SiA Magazine - Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery Vs. Female Circumcion Vol. 1 | Page 3

Affecting
Performance
Meaning,
Movement,
and Experience
in Okiek
Women’s
Initiation
This reissue of Affecting Performance makes available a major work in
performance studies, linguistic anthropology, ritual and symbolic studies, and African studies. A classic study widely used in the classroom, the
book examines how ceremonial performance works and the contradictory dynamics of gender and ethnicity in Okiek initiation ceremonies
in Kenya.
Combining discourse analysis, semiotics, history, political economy,
symbolic interpretation, and gender studies, Corinne Kratz examines
the power of ritual to produce social transformation and explores how
children are made into adults through initiation rites. Taking girls’ passage into womanhood as her topic, Kratz considers dramatic structure,
costume, song, ritual space, and the discourse, rhetoric, and poetics of
ceremonial performance.
Based on decades of research with the Okiek of Kenya, Affecting Performance demonstrates how representations of the central themes of initiation--gender relations and cultural identity--probe the tensions and contradictions that characterize relations between women and men, young
and old, and the Okiek and their neighbors. Long-term fieldwork and
extensive interviews with Okiek women and men of several generations
enable Kratz to situate Okiek ceremonies culturally and historically. She
provides a rich description of changes in Okiek life and ceremonies from
1900 to 1990. Kratz’s sensitive and detailed analysis of ritual language
and ritual action provides an important synthesis and critical perspective for understanding ceremonial structure and performance and for
interpreting the efficacy of ritual performance both from actors’ and observers’ viewpoints.

Corinne A. Kratz
SiA And The Shabaka Stone Winter 2014 3