Playing with dolls: a Benjaminian essay on mimesis - BV FAPESP
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(Reference retrieved automatically from SciELO through information on FAPESP grant and its corresponding number as mentioned in the publication by the authors.)

Playing with dolls: a Benjaminian essay on mimesis

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Author(s):
John C. Dawsey [1] ; Claudia da Silva Santana [2]
Total Authors: 2
Affiliation:
[1] Universidade de São Paulo - Brasil
[2] Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba - Brasil
Total Affiliations: 2
Document type: Journal article
Source: Horiz. antropol.; v. 26, n. 56, p. 29-56, 2020-03-27.
Abstract

Abstract This essay proposes to discuss, from a Benjaminian perspective, a mimetic circuit in which dolls that are similar to ancestral riverbank dwellers enter into relations with people living on the banks of the river, who become similar to dolls. The gesture of an artisan to populate the banks of a river returns with the force of a field which is energized by dolls and riverbank dwellers, invigorating the latter in their determination not to be removed from their homes. Images of people from the past who made their homes and fished from the banks of the Piracicaba River and of Amerindian Paiaguá or evuevi “river people” articulate with the present in a moment of danger in which dwellers are threatened by a city government project of “reconquest of Riverbank Street” associated with the restoration of a bandeirante (backland explorer and Indian slave-hunter) heroic imaginary. Attention is called to the way in which residues of the city and its history, collected by an artisan in a cart pulled by a horse named Otter, come to life in the form of riverine dolls. (AU)

FAPESP's process: 18/19609-9 - Embodiment and performance: Our Lady Aparecida and the werewolf woman, Brazil
Grantee:John Cowart Dawsey
Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research