Foreign bodies : essays in performance, art, and symbolic anthropology /

Napier is concerned with how a conception of the foreign, or "otherness," becomes part of how people define and understand themselves culturally. This work continues a line of reasoning developed in Napier's previous study, Masks, Transformation, and Paradox (1986). The author's concern is not so much with how the foreign is perceived as different, but how its perception enters into one's cultural self-understanding. From this perspective, the five essays cover a range of topics: contemporary Western art and landscape design, postmodernism, pre-Classical Greece and the Perseus-Gorgon legend, the revision of cultural history in 17th-century Rome, and the relation of "stranger" in body images assocated with illness. In these wide-ranging discussions, Napier argues for a symbolic dialogue between a culture's core symbols and the "otherness" that is perceived as most alien to it. In keeping with a book emphasizing visualization as a primary property of the symbolic, numerous illustrations enhance the discussions in the text. For anthropologists interested in symbols, art, mental and physical illness, and for art critics and artists. Graduate; faculty; professional. R. B. Clay; University of Kentucky

When the strange becomes familiar, boundaries of all kinds dissolve. Napier covers such diverse topics as art, immunology, and social psychology yet manages to create conceptual bonds that hold these five essays together. Here, humans are not mere toolmakers, but meaning makers--pivotally speaking, meaning maintainers. Without the category of ``stranger'' there could be no separation into ``us'' and ``them.'' The trouble lies in our collective choice of metaphor. What we conceive is what we believe, and our behavior, for better or for worse, is its flower. This is not light reading. Stimulating relevant theories are often shrouded in needlessly ornate language. At times, Napier seemingly strenghtens his arguments through simplistic West-bashing. However, he also gives his straw man many useful ideations that can help him to become less of a stranger to himself. Recommended for academic libraries.-- Susan M. Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.