[Linganth] Plugging sessions

[Valentina Pagliai]

Hi,

My paper at AAA is part of the poster session friday 4pm-5:45pm. There is no summary for the session.  I am sending you my own summary:

Verbal duels: the participation structure of disrupting everyday realities.

The relevance of gendered categories, political parties, occupational statuses, and the reputations of Tuscan medieval towns is commonly debated through the elaborately structured verbal duels that Tuscan Italians know as Contrasti.  Carrying on a tradition based in the middle ages, such duels provide venues in which the form and substance of popular debate is set to verse.  I conducted research on the Contrasti performances since 1994, showing how the performers can veil effective political critique and negotiate definitions of gender and ethnic identities.  In this poster, using videoclips of the performances as well as their integral texts, I illustrate the elaborate rhymed structure of the duels that transform insults into a carefully calculated dance, where personal conflict becomes a filter through which to carry out attacks on social norms.  I turn my attention on the form of the verbal duel to examine how ritual insults define a participation structure that allows fo
r the disarticulation of everyday discourses defining common sense truths and realities.  This participation structure allows for the collaborative disarrangement of face among participants: here selves and identities are made and shattered.  From Rap to the Yemenite Balah poems, verbal duels are a form of expression and resistance in many cultures.  Notwithstanding this, they have received relatively little attention in recent times.  The poster intends to become a space to start a dialogue among scholars interested in ritual insults and their different forms across cultures.

Bye,

Valentina Pagliai
Oberlin College
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