SOUND, IMAGINATION AND KNOWLEDGE: THE SERIOUS FICTION OF RITUAL

Abstract

This article presents a description of the arete guasu feast of the Chaco Plain, focusing on the centrality of sound in the feast aesthetics. If masks are the key element in this ritual, the figuration techniques that they express come to life with voices and a series of musical and non-musical sounds that build up metaphors, myths, and forms of imagination. By using the concept of intersemiotic translation, we aim to understand the multiple affectations of different languages - images, flutes and drums sounds, voices, and movements - in the ritual ambience. We argued that the acoustic dimension is fundamental to activate the relationships materialized in arete’s aesthetics. Understanding ritual as serious fiction, we elaborate an interpretation that allows to understand the feast, in its performativity, as an instance capable of mobilizing relational processes of knowledge production.

Keywords:
Ritual; Sound; Masks; Intersemiotic translation; Arete guasu