Iulia Panait

0766564
Anthropology of Social Change
Section D: Paper A

Razsa, Maple, and Andrej Kurnik. 2012. The Occupy movement in Zizek’s hometown: Direct
democracy and politics of becoming. American Ethnologist 39(2):238-58

The article vividly depicts events of the Occupy Movement in Slovenia by switching between
narrative tools in a manner which allows for comprehensive understanding of the addressed
phenomenon. Although the piece is far too rich to summarize in just a few lines there are a few
main ideas which come to the front.
A thorough assessment of the democracy of direct action is carried out through investigation of
the Occupy Slovenia movement, which seems to “shift democracy to the terrain of daily life”. Such
assemblies encourage, therefore new initiatives and strive to become a safe space for individuals
with contrasting opinions, since it is not dialogue or argument that is encouraged but action and
performance.
A reference to Hardt and Negri sands out regarding the matter of becoming, where the proposal
persuades shifting emphasis from a prefigurative kind of direct democracy which entails “being
the change one wants to see in the world” towards engaged “open-ended subject making”.
Struggle represents the common ground upon which people should build together and invest in
each other’s individual ideal in order to overcome the frustration of their current predicaments.
I believe that collective performances, here in the representation of workshops, through their
potentiality of generating language, movement and spatiality become a force greater than speech,
greater than individual example. They showcase the power of humility and consensus, tolerance
and patience, all of which indispensable in the development of politically just systems applicable
to the heterogenous context and crisis of today.
Iulia Panait
0766564
Anthropology of Social Change
Section D: Paper B

Parkin, David. 1991. “Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division.” PP. 11-25 in Understanding
rituals, edited by Daniel de Coppet. London: Routledge.

Parking opens up his discourse by clearly distinguishing between myth and ritual as
paralanguage, respectively metalanguage, attributing ritual the ultimate performative legitimizing
quality, which is unreducible to verbal assertions.
Later on, the text focuses on notions such as phasal movement, directionality, positioning and
ruling whilst feeding off of Goody, Gerholm and Lewis references. A minimal definition of ritual is
sketched through the syntagma of “formulaic spatiality”, which can be carried out by groups of
people who are conscious of its imperative or compulsory nature and who may or may not further
inform this spatiality with spoken words.
In other words, ritual imposes a kind of order and “properness”, in spite of it resulting from the
overlapping of partial truths and falsehoods. Even though performers have the ability influence
the phasal thread of ritual in moments of intensity and emotion, the sense of ruling and expected
order remains. A comparative study of the Kenyan coast is described in order to showcase the
dynamics of contrasting and competing ritual practices in close proximity to one another.
The author continues to develop on the notion of bodily partition, which is another instrument to
reimpose order upon oneself, in the conquest of disentangling spatial and bodily states of
disorientation.
As concluded in the last lines of the given fragment, “political control over persons is as much a
physical as an intellectual exercise”. From this I draw to the central question of the argument
regarding the potentiality of performance. It is clear that ritual as presented by Perkin shapes
when intended into publicity-seeking performance and becomes, therefore, a means of
expressing collective and even individual positioning towards a certain matter to a larger
audience, thus voicing a current issue through physical action. I would then proceed to argue that
there is connection between this primordial communicative instrument and the tools of
prefigurative politics and democracy of direct action.