Word, Sound, Image: The Life of the Tamil Text (Explorations on Anthropology,) [Paperback]

Saskia Kersenboom (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859730086 | ISBN-13: 978-1859730089 | Publication Date: November 1, 1995 | Edition: 1st

The first anthropology book to be sold with a Compact Disc Interactive (CDi)

This original and radical book challenges dominant parameters of literacy by comparing the oral tradition of the Tamils in South India with the Western culture of printed text. In India, traditional texts are always performed; as a result, form and meaning can change depending on the occasion. This is the opposite of Western communication through publication which is a static representation of knowledge.

The author examines the reasons for the differences between the Indian and Western textual traditions, and describes how text lives through the performing arts of words, sound and imagery. She argues that interactive multimedia is the first Western communication form to represent oral traditions effectively. A Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i) - packaged with the book - allows readers to see for themselves how multimedia can add meaning and complement traditional text-based studies.

The CDi: The CDi offers a new learning experience that builds on the two-way creative process in an efficient and enjoyable way. A TV set and CDi player is all that is required to run the Philips CDi.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"... a remarkable performance - imaginative and thought provoking." --Stephen Tyler, Rice University

"an inspired and intelligent demonstration that a text lives complex lives. [...] an important contribution to the study of texts in performance." --Social Anthropology

About the Author

Saskia Kersenboom is an Associate Professor in Linguistic Anthropology, at the University of Amsterdam.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Berg Publishers; 1st edition (November 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859730086
• ISBN-13: 978-1859730089
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,317,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A theoretical and practical tour de force..., November 27, 1998

By 

Henri Edward Dongieux - See all my reviews

This review is from: Word, Sound, Image: The Life of the Tamil Text (Cornerstone Books) (Hardcover)

Dr Kersenboom, as dancer, theorist, and master storyteller, provides a radical new schema (at least for the West) for cultural representation. Her ideas are based primarily on the threefold Tamil model (word, sound, image) and the handful of Western theorists (Jakobson, Goranzon, Bourdieu) whose theories are flexible and open-ended enough to harmonize. What we get is a well-written and inspiring work that redefines textual reality and leaves the broken shards of western philology, hermeneutics, and empiricism in its wake. Well, perhaps that's a bit too categorical, but the book does make a strong case for anthropologists to invert the practice of their research. If all Western field resesarchers could, approximating Dr. Kersenboom, start "tabula rasa" - doing their fieldwork first, and THEN coming back to the West and finding the texts (from the arts, classics, rhetoric, and in general a broad range of fields) that support their knowledge, rather than learning the standard ethnographic format and then plugging their field experience into this template - we might have a lot more interesting and emancipatory anthropology going on. Through an arrangement with Philips electronics, Kersenboom has also provided an accompanying interactive CD that, though dated, shows some of the promise of multimedia applications to ethnography - as it provides the proof for this new paradigm in its skillful 'prayogam', or application, of the emic categories.

5.0 out of 5 stars word sound and image in a new perspective, November 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Word, Sound, Image: The Life of the Tamil Text (Explorations on Anthropology,) (Paperback)

This excelent book is a true must for anthroplogists facing problems with just writing texts. The pioneer Kersenboom shows with this book and the CDi a new aproach in the so often static science of anthropolgy. Interactive representations are something anthropologists could learn a lot from.
wonderfully written.