Sally Price Research Articles

Saamaka Dreaming, by Richard Price & Sally Price

Saamaka Dreaming, by Richard Price & Sally Price

Saamaka Dreaming by Richard Price and Sally Price

Reviewed by: Saamaka Dreaming by Richard Price and Sally Price Manuel Valdés Pizzini Richard Price y Sally Price. 2017. Saamaka Dreaming. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 272 pp. ISBN: 978-0822369783. Hay un momento en la vida en el que los académicos hacemos una reflexión profunda sobre nuestro trabajo y lo que hemos pensado y escrito. En la antropología eso requiere que nos internemos en las notas de campo y procedamos a atravesar el tiempo, el espacio y las vidas que hicieron posible nuestras carreras y que forjaron nuestra visión de mundo. La manera en la que miramos las cosas, la política local e internacional, las relaciones humanas, nuestra propia vida, está matizada por las cosas que hemos aprendido en el field, en el campo, y que probablemente estén inscritas —de alguna manera— en los garabatos, los croquis, las entrevistas, las notas, los diarios y en el cuaderno donde registramos nuestras observaciones. Ese es un mundo —en algunos [End Page 161] casos— denso, casi impenetrable de miles de páginas, fotografías, dibujos, entrevistas grabadas, videos, piezas de arte y cultura material. Hay cosas incomprensibles… y otras demasiado claras. Después de atravesar ese espeso bosque tropical, lo que queda es la pesadez que deja la nostalgia por un mundo desaparecido o en vísperas de quedar aniquilado. Ese es el legado del libro Saamaka Dreaming (2017) escrito por los antropólogos Richard Price y Sally Price sobre su experiencia de vida en el estudio etnográfico e histórico de los descendientes de los cimarrones de Surinam, quienes se convirtieron en un territorio soberano y mantuvieron la cultura que forjaron luego de romper las cadenas de la esclavitud e independizarse de los holandeses en las profundidades del bosque tropical. Los saamaka (anteriormente conocidos como saramakas) son parte de un conjunto de grupos sociales y culturales, agrupados en aldeas, que construyeron una cultura híbrida, con un fuerte componente africano, acrisolando diversas experiencias étnicas y lingüísticas en varias aldeas, que en el caso de esa experiencia etnográfica, estaban ubicados en la cuenca de los ríos Pikilio y Gaanlio que hoy día alimentan la represa de Afobaka. Los Price, jóvenes y entusiastas, se iniciaron en la aldea de Dangogo y desde allí comenzaron una intensa jornada de observación participante. Un interesante ejercicio marcado por una división sexual, académica y matrimonial del trabajo etnográfico, que matiza todo el libro (211–213). Las estudiosas y los estudiosos de las sociedades cimarronas y afroamericanas de América del Sur que conocen la obra de los Price (algunas galardonadas), saben de la diversidad de textos que han producido y su interés por reconstruir la historia de estas sociedades, desde ese primer momento que reconocen en su tradición oral, el Fé-siten o First Time (1983). Un saber que no podía ser divulgado, pero que, en su afán por preservarlo, se lo comunicaron a Richard Price en diversos momentos. Por su parte, Sally Price ha documentado la infinidad de formas de expresión artística, desde el cuerpo, hasta toda la obra plástica de estos pueblos, en artículos y en un libro innovador por demás: Equatoria (Price & Price 1992). Richard Price ha desguazado su sistema de parentesco (1975), la historia contada por sus sabios (1990), el lenguaje y la trayectoria política de estos cimarrones, ligándola a la obra de numerosos colegas y desenterrando, junto a Sally Price, el trabajo de los misioneros y militares (John Gabriel Stedman) holandeses que vieron de primera mano la sociedad esclavista, la brutalidad de su régimen y la resistencia de los cimarrones de Surinam, que lograron emanciparse en 1762 (1992). Saamaka Dreaming es una obra peculiar, puesto que quienes practican la antropología (y sobre todo la etnografía) nos hemos acostumbrado a unos modelos y cánones de presentar y estructurar la vida de la gente que estudiamos, presentando una visión estilizada y destilada de cómo [End Page 162] funciona su “sistema social”. En este libro rompe con ese esquema —como toda obra de los Price— para mostrarnos, casi al desnudo...

Logical Horses: Or Several Historical, Aesthetic, Allegorical, and Mythical Vignettes

Author(s): Czacki, Catherine Erica | Abstract: Logical Horses: Or Several Historical, Aesthetic, Allegorical, and Mythical Vignettes is a multi-tiered essay that weaves historical accounts in relation to storytelling, science fiction, and visual culture. The various methodologies detail instances of categorization within aesthetic discourse while also narrating absence––how exclusion/inclusion as polarities create conflicting histories. The essay jumps historical time periods––a problem I attempt to navigate by focusing on particular instances and cases that relate together the cacophony of history, time and aesthetics (using the concept of cacophony in line with Jodi Byrd’s argumentation in The Transit of Empire). The essay was edited by 6 participants and colleagues, in order to treat their art, writing and work as integral to the narratives established for the service of my writing. The essay begins with a vignette on the Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, establishing a thread regarding cultural and social othering as a broader social issue, continued later in the essay specific to artistic aesthetics. Other vignettes detail structures, such as Marxist thought, the history of Western ideas like the Great Chain of Being and institutions such as the College Art Association––analyzed as participants that promote certain artists over others as hierarchicalized authentic producers of art and culture, alternately falling into dangerous territories of exotification when including subjectivities previously excluded from the canon. Systems of connoisseurship and validation (Sally Price), deference and preference within how language is a tool for doing it right or wrong (Joanna Russ), and Liquid Blackness (a research collective and a term used by Black Studies scholars), are themes throughout the essay that address particular artists within and aside from the canon. Additionally interspersed throughout the essay is a speculative science fiction narrative, a story that unfolds under an alternative planetary setting, where resistances to dominant cultural paradigms are taking place. The aim of this essay is to, following Byrd’s idea of cacophony, place instances next to each other so that the tensions of the narratives might trouble the stability of monolithic canonical histories, and seek hybridity as a methodology (though admittedly troubled as well)––what Byrd describes as opening doors, on the complex issues relevant to how colonialism, cultural othering and aesthetics are interwoven.

Créolisation, Creolization, and Créolité

Conceived as a contribution to a 2014 symposium reconsidering Éloge de la créolité—written by three Martiniquan intellectuals—twenty-five years after its publication, this essay draws a distinction between the French use of créolisation as a mainly philosophical and poetic concept and the more historically grounded use of creolization in the anglophone world. After outlining the various criticisms of the Éloge expressed in the author's 1995 essay “Shadowboxing in the Mangrove” (coauthored by Sally Price), it sketches in a history of the use of the creolization metaphor in the anglophone academy, drawing examples mainly from historical and anthropological work on Afro-America. It ends by considering the limitations of the perspectives put forth in the Éloge and the potential usefulness of the creolization concept for the future.

Bookshelf 2011

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price

Bookshelf 2010

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price

The Roots of Roots: Or, How Afro‐American Anthropology Got Its Start by Richard Price and Sally Price

The Roots of Roots: Or, How Afro‐American Anthropology Got Its Start by Richard Price and Sally Price

Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension (review)

Reviewed by: Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension Petra Barreras del Río Sally Price and Richard Price. 2006. Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 189 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8122-3948-5. Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension is a handsome art publication in big format that straddles fields of study such as cultural criticism, art history and anthropology. In a concise preface, the distinguished team of Caribbean scholars Sally Price and Richard Price state their intentions. First, to introduce to a larger audience a group of little known watercolors created in the Caribbean by American artist Romare Bearden, (1911-1988), and to present the context in which they were produced. Secondly, to propose that Bearden's Caribbean artistic output, from 1973 until his death in 1988, spearheads a transformation that grants a new critical assessment of his later production regardless of its medium, where it was created or the audience it was intended for. Bearden's work, rooted within the modernist tradition and the [End Page 210] African American heritage—of both, the rural south and Harlem—has received well deserved recognition since the 1970s. He had retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, (1971), the Mint Museum of Art in North Carolina, (1980), and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, (1986), as well as posthumous retrospectives at The Studio Museum in Harlem (1991), and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (2003). In October of 2010, a national touring exhibition of his work will open at the Mint Museum sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts that granted the project one of only five American Masterpieces Grants awarded to museums nationwide in 2010. Such recognition notwithstanding, the Prices find, in reviewing Bearden's bibliography, that there is a void in scholarship regarding the aspect of the artist's production that is the subject of this book. Why this blind spot? They put forward two convincing reasons. Although unfounded, there is a perception that watercolor is a facile medium and a minor genre within the Fine Arts. Keenly aware of cultural hierarchies, they also cite the apathy in the United States for the art produced in the Caribbean. They describe such pattern as the "American difficulty with accepting the Caribbean as a site of serious culture" (p. 16). The well honed team of anthropologists is up for the challenge to fill the void. The main focus of their research and publications for over 35 years has been the Caribbean region, where they continue to live and work for the better part of each year. Their proficiency as researchers and writers, their knowledge of the cultures in the area and their professional and personal connections in the islands are formidable. Just as powerful is the couples' passion for the subject at hand. Generous access to the holdings of the Romare Bearden Foundation granted the authors a splendid variety and wealth of sources. These, which are meticulously listed in their notes, include: artwork, correspondence, journal notations, tape-recorded interviews, texts authored by Bearden and art historical studies. In addition, they conducted interviews with many of Bearden's friends, associates and collectors in St. Martin and the United States. With their usual skill, the writers bring into play a great many sources throughout the book. These are employed very effectively to anchor the first two chapters, "Romare Bearden: A Life in Art" and "A painter's Mind." In these chapters they lay out the groundwork for several lines of discussion that re-emerge throughout the book. There is an attempt to understand and describe this artist's creative process which was far from naive. Bearden was an intellectual who lived through the Harlem Renaissance, received a college education, attended art schools and traveled to Paris, the first time, with the GI Bill in 1950. He co-authored The Painter's Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting [End Page 211] (1969), an erudite book on the techniques of painting that embraces areas as diverse and complex as Byzantine and Renaissance art, Dutch and Chinese painting, Cubism and Abstraction. The following chapters, the Prices devote to the analysis of the...

Bookshelf 2009

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by <i>Sally Price</i>

Bookshelf 2008

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price.

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly. Sally Price

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsParis Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly. Sally Price Lawrence Guy StrausLawrence Guy Straus Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Anthropological Research Volume 64, Number 4Winter, 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jar.64.4.20371312 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2008 The University of New MexicoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sally Price RETURN TO THE QUAI BRANLY, Museum Anthropology 33, no.11 (Mar 2010): 11–21.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1379.2010.01071.x

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean AnthropologyVolume 13, Issue 2 p. 451-452 Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price Catherine Benoît, Connecticut CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Catherine Benoît, Connecticut CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 19 November 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1935-4940.2008.00047.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume13, Issue2November 2008Pages 451-452 RelatedInformation

Paris primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly

In 1990, Jacques Chirac, the future president of France and a passionate fan of non-European art, met Jacques Kerchache, a maverick art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture in the holy temple of French culture, the Louvre. Together, they began laying plans, and ten years later African fetishes were on view under the same roof as the Mona Lisa. Then, in 2006, amid a maelstrom of controversy and hype, Chirac presided over the opening of a new museum dedicated to primitive art in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower: the Musee du Quai Branly (MQB). Paris Primitive recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris' museum world that resulted from Chirac's dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB's creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France. Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price's account fascinating.

A agência de Gell na antropologia da arte

Ao delinear os parâmetros para uma antropologia da arte, o famigerado livro de Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, deixou de lado boa parte da antropologia, o que coloca algumas questões tão embaraçosas quanto pouco tratadas: pode-se fazer boa teoria sem contar com o acúmulo de conhecimento nessa área? Ou os temas recebem tratamento tão díspar que realmente não faz sentido falar mais em princípios teóricos comuns que podem e devem ser aplicados a qualquer objeto? O que perdemos com uma narrativa tão autocentrada? Partindo do pressuposto de que não é possível tratar teoria enquanto um conjunto de máximas que se somam ou se substituem, ou como um tabuleiro de peças que se acomodam umas às outras segundo sua validade isolada, este artigo procede a um exame da narrativa contida no livro de Gell, das articulações que realiza entre suas proposições. Examinarei, sobretudo, a leitura que faz dos autores que cita, como Peirce, Sally Price, e outros, e como os encaixa na sua argumentação. O objetivo desse exercício é evidenciar, para além de suas próprias definições, certas concepções sobre arte contidas na abordagem que Gell sugere e ampliar as referências para uma antropologia da arte.

Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension by Sally Price and Richard Price

Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension by Sally Price and Richard Price

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly (review)

Reviewed by: Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly Dominic Thomas Sally Price . Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007. 190 pp. A symbiotic network connecting "museums and governmental agencies" (23) operates in France, and as Sally Price has shown, "Museums in France are solidly under the thumb of the State [. . .]. The principal governing body for French museums, the Direction des Musées de France (French Museums Board) or DMF, part of the Ministry of Culture, has traditionally played a determining role in the creation and function of major museums" (23). Indeed, since the office of Minister for Cultural Affairs was inaugurated in 1960, a mechanism has been set in motion whose antecedents can be found in such colonial mechanisms as the civilizing mission that rendered culture and politics indissociable. These close relations have expressed themselves in multiple ways, most powerfully in the Presidential "Grands travaux" legacy projects; former President François Mitterrand was the most active in this regard, literally transforming the Parisian landscape through the addition of such sites as Pyramide du Louvre, the Arche de la Défense, the Opéra Bastille and the new Bibliothèque Nationale. Thus, as Price shows, The vision of museums as State institutions means that projects initiated by presidential decree operate through a special dynamic within the general structure, enjoying a degree of autonomy that simultaneously facilitates their efficient realization and foments strong divisions between supporters and opponents. (27) [End Page 288] Broadly speaking, it is to these divisions that Price turns her attention in Paris Primitive. The Musée Quai Branly (MQB) was Jacques Chirac's grand projet, inaugurated in June 2006, some eleven months prior to leaving office. The museum has essentially centralized the collections of the former Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie (MNAAO) and the Musée de l'Homme. Price's book provides a comprehensive background to the political intrigue (separate chapters are devoted to both Jacques Chirac and art collector Jacques Kerchache who masterminded the project) that informed the conceptualization, planning, resistance to, and ultimately the actualization of the MQB. The justificatory rationale of the project was to accord a place to those arts previously "unknown, neglected, or disdained" (36), overshadowed by established museums such as the Louvre in which Western art occupied a place of privilege. However, the MQB is, much in the same way as other French museums, inseparable from layers of ambiguity. The Musée de l'Homme, for example, itself the outcome of several revised collections, was a space in which "to celebrate the exploits of French explorers and, more generally, the French nation" (81). Thus, the MQB's objective of transplanting "nearly three hundred thousands of objects in the collection of the ethnology department and elevate them to what was seen by proponents of the new museum to be conceptually higher ground as masterpieces of world art" (87) is naturally riddled with problems, and all the more as Price illustrates, given that against this background, the current recontextualization of these same objects from scientific specimens to works of art might be read as continued proof of the power of political and cultural climates to determine the significance of objects that have been stripped of their original (native) meanings. (97) Anthropologist Maurice Godelier had recommended a "resolutely postcolonial museum" (50) that incorporated information on the history of acquisition as part of the display information, but he was eventually sidelined and that proposed angle was "drastically downsized and largely leeched of power to influence the museological program" (53). But for MQB architect, Jean Nouvel: "It's a space marked by the symbols of the forest, the river, and obsessions with death and oblivion [. . .] a snake or lizard into which you walk and discover not so [End Page 289] much a building as a territory—a zoo really" (113, emphasis mine). Nouvel speaks with apparently no concern for the striking allusions to human zoos and essentializing exhibition practices at such sites as the Colonial Exposition of 1931. Many critics had observed very early on what Benoît de L'Estoile remarked upon in 2003: "In this day...

Bookshelf 2004

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price.

Bookshelf 2007

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price.

Book shelf 2005/2006

A selection of books reviewed by Richard and Sally Price.