Attention in Performance

Cassis Kilian worked for more than twenty years as an actor before she wrote a dissertation on African film. She teaches in the department of anthropology and African studies at Mainz University, Germany. Her publications focus on media, racism, cosmopolitanism, senses, perception, methodology and epistemology

'Metaphors from the theatre have often been used in anthropology – social dramas, frontstage vs backstage – but few have explored the literal connections between acting and anthropology. Cassis Kilian draws on her double competence to remind us of the fact that ethnographers use their bodies as tools of inquiry in order to study other bodies moving, eating, speaking, working, watching, sleeping and, yes, acting. Through a string of memorable cases, the book shows ways of using the senses to achieve performative knowledge in order to be able to study it later. Kilian's beautifully written and extraordinarily original book speaks convincingly to the minds of ethnographers, but also to their senses.'Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway'Through a set of engrossing accounts of her engagement with actors' sensory training, Kilian provides anthropology with a major, and unique training asset as its methodological foundation in "participant observation" has been transformed in recent years into a refined sensory capacity to be attentive.'George E. Marcus, University of California, USA

• Prologue; 1. Researching Films We Live By: Tribute to Dieudonné Niangouna; 2. Researching Sensory Memories: Tribute to Walter Lott; 3. Researching Being Present: Tribute to a Siberian Tiger; 4. Researching Urban Rhythms: Tribute to Emil Abossolo Mbo; 5. Researching Global Entanglements: Tribute to Nkem Owoh; 6. Researching Human Sounds and Their Resonance: Tribute to Christiane Zerda; 7. Researching on Discipline and Despotism: Tribute to Peter G. Dirmeier; 8. Researching Collaborative Approaches: Tribute to Caroline Gatt; Epilogue