Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Meaning and Sense in Images and Texts

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949468.2010.484995

1545-5920

Andréa Barbosa,

Indigenous Studies in Latin America

Abstract Text and image, silence and sound: different ways that express equally different facets of humankind's understanding of the world, and that also express our anthropological reflection of these human processes which give meaning to experience. This article focuses specifically on the kind of depth offered by considering other forms of understanding than conceptual forms and that, through cinematographic anthropology, open up an under-explored field that is very fruitful in analyzing various topics related to this discipline, such as the processes of constructing identity and memory. Notes The seven films (A Balinese Family, Karba's First Years, First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby, Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea, Bathing Babies in Three Cultures, Trance and Dance in Bali and Learning to Dance in Bali) were edited and assembled without Bateson's participation more than ten years after the research had been conducted, due to differences between the two about the place of images in anthropological analyses. For a deeper analysis regarding Mead's and Bateson's work, see the riveting introduction by Étienne Samain to the book Os Argonautas do Mangue (Argonauts of the Mangrove) [Alves Citation2004]. The article "Imagens e memórias na construção de uma experiência da e na cidade de São Paulo" (Images and Memories in Constructing an Experience of and in the City of São Paulo) [Barbosa Citation2007] and the film were produced as part of my postdoctoral research developed together with USP's Anthropology Department and with the support of FAPESP, as part of the thematic project entitled "Alteridade, expressões culturais do mundo sensível e construções da realidade: velhas questões, novas inquietações" [Otherness, Cultural Expressions of the Sensitive World and Constructs of Reality: Old Questions, New Concerns]. In the case of Jean Rouch's work, this subtlety was always present; perhaps it is for this reason that, in the 1960s, he was more appropriated and debated by filmmakers than by anthropologists. Regarding this question, see my article on "Images and Memories in Constructing an Experience of and in the City of São Paulo" [Barbosa Citation2007; unofficial, unpublished translation]. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndréa Barbosa Andréa Barbosa is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at UNIFESP—Universidade Federal do Estado de São Paulo. She is co-author of the book Antropologia e Imagem [Zahar Editores, 2006] and editor of the books Escrituras da Imagem [Edusp, 2004] and Imagem-Conhecimento [Papirus, 2009]. Among the documentaries she directed are O resto é o dia, a dia, No canto dos olhos, and Em(si)mesma.