An interdisciplinary study of an aesthetic particularism: the ‘Split representation in the Art of Asia and America’

Abstract

An interdisciplinary study of an aesthetic particularism: the ‘Split representation in the Art of Asia and America’. This thesis consists of an interdisciplinary research on an aesthetic particularism mentioned by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss as “The split representation in the Art of Asia and America” in his 1944 eponymous essay. Most researchers include in this group the Ainu and Jōmon People from Japan, tribes from the Amur Basin, Haida people from the Northern West Coast, Ancient China (Yangshao and Shang Dynasty), Māori People from New Zealand and Kadiweu people from Brazil. I conducted this inquiry through an online study of academic papers and historical accounts available in online databases, by doing researches at research Libraries in Paris, through field researches in the Arctic, Brazil, Hawaii and Nepalese Himalayas, and email exchanges with some prominent researchers in the disciplines related to the subject, on a six years period.

In the framework of this research I was also granted an access to National Geographic's Genographic Project database, and allowed by Claude Levi-Strauss's widow to consult his unpublished expeditions notebooks at his archival fund at the research Library of the National Institute of Art History in Paris. After presenting Levi-Strauss's Life and the roots of his theories, I discuss more recent perspectives on the subject, including the researches of the British anthropologist Alfred Gell. Before exposing the cases of the widely acknowledged connections between the pattern making habits amongst certain hunter-gatherers tribes with the taking of entheogenic drugs during rituals, with the Shipibo people from the Peruvian Amazonia and their ritualistic use of Ayahuasca as a case study. I continue by providing dedicated inter-disciplinary case studies on the specific patterns of each populations from the Split Representation groups using up to date researches results in the fields of Art theory, ethnobotany and allied sciences.

Using an interdisciplinary and technoetic approach, My first original contribution to knowledge consists of a demonstration of the flaws in Levi-Strauss theory by documenting how he based his overall reasoning on now outdated datas that have been for some completely refuted since the publication of his essay. I also propose an alternative theory on the split representation, by highlighting the common practice of shamanism among the various people cited by Levi-Strauss, and how entoptic visual imagery derived from altered states of consciousness, primarily induced by psychoactive plants, as well as animistic self-other identification and the influence of shamanic type rhythmic drumming might explain for a part the similarities between those diverse artistic styles. Finally, this set of new knowledges brings new perspectives and possible explanations to the function and origins of Art and their influences on early human cognitive development.