Dr Paolo Fortis paolo.fortis@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
General MacArthur among the Guna: The Aesthetics of Power and Alterity in an Amerindian Society
Fortis, P.
Authors
Abstract
This article deals with issues surrounding the study of indigenous appropriations of symbols of military power. It focuses on the case of Guna people from the San Blas Archipelago of Panama who, in the 1940s, carved some wooden figures in the likeness of General Douglas MacArthur and used them as auxiliary spirits in collective healing rituals. By appealing to anthropological reflections on the notion of style, the article suggests a correlation between stylistic variations in forms of visual art, sociality, and power. It exploits the potential of style analysis for interpreting historical phenomena from an anthropological perspective. It is argued that there is a strong link between the stylistic changes in Guna woodcarving and the sociopolitical transformations that occurred in the middle of the twentieth century. The Guna figures of MacArthur are the outcome of a stylistic switch toward individuation, paralleled by the creation of strong political subjects called upon by the historical events of the first half of the twentieth century in San Blas. Finally, the case of cross-cultural appropriation discussed in the article shows the potential of ethnographic studies of local lived worlds in furthering the understanding of global events such as World War II.
Citation
Fortis, P. (2016). General MacArthur among the Guna: The Aesthetics of Power and Alterity in an Amerindian Society. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 430-451. https://doi.org/10.1086/687112
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Apr 11, 2015 |
Online Publication Date | Jun 1, 2016 |
Publication Date | Aug 1, 2016 |
Deposit Date | Jun 6, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 1, 2017 |
Journal | Current Anthropology |
Print ISSN | 0011-3204 |
Electronic ISSN | 1537-5382 |
Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 57 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 430-451 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1086/687112 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(592 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
© 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
You might also like
'Too many meanings': Reading Piro Designs
(2022)
Journal Article
Frequency, modulation, and time in Amerindian art
(2021)
Journal Article
On the Multiple Temporalities of Guna Woodcarving
(2021)
Journal Article
Introduction
(2021)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search