Every Situation has its Rhythm: Acoustic Mimesis and Sonic Exoticism in Tambours Sur La Digue.

This article examines the soundscapes of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Tambours Sur La Digue and explores the concept of acoustic mimesis located in the performance as a dramaturgical strategy to create, aurally, an imagined Far East. In Tambours, mimesis is the performative principle exemplified by the presentation of the mise en scène, and most distinctly Mnouckine’s decision to adapt the Japanese performance tradition of Bunraku through a process of 'reversed' mimicry (in which human bodies simulate the wooden marionettes of the Japanese style). Mimesis pervades the acoustemologies of the performance as it is heard in the extracted sounds, styles, and rhythms of Asian musical modes and movements that consequently become dislocated from context; the sounds become imitated, iconicised and exoticised as sonic signatures as they reify the Orientalist spectacle. The 'oriental' soundscape, reverberating with exotic overtones, becomes the means by which the production creates an imaginary Orient – one in which the Orient Other is silenced, and is resounded only through the musical sensibilities of the Occidental Self.

Between Sound and Sight: Framing the Exotic in Roysten Abel's The Manganiyar Seduction

Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction is perhaps the most popular performance of Indian folk music on the global festival market today. This performance of Rajasthani folk music is an apt exemplification of an auto-exoticism framed as cultural commodity. Its mise en scéne of musicians framed, literally, by illuminated red square boxes ‘theatricalises’ Rajasthan’s folk culture of orality and renders such a tradition the quality of strangeness that borders on theatre and music, contemporary and traditional. The ‘dazzling’ union of the Manganiyar’s music and scenography of Amsterdam’s red light district engendered an exotic seduction that garnered raving reviews on its global tour. This paper then examines the production’s performative interstices: the in betweenness of sound and sight where aural tradition is ‘spectacularised’, and the shifting convergences of tradition and cultural consumption. It further interrogates the role of reception in the construction of such ‘exotic’ spectacles.

Exotisme religieux et bricolage

Cet article propose d’utiliser notion d’exotisme religieux afin d’analyser au mieux la dissémination des ressources religieuses « autres » dans les sociétés contemporaines et la relation que les acteurs sociaux entretiennent avec ces ressources. Il s’attachera aussi à montrer que cet outil conceptuel permet de reprendre les analyses qui ont été faites des bricolages composés de ressources symboliques variées, et en particulier d’en saisir les logiques culturelles et sociales. En effet, on a peut-être trop souvent surestimé l’éclectisme des combinaisons élaborées par les acteurs sociaux, pris pour acquise la disponibilité des ressources religieuses en présence et manqué de comprendre l’individualisme religieux de manière satisfaisante.

This article suggests that the notion of religious exoticism allows us to analyse better the diffusion of “other” religious resources in contemporary societies as well as the type of engagement individuals develop with the cultural and religious otherness. It will also try to show that this conceptual tool allows to further the analyzes that have been made about the forms of hybridity that combine diverse symbolic resources, and in particular to grasp its cultural and social logics. Indeed, the understanding of hybridity with foreign religions has sometimes over-estimated its eclecticism, taken for granted the availability of religious resources, and misunderstood religious individualism.