La antropología, el arte y la vida de las cosas. Una aproximación desde "Art and Agency" de Alfred Gell

Abstract

Art has been a controversial concept for anthropological theory since its early days. Anthropology was often situated between the recognition of the cultural uniqueness of objects and practices that could not be qualified as Art without falling into ethnocentrism, and the effort to shape comparative frameworks broad enough to encompass different human practices relating to aesthetic experience. In order to go beyond the scope defined by those discourses, Alfred Gell pointed out that art experience has to do with a peculiar form of attribution of agency to objects and images. Consider this fact may be the starting point for developing a genuine anthropological theory of art, built on the specificity of the discipline and its conceptual tools. This approach raises questions concerning the definition of concepts such as those of agency, personhood and materiality that involve other forms of cultural analysis and critique. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]