[Linganth] AAA 2019 Panel, Performative Images

[Constantine Nakassis]

Dear all,

Below is draft of a panel abstract, *Performative Images: Toward a
Linguistic Anthropology of Images, *that I would like to organize for the
2019 AAA meetings in Vancouver. If you are interested, please send me an
email (cnakassi at uchicago.edu). Thank you!

Costas

*Performative Images: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Images*
In recent years, linguistic anthropology has pushed the boundaries of the
objects of its analysis beyond linguistic discourse and the performativity
of language to focus on a variety of multimodal, image-based media, from
cinema (Hardy 2015; Nakassis 2017), photography (Wirtz 2014; Ball 2017),
cartoons (Keane 2009), typography (Murphy 2017), painting (Chumley 2016),
puppetry (Barker 2019), maps (Hull 2012), and social media, among others.
And while the semiotic tools developed in linguistic anthropology (e.g.,
ideology, metapragmatics, entextualization, interdiscursivity, stance,
enregisterment, and so on) are non-modality specific and imply the
imbrication of language with non-linguistic media (Woolard 1998), they have
all been developed out of a deep engagement with language in use. How,
then, might such analytics (and by extension, linguistic anthropological
theory and method) be extended to a systematic theorization of
non-linguistic modalities and media of semiosis? Specifically, what might
linguistic anthropology have to contribute to the study of images? And how
might a focus on images, and their particular semiotic
affordances/materialities, functions, and ideologies, provide a
reevaluation of linguistic anthropological method, analysis, and theory?

A re-evaluation of the semiotics of images is particularly important,
given: (a) images have not been a concerted, central object of linguistic
anthropological inquiry (this despite the centrality of what Jakobson
[1935] called the aesthetic function, and later the poetic function [1960],
to the study of “figures of sound” in language), and (b) a number of fields
(e.g., visual studies, art history, film studies) have founded their own
disciplinary domains on an ideological distinction of image versus language
(see, e.g., Mitchell 1986, 2015 for discussion).

This panel opens up the question of a linguistic anthropology of images by
focusing on the question of the performativity of images—a topic of
interest in disciplines such as art history / visual studies (Mitchell
2005), sociocultural anthropology (Gell 1998; Mazzarella 2013), and visual
and media anthropology; that is, the question of how images constitute
social acts and thereby entail affective, sociological, and institutional
mediations of various sorts. Through an analysis of performative images the
panel aims to expand the horizons of linguistic anthropology as well as
open up disciplinary connections with allied fields and modes of inquiry
that have developed their own sophisticated semiotics of images.

While interested in papers working on prototypically imagistic—that is,
visual—media (cinema, photography, painting, etc.), the panel invites
papers that expanding the horizons of the concept of image beyond
visually-dominated prototypes. If interested to participate, please send a
paper title and abstract of no more than 250 words to Constantine V.
Nakassis, cnakassi at uchicago.edu.


*References cited*

Ball, Christopher. 2017. “Realisms and Indexicalities of Photographic
Propositions,” *Signs and Society* 5(S1): S154–S177.

Barker, Meghanne. 2019. “Dancing Dolls: Animating Childhood in a
Contemporary Kazakhstani Institution.” *Anthropological Quarterly*.

Chumley, Lily. 2016. *Creativity Class. *Princeton University Press.

Gell, Alfred. 1998. *Art and Agency. *Oxford University Press.

Hardy, Kathryn, ed.. 2018. “Production of Cinematic Space,” a special issue
of *Widescreen* 7(2).

Hull, Matthew. 2012. *Government of Paper. *University of California Press.

Jakobson, Roman. 1935[1987]. “The Dominant.” In K. Pomorska and S. Rudy,
eds. *Language in*

*Literature. *Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 41–46.

---------. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In T.
Sebeok, ed. *Style in*

*Language*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 350–77.

Keane, Webb. 2009. “Freedom and Blasphemy: On Indonesian Press Bans and
Danish Cartoons.” *Public Culture *21(1):47–76.

Mazzarella, William. 2013. *Censorium. *Duke University Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. 1986. *Iconology. *University of Chicago Press.

----------. 2005. *What Do Pictures Want? *University of Chicago Press.

----------. 2015. *Image Science. *University of Chicago Press.

Murphy, Keith. 2017. “Fontroversy! Or, How to Care about the Shape of
Language.” In J. Cavanaugh and S. Shankar, eds. *Language and Materiality*.
Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–86.

Nakassis, Constantine V. 2017. “Rajini’s Finger, Indexicality, and the
Metapragmatics of Presence.” *Signs and Society *5(2):201–242.

Wirtz, Kristina. 2014. *Performing Afro-Cuba. *University of Chicago Press.

Woolard, Kathryn. 1998. “Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of
Inquiry.” In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard, and P. Kroskrity, eds. *Language
Ideologies*. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–50.
--------------------------------
Constantine V. Nakassis
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Associate Faculty,
Department of Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago
Treasurer, Society for Linguistic Anthropology
email: cnakassi at uchicago.edu, office: 773 834 4810

https://anthropology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/constantine-v-nakassis
http://nakassis.com/constantine
http://chicagotamilforum.uchicago.edu
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