CECI n'est pas EXECUTE Laura Silvestri

Laura Silvestri

PhD
Thesis defended in April, 2013

Professional contact information
silvestrilau[at]yahoo.it

Dissertation directors: Gilles Tarabout / Enrico Comba
PhD program: EHESS - Social Anthropology and Ethnology / University of Turin - Anthropological Sciences
Initial registration: 2008

 

 

Flowing Like Water: Practices and Theories of the Moving Body in Kaḷarippayaṟṟụ, a Keralan Martial Art

 

The aim of this study is to analyze how certain traditional South-Indian martial techniques, formerly related to a kind of political organization made up of highly hierarchical levels, are transformed into martial arts that convey the image of a unitary, secular and egalitarian regional spirit, by stressing their aesthetic and performative value. More specifically, I study how such changes affect the conceptions and representations of the body and the person, which constitute the key issue in the incorporation of martial practice and social values. I focus in particular on kaḷarippayaṟṟụ (kaḷari = place of learning and training; payaṟṟụ = body work performed in the kaḷari), a martial art from Kerala, whose name is itself the result of a process of revival that began in the decades immediately preceding the creation of the Kerala state (1956) within the Indian Union.

This project took shape after my Tesi di Laurea (Master’s degree), which analyzed the practice of Ayurvedic medicine in Italy. That research showed that Italian Ayurvedic practitioners interpret the causes of illness by means of highly modern ideas of the person and of his place in the world, ideas that were developed by Indian scholars themselves in reaction to the colonial encounter. Therefore, I decided to study how this process of mutual definition and representation—which produced a discourse on the body that goes beyond the regional dimension and opens up onto a global perspective—operates in India itself.

I therefore took an interest in kaḷarippayaṟṟụ , the martial art of Kerala (South India), which shares a cosmology similar to that of āyurveda but, being a technique of “body construction,” provides a closer look at the concepts and changes that primarily attract my attention. The process of revival and reinterpretation of several Indian knowledge systems, which has grown alongside the nationalist movement and in dialogue with Western science and culture, has transformed the once largely secret techniques of kaḷarippayaṟṟụ into a performing art in and of itself or into a supplemental technique in the training of dance and theatre artists in India and the West. The very definition of kaḷarippayaṟṟụ as martial art, which is a result of this process, is challenged by those who see martial techniques as a mere piece of a broader knowledge system.

 

Publications

Book chapters

“Kalarippayatt” entry in Bernard Andrieu (ed.), Vocabulaire de philosophie du corps, Volume 2, Les nouvelles recherches, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2015.

“La meditazione, la relatività e le neuroscienze : paradigmi e immaginari scientifici tra Oriente e Occidente [Meditation, Relativity and Neuroscience: Paradigms and Scientific Imagination between East and West],” in Luigi M. Lombardi Satriani (ed.), RelativaMente : nuovi territori scientifici e prospettive antropologiche, Rome, Armando, 2010, ISBN: 978-88-6081-667-2, pp. 162-179.

“Territori della giovinezza a Torino sud [Young People’s Territories in South Turin],” in Lia Zola (ed.), Memoria del territorio, territori della memoria, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2009, ISBN: 9788856814040, pp. 109-114.

“L’universalizzazione della tradizione: la scienza della longevità [The Universalization of Tradition: The Science of Longevity],” in Laura Bonato (ed.), Memoria riciclata. Riappropriazioni culturali, connessioni, prestiti, Rome, Aracne, 2008, ISBN: 978-88-548-1546-9, pp. 141-181.

 

Articles

“Science and Religion in Traditional Indian Medicine: The Laws of Nature and the Individual in Western Ayurvedic Practice,” Proceedings of the Xth Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), “Experiencing Diversity and Mutuality,” Ljubljana, 26-30 August 2008, Quaderns-e. Revista de l’Institut català d’Antropologia, 12/2008b.  

“Il ciclo dell’anno e della vita a San Benedetto Belbo [Ritual Year and Life Rituals in San Benedetto Belbo],” Bollettino della Società per gli Studi storici, archeologici e artistici della Provincia di Cuneo, ISSN : 0392-0402, n. 140, 2009, 1, pp. 127-134.

 

 

Last update: 29 January, 2016

 

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