First, assuming otherness is central to play and, therefore, indelibly human. At ConFest, there can be observed a variety of forms of mimicry (from the Greek mimos, meaning imitator or actor). By 'dressing up' as Aboriginal, American Indian, Celtic Pagan, female, child (or fairy, witch, animal), imitating the desired 'other' - via corporeal inscriptions (dress, adornments, piercings, body paint, known icon of the other) gestures and practices (rites) and elaborate symbol systems (mythology) - ConFesters enter, via the laws of sympathetic magic, into physical contact with that 'other', whose raiment, whose very image, enhances condition. Such othering demonstrates, in a phenomenological sense, the possibilities arising out of what Taussig (1993) calls the 'mimetic faculty'- the very human capacity and desire to other. In the 'mimetic faculty' lies the potential for 'copying or imitation and a palpable, sensuous, connection between the very body of the perceiver and the perceived' (1993:21). Mimesis, the 'art of becoming something else, of becoming other' (ibid.:36), a condition wherein otherness is copied and contacted, makes possible the altering of the self and the manipulation of the world. The processes of imitation here are processes of (re)creation and (re)formation. And, as Taylor (1997:198) points out, cross-cultural borrowing and the blending of myth, symbol and rite is a 'rarely escaped dimension of religious life' (and more so at a time when few societies remain insular).

Second, identification is not unitary or fixed. The 'postmodern personality', argues Bauman (1996:32), is restless, fickle and irresolute. Displaying or performing one's self, an individual participant may simultaneously interiorise or exteriorise more than one 'other' (e.g. via curious combinations of Celtic symbolism, didjeridu use, Hindu pantheon, Rastafarian hairstyle and tipi dwelling), or, illustrative of the indefiniteness of identities now 'adopted and discarded like a change of costume' (Lasch in Bauman 1996:23), they may manipulate different sets of symbols at different times. ConFesters are very much bricoleurs energetically committed to a DiY lifestyle. They display desired vestiges of otherness in an externalised pot-pourri of exotic tattoo, or change their skins like ludic chameleons. Drawing upon multiple sources of authenticity, like new travellers, their identities are 'heteroclite' (Hetherington 1996a:43). Participants' identities, as they are performed on site, are an embroglio of signifiers/inscriptions. To be feral, is itself most evocative of such unruly syncretism.

This relates to my feeling that the origin of 'artefacts' adopted (e.g. clothing, jewellery, icons, instruments, cuisine, language) is too often unclear as the meanings of such have been refashioned and reinvented in a diffuse, undocumented, and steadily exponential tangle of migrations and fashionable concatenations. In such a creative cultural dynamic, where the ethnicity/culture of the 'displayer' (the 'self') is becoming as diverse as the favoured 'other/s' acted out, a preoccupation with origins (much like the 19th century search for the origins of religion) verges on the pointless and futile. Though we can clearly perceive Taussig's 'magical power of replication' (1993:2) at work in the recreational space of ConFest, that which is represented/reproduced is constantly distorted, refashioned, reinvented by the representer/reproducer. It is thus a context for the mimesis and synthesis of elements of imagined otherness. As such, it engenders multi-alterity, the protean effect of costuming, mask and paint work not unlike that of Halloween mask work which endows American children 'with the powers of feral, criminal, autochthonous and supernatural beings' (Turner 1969:172).

< BACK

NEXT >