Massimo Canevacci opens IED Books, a series of events dedicated to the editorial publications
Events
IED Books: Massimo Canevacci
Date
23 May 2023
Wednesday, May 24 (3.30 p.m.), the first IED Books appointment with Massimo Canevacci: an Italian academic, ethnographer and critical thinker, will present his latest book "Stupore Indigeno. Le culture native in Brasile tra rituali iniziatici e sfide digitali".
A travelogue into the depths of Brazil, 'Stupore Indigeno' revolves around unlimited margins and a parenthesis that addresses the difficulties of travelling between claimed or imposed localisms and experienced or desired cosmopolitanisms. Massimo Canevacci presents the Xavante, Bororo and Krahô cultures through a narrative that ranges from personal experiences to accounts of customs and rituals that he has had the privilege of learning from the inside. It is a conceptual and emotional constellation based on astonishment, which expands and permeates the porous body in a mixture made possible by the depth of friendship. The experiences recounted prefigure the battle that indigenous cultures have been called upon to fight by the Bolsonaro government to defend their original rights to lands already under attack by missionaries and landowners. Relegated to a smaller and wilder physical and temporal space, the indigenous people are nevertheless forced to assert their existence, finding in digital media and the encounter with the new a way to safeguard it. Canevacci offers a valuable testimony of how confining indigenous people in living, unchanging museums is only an attempt to deprive them of the power to rebel.
Canevacci is Professor of Antropologia Culturale at La Sapienza University in Rome. As visiting professor he has been invited to several European universities, to Tokyo and Nanjing. From 2010 to 2017 he was visiting professor in Brazil in Florianôpolis (USFC), Rio de Janeiro (UER) and São Paulo (ECA/USP, IEA/USP). He currently teaches as professor emeritus at La Sapienza. He was also editor of the Italian magazine 'Avatar' from 2001 to 2006.
He is known for his work on contemporary metropolises, 'native' cultures and digital arts. He pioneered the development of concepts such as 'communicative metropolis', 'multividual' and the exploration of the tensions between 'self-representation' and 'other-representation'. He is also recognised for his contribution to the study of digital cultures and for his dialogical relationship with 'native' populations such as the Bororo and Xavante of central Brazil.
The talk will be moderated by Marco Bartolucci, IED professor, author and fashion brand consultant.
IED Books is a series of events organised by IED Firenze dedicated to professionals and publishers in the world of creativity.
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