, de colaboração com o arqueólogo Prof. Julian Thomas (Univ. de Manchester), e tendo como discussant o Prof. Colin Renfrew. Título da sessão: “Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context”.
Ver: http://tag07.york.googlepages.com/home
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Nosso planeamento actual:
Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context
Professor Vítor Oliveira Jorge (University of Porto) and Professor Julian Thomas (University of Manchester), vojorge@clix.pt
Archaeology is intimately connectd to the modern regime of vision. A concern with optics was fundamental to the Scientific Revolution, and informed the moral theories of the Enlightenment. And from its inception, archaeology was concerned with practices of depiction and classification that were profoundly scopic in character. In the 19th century, with the invention of photography and then of the cinema, a certain cultural order - based in the centrality of "civilized" Europe and at the same time in the centrality of male, patriarchal power reached its apogee. This had been grounded in the emergence of new class relations based on trade and the free circulation of commodities throughout the Earth, and in the ideology of progress and natural evolution.
To put reality at a distance, to observe, to see and to describe, to control and dominate all the planet, and at the same time to "bring it at home" under the form of the museum, the zoo, the international exhibition, the idealized "nature" were indeed two faces of the same coin. The "consumption of places" by travel and tourism (J. Urry) and the creation of "place-myths" are intimately tied to this transformation of the subjectivity of modern people. The "visual character" and also the desire for direct, sensorial experience of that consumption is obvious. The idealization of the "material" and the "visual", the notion that to a certain point the image replaced the idea, are widespread today. And both modernity and post-modernity are well -established notions too, in spite of the fact that the latter refuses be framed, self-defined, and has constant fluidity as one of its core characteristics.
But what is the role of archaeology in that changing context? Are we just one more kind of many workers in the machine of "heritage industry"? Is it still possible a reflexive, critical standpoint on a system that systematically divides rescue archaeology and academic research, melting at the same time the real and the virtual?
In this session we do not claim to have found any new means of redeeming a critical archaeology, nor do we offer an abstract programme for a cleansed and rejuvenated discipline. There can be no such thing; the very enunciation of the "new" has become a problematic rhetorical move.
Instead, we encourage the presentation of case studies which, taking particular experiences as a point of departure, may connect them to different kinds of approach and method, dissolving the gap (sometimes so great that it sounds like a sort of abyss) between "philosophic" and trans-disciplinary discourses and more descriptive/narrative ones.
Perhaps a good point of departure would be to use an imaginative scientific method a sort of anthropology, or sociology of our own practice to look upon our common sense and the "take for granted" concepts that we use in everyday archaeology. Using a politics of sight to focus in a more precise way our most current concepts and intuitions.
Speakers:
9 h Introduction by the coordinators
Professor Vítor Oliveira Jorge (University of Porto) and Professor Julian Thomas (University of Manchester), vojorge@clix.pt
9,10 h On the Ocularcentrism of Archaeology
Julian Thomas (Univ. of Manchester):
Archaeology is a product of the modern era, another aspect of which has been the identification of vision as the paradigm of knowing. Paradoxically, then, archaeology relies on the notion that new knowledge can be created from an engagement with material things, and yet it proceeds to apprehend those things through the visual sense. The problem of knowing the material world visually lies at the core of archaeological practice, and in this contribution I will seek to unravel some of the difficulties that arise as a result.
9,30 h Love in ruins, or why do we “see” couples in archaeological sites
Stelios Lekakis (Univ. of Athens)
The paper, based on the author’s previous fieldwork and visits to archaeological sites around the world, pertains to the common observation of people holding hands or kissing while walking through archaeological sites.
The former fact is approached via multiple interpretative angles (pragmatic, touristic etc.) and several conclusions are drawn; examining a parallel route, the romantic view (and its visual preconceptions in their diachronic development) is chosen as a central argument. It attempts to interpret the aforementioned observation, through the notion of Romanticism as formalized both in theories of architecture and restoration and in literature/poetry et al.
Thus, a philosophic tool -connected with less systematic, measurable, analyzable or “obvious” data- is incorporated in order to enlighten the theme. Without implying interpretative dichotomies, the “feeling” is employed as a sensor in conjunction with the “vision” of the classical archaeological scopic science. This atypical, “less scientific”, approach while clashing with modern notions of effective site interpretation and management, offers an alternative view towards a holistic perception of the site.
In general, the paper suggests a broad incorporation of alternative interpretative methods (re-examining former and present visual approaches of monuments), that will contribute to the more effective management of antiquities in cooperation with the local communities in a post-modern context.
9,50 h. Questioning an archaeology of vision: four dimensions of implicated discourse from past material culture
Keith Ray (Herefordshire Archaeology)
It is unquestionable that archaeology as a practice has habitually privileged the visual dimension of material culture. Indeed, arguably this is inevitable given the visible physicality of the objects, places and landscapes that are its arena of inquiry. This concern with the visual is however more subtly a product of a post-Enlightenment preoccupation with surfaces and appearances – an aspect that has been intensively explored in recent years by some art historians, for instance.
It would and will be a very worthwhile exercise to explore ‘visuality’ in reference to key categories of material, as Douglass Bailey has so effectively done in his recent volume on figurines. In this brief paper, what I want to introduce however is four alternative spheres of discourse where the visual is present but is not privileged. These spheres are the tactile, the substantial, the literary and the invisible, respectively. None of them are directly accessible through past material culture and residues. What it is necessary to do, therefore, is to discern how each is implicated through the visible and tangible remains that as archaeologists we routinely encounter, and is called into presence by deliberate material/visual referencing in some contexts. The aim in making this exploration is to broaden our repertoire of means to understand how material items and the living space of past communities has been used by them to shape both their experience of being in the world and also their interactions with one another and with the unseen.
10,10 h Additive subtraction: addressing pick-dressing in Irish passage tombs
Andrew Cochrane (Univ. of Cardiff)
I have been thinking for a while on themes of erasure and overlay in some Irish passage tombs – for instance, the occurrence of 'pick-dressing', often the last episode of 'decoration' or imagery on the stones. As a means of exploring this element of passage tombs (via the politics of spectatorship and application), I would draw on visual culture examples that would include: the defacement and then destruction of the B?miy? Buddhas, Afghanistan; the work of the contemporary artist Idris Khan ( e.g. every... page of the Holy Koran). I will also consider the works of Leonardo da Vinci (e.g. The Virgin of the Rocks) in discussing the effects or performances of superimposition, overlay and underlay. In a move away from textual and representational understandings of imagery, I will consider the works of Michelangelo's 'non-finito' pieces to discuss how unfinished/incomplete (?) sculptures/stones 'work' on a spectator (the creation of cognitive indecipherability) – the visual politics of what they do, as opposed to what they might mean.
10, 30 h Tea/Coffee brake
11 h Coming to Our Senses: Toward a Unified Perception of the Iroquoian Longhouse
Christopher Watts (Univ. of Toronto)
From early seventeenth century historical depictions through modern archaeological mapping regimes, the Iroquoian longhouse is recognized as the quintessential Aboriginal dwelling form of northeastern North America. In this paper, I argue that our understanding of the Iroquoian longhouse is, however, fundamentally constrained by a tyranny of the visual. So preoccupied are we with the visual recognition and reconstruction of longhouse features that we neglect to consider how the longhouse would have been experienced by Iroquoian groups as a sensuous whole. Drawing inspiration from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I look at how this lived space might have been disclosed as an ‘inter-sensory entity’ to its inhabitants. Concurrently, I also explore how such an approach impacts upon some commonly held beliefs regarding Iroquoian sociality.
11,20 h Seeing the Meaning Behind the Mask: examining the role that meanings play in social integration
Christopher M. Roberts (Arizona State University)
The katsina cult, a religious expression of the Pueblo peoples in the North American Southwest, has often been used as an explanatory framework for interpreting the striking changes in social organization during the Pueblo IV period (c. AD 1274-1540). In particular, some scholars link iconographic representations from the past to present ethnography, to suggest the katsina cult functioned as a means of integrating newly aggregated people. In so doing they apply a taken-for-granted concept in their research by assuming that ‘what you see is what you get’. They use past images to interpret social conditions by assuming that similarities between ancient and current iconography reflect common meanings between modern practices and ancient depictions. This assumption has been criticized by other scholars, who suggest that the Pueblo IV iconography is not identical to its modern manifestations and thus that the katsina cult cannot be applied to as an interpretive strategy to explain the social integration seen in the period.
I hope to move beyond both the assumptions of some scholars and the criticisms of others by explicitly examining how the meaning attached to images can function as an integrative mechanism in society through the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. I will demonstrate that the katsina iconography, rather than meaning exactly what we see, is actually an agglomeration of similar and different meanings at the same time. With this perspective it can be argued that katsinas, through their concurrent possession of dual meanings, could serve an integrative function by providing a common ground between agents of different social and geographical backgrounds. In so doing I hope to avoid the pitfalls of a purely analogical approach through the application of social theories.
11,40 h Archaeology’s ‘Scientific Vision’ and the ‘Local’: Salvage Work in Turkey’s G.A.P. Region
Laurent Dissard (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
The main point of this paper is: “marginalizing” the “local” is a necessary condition for a certain specific type of archaeological scientific knowledge to be produced. In order for archaeology to create accepted science, it must “marginalize” the “local”. It must “de-local-ize” itself, that is place the “local” people, “local” context, “local” politics outside of its scientific frame. As a consequence, the “local”, if not completely erased, has become almost invisible, placed on the margins of the photographic image, as a side-note to the practice of archaeological science.
12 h Learning to see through the 'Kilmartin Eye'
Aaron Watson
Archaeology envisions the past in its own image. The visual traditions of research, fieldwork and publication define boundaries within which the discipline's interpretations can take place. Interpretation occurs within maps, section drawings, artefact illustrations, site photography, and so on. In this paper I explore different visual spaces for interpretation that exist in-between archaeology and art, between method and imagination. The 'Kilmartin Eye' is a landscape installation set amidst the rich prehistoric archaeology of Kilmartin glen, Argyll. It was commissioned by Kilmartin House Museum, and opened to the public in spring 2007. The 'Eye' is not a reconstruction of a specific archaeological site, and does not contain explanatory text. Rather, it consists of a circle of large timber posts within which the visitors' view of the wider landscape is juxtaposed against a series of striking abstract paintings, inspired by my experiences of local prehistoric sites and their landscapes. I conceived the 'Kilmartin Eye' as a place within which the visitor might creatively participate in the interpretation of the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape. Like the ancient sites nearby its ambiguities demand explanation. Yet this new monument is not the exclusive preserve of either archaeology or the heritage industry, nor is the 'Eye' solely an artwork since its location and form reflect many years of archaeological research.
The 'Kilmartin Eye' does not simply deliver premeditated archaeological concepts, but is a means by which research and theory can inspire new interpretations that are actively realised and performed through the creative participation of the visitor. On one level this offers a challenging addition to heritage interpretation that has proved successful with both visitors and the local community. On another, the concepts that underlie the 'Kilmartin Eye' also offer a method for 'seeing' the archaeological record in ways that transcend the conventions of modern vision.
12,20 Discussant Colin Renfrew
13 h Lunch
14 h Aspects of the historiality of authoritative conceptions of perspectival (and a-perspectival) objectivity and conditions of possibility for plurality of archaeological research directions
Stephanie Koerner (Univ. Manchester)
Until quite recently, the historiography of science has paradoxically been the most and the least historicised of all humanities and human sciences: the most, because the history of science was assumed to be the fastest paced part of history and arguably (along with scinec based technology) the force of propulsion behind all other parts of history’; the least, because the history of science was written as if context and contingency, the marrow of history, were irrelevant” (Daston 2005: 529). The last decades have seen considerable conditions of possibility for change develop relating very directly to several themes of the session (cf. Stengers and Prigogene 1997; Latour and Weibel eds. 2002; J.L. Koerner 2004; Thomas 2004), including growth of interest in the historiality of authoritative conceptions vision and objectivity (Rheinberger 1997; Daston and Galison 2002; S. Koerner and Wynne 2007).
This contribution focuses on case study materials relating to themes of the session, which bear upon questions posed by the exhibition and edited volume, Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art (Latour and Weibel eds. 2002) was: under what sorts of circumstances have images become "the focus of so much passion? To the point that destroying them, erasing them, defacing them, has been taken as the ultimate touchstone to prove the validity of ones faith, of one’s science, of one’s acumen, of one’s artistic creativity? To the point where being an iconoclast seems the highest virtue, the highest piety... [the highest achievement] of intellectual circles"? (Latour (2002: 14).
I will conclude with some suggestions about the bearing these materials have upon the question in the session abstract about the impacts of the ‘heritage industry’ on archaeology, but especially about the relevance of the historiality of authoritative conceptions of ‘objectivity’ for developing critical and constructive approaches to archaeology’s roles in the dynamics of pedagogical institutions and public affairs.
14,20 h 'Now, I can see you' : bringing an archaeological sensibility to bear on digital media through the politics of presence.
Ian Russell (Univ. of Notre Dame)
As the desert of cyberia expands and more families are moving from communities into cyburbia, what can an archaeological sensibility offer in the form of reflexive criticism of the mediation of humanity? As the lines between human and media are becoming blurred, a recent call has been made by some archaeologists to bring the discipline's sensibility to bear on the documentation and interpretation of human agency in digital lifeworlds. When we enter into digitised mediation, what are the politics of presence? Through the development and maintenance of dispersed communities bound together by the web of digital intra-relationships supported by analogical keystrokes and mouse-clicks, what new presences are rendered? Do they also result in new absences? Can archaeological interventions into the politics of absence/presence provide a more nuanced appreciation of the traces of human enmeshment and participation in mediated lifeworlds. Building on critical steps taken by Stanford Metamedia, this paper explores an archaeological intervention into UK theatre company Blast Theory's virtual game-space of 'Can you see me now?' (http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html). This paper will question the assumption of the primacy of the visual in the graphic user interfaces (GUIs) of modern and post-modern media. When the virtual and digital-scapes of media are constructed through physical manipulation of plastics in order to render consumable, experience-able visuals, can digital lifeworlds be approached as purely visual composites, or is this only supporting an abstraction of (or an apprehension over) the practicable enmeshment of humans within the manifestation of digital and visual media?
14,40 h Aspects and icons of Portuguese nationalism in the period of the XXth century dictatorship
Sérgio Gomes (Univ. Porto)
Between 1926 and 1974 Portugal lived under a dictatorship named Estado Novo ( “New State”). This political period was very similar, in ideology and strategies, to other European dictatorship, as fascism in Italy or Franco's regime in Spain. It was a regime whose speech bases on the defence of a historicist nationalism and in a commemorativist spirit in which the government's calendar seeks the history of the nation to create a sort of legitimation link.
In this juxtaposition dynamics, between the Golden Ages and the political action, the Past emerges in the public space as a reason for new kind of sociabilities. In the slogan "material restoration, moral restoration, national restoration" proclaimed by Oliveira Salazar, lays several projects of restoring national monuments and rehabilitation of traditional habits which results in a new image of the country.
In this paper, I want to approach the way the regime has built a puzzle where images of a glorious past, of a rural way of life and of a colonial empire are summoned in the construction of an identity for the nation. However, I should argue that this puzzle, far away from constituting a sum of the several elements that the different realities provide, is the image of the ideology and projects of the regime.
15 h Deconstructing domestic views of the Copper Age monumentalized hills of Iberia: the case of Castanheiro do Vento in Foz Côa (NE of Portugal)
Ana Margarida Vale (Univ. Porto)
The history of archeological thinking is deeply intertwined with images naively used to describe an observed reality, but, in fact, creating that very reality they are supposed to represent. In the case of the Copper Age “hill settlements” of Iberia, the successive images produced about them, and included as illustrations in the publications, actually served as mythical demonstrations of an a priori idea about this kind of sites. Today, being aware of the complexity of these places and of the permanent actions of building and of deposition of things carried out inside and around these precincts, we try to create new images at different scales to illustrate that very complexity. Far from producing images connected to overwhelming and naive interpretations, we try to represent each context, each site, each landscape as a unique set of features in order to open our minds to the singularity of each context and to compare different contexts, sites and landscapes from a much more awareness of variability then the one used in the past. One of the aspects of this approach consists in avoiding simplistic functional explanations, like “fortified settlements”, or “dwelling units” (houses), or ritual depositions, or whatever. We know that the reality that we are dealing with is much more complex then these “classifications” would imply. Acting accordingly to these lines of enquiry, we try not to domesticate the past using categories that seem obvious and universal to us (domestic/ritual/burial places, etc., for instance), but, to the contrary, we focus our attention in relation to non-familiar images of what “was going there”.
15,20 h Tea/Coffee brake
16 h Archaeological excavation as performance: dissolving boundaries between art and science for the sake of knowledge
Vítor Oliveira Jorge (Univ. Porto)
Knowledge is not quantifiable or stable. It is embodied competence, everything that allows us to perform daily life and to keep ourselves as having a certain joy in our existence: it is in a process of constant transformation and unfolding. The forces that drive us into it could be called desire. We want to know, to understand more clearly, because we have the fantasy of explaining it all, with the power associated to that imagined state of fulfilment, which is unattainable by definition.
Archaeological knowledge is the conventional expression that we use to embrace the whole world around us, to which we belong, and where we detect traces of so to speak past performances.
Actually, these traces are everywhere, and ultimately they overlap our entire environment, our field of perception and action. So they are not so much traces of dead actions or people, but “present absences” like everything else. In fact, every object of our attention, be it a stone or a person, immediately after being framed, obscures its surroundings and creates its own “deep core” of inaccessibility. This is why the French philosopher and psychoanalyst J. Lacan spoke of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary as a triadic device to understand what we people are and how we perform, feel and think. It is probably a useful scheme, as many others, in the sense that it helps us to access the complexity of human action and motivations, not only the most visible, recognizable ones, but also the rest: and the “rest” could be compared to the submerged part of an iceberg. So as long as we try to understand what is “our business” as archaeologists, we need to improve our self-knowledge as persons; both things are one and the same.
An archaeological excavation is a theatre of tasks (a “taskscape” - Ingold) and hence a stage of interactions in a place often full of “traces” of former interactions. The reasons for what we are doing will be richer if the entire person - and not only just an external, abstract observer - coalesces into that action. A cold observer produces dead things. What we need is an engaged subject, capable or moving into the site all his/her experience, dissolving the traditional procedure of science into the movement of art, and vice-versa. In that sense, our embodied conscience as performers among other performers helps a lot. To make my point clearer, I will comment on some images of my own experience as a field archaeologist.
16,20 h Privileging the Visual at Chaco Canyon: A Case Study from the Southwest
U.S.
Ruth van Dyke, Colorado College, USA
Visual representations in archaeology are neither innocent nor transparent - rather, they are examples of LaTour's immutable mobiles. We manipulate maps, drawings, photographs, video footage, and other forms of graphic
representation to construct specific kinds of knowledge, and to market some archaeological interpretations at the expense of others. Ancient peoples also manipulated the visual for their own purposes, so that an examination of this process sets up a double hermeneutic. In this paper, I engage in a self-critical examination of the uses and abuses of visual media in the archaeology of Chaco Canyon in the Southwest United States.
16,40 h An Archaeology of Vision: Seeing Past and Present at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
Michael Ashley, Berkeley
Archaeology is a 'sensual' field practice, employing the senses of sight, touch and hearing - sometimes smell and taste - to bear on the problem at hand, be it excavation, survey or lab research. The visual archaeological environment is a place caught between present and past, experienced in the real by the archaeologist who is investigating it. An archaeology of vision calls for a focus shift, a restructuring of the visual and invisible in order to make it meaningful. A clear definition of the relationship between viewer, viewed and viewing environment is needed. By keeping this relationship multi-dimensional, it becomes apparent that a study of vision in archaeology requires us to define what exactly we are looking at and for. Namely, who is doing the looking, what are they looking at, under what viewing conditions? What becomes quickly apparent is that it is us who are doing the looking at present remains under a very different visual situation than originally experienced by the observers in the past. We use the evidence of archaeology, ethnography, history and human experience in order to fill in the 'blind spots' of our archaeological interpretation, but often this is done without considering the past viewer in context. This paper attempts to bring these sources for our imaginations into focus as tools for articulating the past-viewed world of viewers, viewed objects and viewing environments that maintains the complexity and depth of human vision.
17 h [or 17,20 h] Discussant : Professor Colin Renfrew
18 h. Session closed
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Conclusão, até ao fim do ano, do livro “Crenças, Religiões e Poderes”, coordenado por mim e pelo Prof. J. M. Costa Macedo, da FLUP, e editado pelas Ed. Afrontamento, Porto, 2007. A intenção é a de que seja lançado ainda este ano, ou o mais tardar no início de 2008. Está neste momento em adiantado estado de preparação.
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