CHARIVARI Dark Folklore: Neighbour Feuds < CHARIVARI > Folklore Noir: conflits de voisinage < CHARIVARI > schwarze Folklore: Nachbarschaftsstreit < CHARIVARI > Folclore Negra: disputa vecinal < CHARIVARI > Zwarte Folklore: burenvernietiging < CHARIVARI > Lite tra Vicini
CHARIVARI Dark Folklore: Neighbour Feuds < CHARIVARI > Folklore Noir: conflits de voisinage < CHARIVARI > schwarze Folklore: Nachbarschaftsstreit < CHARIVARI > Folclore Negra: disputa vecinal < CHARIVARI > Zwarte Folklore: burenvernietiging < CHARIVARI > Lite tra Vicini
An extraordinary collection on neighbourly destruction as a counterpoint to the cherished ideal of neighbourly help and solidarity as core values of a harmonious community.
The romanticised face-to-face communities were also back-to-back communities where feuds were fought for generations.
What happens when social harmony is disrupted?
Dark Folklore: neighbourly destruction in a ritualised way by taking justice in own hands, infringing the state's monopoly on violence with honour-related processes of malediction, stigmatisation, outcasting & banishment.
Charivari
A ritual used to punish deviant behaviour within local communities.
It’s a kind of informal folk court reflecting the moral economy of commons.
Because the punitive ritual infringes on the state's monopoly on violence, charivari is itself punishable under the law.
The Body Social
The body functions as a metaphor of society.
Asocial behaviour is hereby equated with bodily secretions, such as excrement, vomit, snot, saliva, pus and blood. Just as the body emits waste, society also ejects social waste. Attached to these rejections are culturally determined notions of dishonour and dirt.
Farmyard
Site of action are public spaces, especially transitional zones between public and private such as the yard in front of the house. The disruption of social order is marked by making disorder in the farmyard.
Here, the ritual element of dragging and dropping other people's belongings is crucial.