Search

The Kantujira is an initiative which, once a month, convokes a substantial number of people in order to sing traditional songs in Basque in the streets of the Old Quarter of Donostia (as well as in different neighbourhoods in the city). There are similar initiatives in towns and cities throughout the Basque Country. In this paper, I analyse the multiple dimensions of the Kantujira, which is much more than a cultural event and a way of maintaining tradition, since it plays a significant role in sociability and in shaping collective identity, while at the same time it is a form of resistance and of protest; a resistance with a particular feature, that it is made up and expressed on the basis of shared pleasure, the pleasure of singing in a group in the street, so we can consider it as a playful form of resistance. My aim is to show that we cannot understand the satisfaction of group singing without alluding to all these other dimensions. In order to achieve that, I base the study on information gathered during my ethnographic participation in the Kantujira since early 2017 to present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an invitation to reflect on the importance eroticism may have in the different stages of anthropological work (gathering information, analysis, writing, presenting to an audience…), starting from a definition of eroticism as potential and creative force, which includes but not be limited to the sexual sense of the term; an approach that may serve to capture the dynamic, sensorial intensity of both pleasant and unpleasant human experiences. In order to do so, I turn to classic texts by Audre Lorde, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari and Georges Bataille as well as current authors such as Maria Livia Alga, Alba Barbé, Adriana Guzmán and Elisa Lipkau. But, above all, I take inspiration from Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”, published originally in 1966 and applied to art criticism. Following a brief revision of anthropological research in the field of sexuality, I address different questions relating to importance of commitment and erotic affectation in ethnography, developed above all in certain fields such as visual anthropology and feminist anthropology. One question guides my entire reflection: What would an erotics of anthropological research be and in what sense could that be of use? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]