Abstract

DIAZ CRUZ, Rodrigo. The celebration of contingency and form: On the anthropology of performative acts. Nueva antropol [online]. 2008, vol.21, n.69, pp.33-59. ISSN 0185-0636.

This article defends the idea that social acts are involved in two modalities: that of causality and that of performative acts. Such acts "create and make present realities that are vivid enough to beguile, amuse or terrify"; in addition they can induce intense acts of reflexivity. Thus performances develop a permanent tension between authority -convention, tradition, rules - and emergent properties, between form and contingency, the process through which the participants carry out or make something, recover, remember or invent selectively. Consequently, performative acts are articulated within power relationships.

Keywords : creative acts; expression; reinterpretation.