Deborah A Kapchan
Biographic Data
| ID | 129312 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah A Kapchan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah A |
| FAMILY NAME | Kapchan |
| SIGNATURE | KAPCHAN D A |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 170 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Notes on a Scattered Subject in Montmartre
The work of artist/anthropologist Susan Marie Ossman and her 12-station exhibition in Montmartre in 2020 lends itself to a personal meditation on art and illness during a global pandemic. Walking the neighborhood where the installations were created and assembled, Ossman’s artwork becomes a means of transforming the experience of chemotherapy and suggests how the cancer treatments themselves refl ect on a larger society of illness. Most important…
"A Gesture Narrowly Divides Us From Chaos"
Incense swirls around me in thick clouds: jawi, musk, lambre . The names themselves are intoxicating. Frankincense, musk, myrrh, black and white benzoin, ambergris; the resinous rocks melt on the hot coals of the earthen brazier. Not like wax melts, but first sizzling, the pieces of incense bubble up like hot glass, then drip down the sides of the charcoal as if to envelope and snuff it out. Instead they turn into a yellowish liquid on the redden…
Intimate Entanglements in the Ethnography of Performance
Launching the journal, opening the forum
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Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Performance
Cette contribution a pour objet la performance comme pratique esthétique. Selon Deborah A. Kapchan, il s’agit d’un processus qui transforme la réalité. Après une présentation historique du mouvement de la performance en anthropologie, elle explore la manière dont des oratrices performent des genres oraux habituellement associés aux hommes et les « réénoncent » (revoice) au féminin, créant ainsi de nouveaux espaces pour les femmes dans la sphère p…
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Body
Cultural Heritage in Transit
Analyzing "heritage events"—from Roma wedding music to Trinidadian wining, Moroccan verbal art, and neopagan rituals— Cultural Heritage in Transit tracks the effects of the heritage industry, focusing on cultural rights and human rights writ large
The Aesthetics of the Invisible
Is listening a performance? How do “invisible” practices like Sufi Muslim sama', or sacred listening, impact the public and secular spaces of contemporary France? What do listening acts reveal about the political viability and performativity of sacred listening in a secular nation
Moroccan Households in the World Economy
Singing community/remembering in common
In Morocco, the forms of Islam practiced are very influenced by Sufism, and there are many paths or tariqat , including the tariqa butshishiyya , a Sufi path in the Qadiri lineage whose living leader is Shaykh Hamza in northeastern Morocco ( http://www.tariqa.org/ ). In the last decade, branches of this school of Sufism have grown up in France, England, Spain and the United States, and the texts of the prayers, songs and poems have been translite…
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
The Promise of Sonic Translation
How do international music festivals produce experiences of the sacred in multifaith audiences? What is their part in creating transnational communities of affect? In this article, I theorize what I call "the promise of sonic translation": the trust in the ultimate translatability of aural (as opposed to textual) codes. This promise, I assert, produces the "festive sacred," a configuration of aesthetic and embodied practices associated with festi…
A Colonial Relation Not My Own. Coming Home to Morocco and France
Berber Culture on the World Stage
Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Jane E. Goodman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 239 pp
Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco
Book Review| March 01 2006 Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco Sadiqi, Fatima. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. ISBN 90-04-12853-0. 336 pages. Deborah Kapchan Deborah Kapchan New York University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2006) 2 (1): 126–129. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-2006-1006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Deborah Kapchan;…
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
Theorizing the Hybrid
Theorizing the Hybrid" is a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore that critically engages the metaphor of hybridity as it is currently employed in the analysis of narratives and discourses, genres and identities, material forms and performances. Authors in the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, literary history, ethnomusicology, and comparative literature reflect on the nature, value, limitations, and…
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Paroles de femmes, paroles volées
Sur les marches maghrebins, les marchands seduisent la clientele par leurs talents oratoires. Us citent des vers du Coran, des poemes ou des proverbes. L’article analyse le nouveau role des femmes dans l’espace public au Maroc ou les femmes s’accaparent la tradition orale habituellement reservee aux hommes. Cette appropriation, ironique, souvent a double sens, est un terrain d’etude du concept de mimesis
Gender on the Market
"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society."— Choice
Inscribed Surfaces
Theorizing the Hybrid
Theorizing the Hybrid" is a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore that critically engages the metaphor of hybridity as it is currently employed in the analysis of narratives and discourses, genres and identities, material forms and performances. Authors in the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, literary history, ethnomusicology, and comparative literature reflect on the nature, value, limitations, and…
The Promise of Sonic Translation
How do international music festivals produce experiences of the sacred in multifaith audiences? What is their part in creating transnational communities of affect? In this article, I theorize what I call "the promise of sonic translation": the trust in the ultimate translatability of aural (as opposed to textual) codes. This promise, I assert, produces the "festive sacred," a configuration of aesthetic and embodied practices associated with festi…
Performance
Moroccan Female Performers Defining the Social Body
Shikhat are female performers in Moroccan society whose singing and dancing are central to allfestivity, including rites of passage like marriage ceremonies and birth and circumcision celebrations. Despite their centrality, however, shikhat are socially marginal due to the license that they exhibit both in performance and in their off-stage lives. This article examines the artistic and bodily competencies of the shikhat as they articulate some of…
Hybridization and the Marketplace
l'A. propose une analyse de la plus petite elocution generique (un cliche culturel) et montre sa relation avec le domaine plus large de la place du marche de Beni Mellal, au Maroc, premier site de la production de discours hybride. Il examine les concepts d'hybridation et de styles hybrides employes dans les etudes folkloristes (melange, fusion, infiltration, reformulation et co-existence) et analyse l'hybridite et la transmission culturelle a pa…
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco
Book Review| March 01 2006 Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco Sadiqi, Fatima. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. ISBN 90-04-12853-0. 336 pages. Deborah Kapchan Deborah Kapchan New York University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2006) 2 (1): 126–129. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-2006-1006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Deborah Kapchan;…
Hybrid genres, performed subjectivities
Romancing the Real
Hybridization and the Marketplace
l'A. propose une analyse de la plus petite elocution generique (un cliche culturel) et montre sa relation avec le domaine plus large de la place du marche de Beni Mellal, au Maroc, premier site de la production de discours hybride. Il examine les concepts d'hybridation et de styles hybrides employes dans les etudes folkloristes (melange, fusion, infiltration, reformulation et co-existence) et analyse l'hybridite et la transmission culturelle a pa…
Moroccan Female Performers Defining the Social Body
Shikhat are female performers in Moroccan society whose singing and dancing are central to allfestivity, including rites of passage like marriage ceremonies and birth and circumcision celebrations. Despite their centrality, however, shikhat are socially marginal due to the license that they exhibit both in performance and in their off-stage lives. This article examines the artistic and bodily competencies of the shikhat as they articulate some of…
B
MIDDLE EAST STUDIES IN DENMARK. Edited by LARS ERSLEV ANDERSEN. Odense, Odense University Press, 1994. 215pp. DKK 200. APPROACHES TO THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST: INTERVIEWS WITH LEADING MIDDLE EAST HISTORIANS. By NANCY ELIZABETH GALLAGHER. Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1994. viii, 197pp. A HISTORY OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST. By WILLIAM L. CLEVELAND. Boulder and Oxford, Westview Press, 1994. 503pp. Tables, maps, photographs, glossary, select bibli…
Hybrid genres, performed subjectivities
Performance
Gender on the Market
"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society."— Choice
Inscribed Surfaces
Paroles de femmes, paroles volées
Sur les marches maghrebins, les marchands seduisent la clientele par leurs talents oratoires. Us citent des vers du Coran, des poemes ou des proverbes. L’article analyse le nouveau role des femmes dans l’espace public au Maroc ou les femmes s’accaparent la tradition orale habituellement reservee aux hommes. Cette appropriation, ironique, souvent a double sens, est un terrain d’etude du concept de mimesis
Theorizing the Hybrid
Theorizing the Hybrid" is a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore that critically engages the metaphor of hybridity as it is currently employed in the analysis of narratives and discourses, genres and identities, material forms and performances. Authors in the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, literary history, ethnomusicology, and comparative literature reflect on the nature, value, limitations, and…
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco
Book Review| March 01 2006 Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco Sadiqi, Fatima. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. ISBN 90-04-12853-0. 336 pages. Deborah Kapchan Deborah Kapchan New York University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2006) 2 (1): 126–129. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-2006-1006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Deborah Kapchan;…
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
A Colonial Relation Not My Own. Coming Home to Morocco and France
Berber Culture on the World Stage
Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Jane E. Goodman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 239 pp
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
The Promise of Sonic Translation
How do international music festivals produce experiences of the sacred in multifaith audiences? What is their part in creating transnational communities of affect? In this article, I theorize what I call "the promise of sonic translation": the trust in the ultimate translatability of aural (as opposed to textual) codes. This promise, I assert, produces the "festive sacred," a configuration of aesthetic and embodied practices associated with festi…
Singing community/remembering in common
In Morocco, the forms of Islam practiced are very influenced by Sufism, and there are many paths or tariqat , including the tariqa butshishiyya , a Sufi path in the Qadiri lineage whose living leader is Shaykh Hamza in northeastern Morocco ( http://www.tariqa.org/ ). In the last decade, branches of this school of Sufism have grown up in France, England, Spain and the United States, and the texts of the prayers, songs and poems have been translite…
Moroccan Households in the World Economy
The Aesthetics of the Invisible
Is listening a performance? How do “invisible” practices like Sufi Muslim sama', or sacred listening, impact the public and secular spaces of contemporary France? What do listening acts reveal about the political viability and performativity of sacred listening in a secular nation
Cultural Heritage in Transit
Analyzing "heritage events"—from Roma wedding music to Trinidadian wining, Moroccan verbal art, and neopagan rituals— Cultural Heritage in Transit tracks the effects of the heritage industry, focusing on cultural rights and human rights writ large
Body
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Sociology (14 works) · History (13 works) · Art (9 works) · History (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · African history and culture studies (6 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works)