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Type:
Articles
Date:
1988
Notes:
Napier raises the philosophical problem of how to understand categories of thought of a culture in interpreting the "inner states" of masquerades. How does the anthropologist as participant observer cross the boundary or, at least, reduce the distance? And how does he translate this thought and action, of the masquerade, into an intelligible interpretation, into our own contextual verbal discourse? Napier frames his discussion within the theoretical positions of Lévy-Bruhl, Needham and others.
An expanded version of this discussion appeared in Napier's book Masks, transformation and paradox (University of California Press, 1986).
Published as Annales. Sciences humaines. Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale, vol. 126.
