BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//jEvents 2.0 for Joomla//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Paris BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20240323T153000 RDATE:20240331T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CET END:STANDARD BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241027T020000 RDATE:20250330T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CET END:STANDARD BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251026T020000 RDATE:20260329T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CET END:STANDARD BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20261025T020000 RDATE:20270328T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CET END:STANDARD BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20271031T020000 RDATE:20280326T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CET END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240331T030000 RDATE:20241027T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CEST END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20250330T030000 RDATE:20251026T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CEST END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260329T030000 RDATE:20261025T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CEST END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20270328T030000 RDATE:20271031T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:Europe/Paris CEST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:6f3002f8c8a6f1c354557a8adb447e78 CATEGORIES:L'échangeur CREATED:20250116T094718 SUMMARY:Malabar’s Creole Charlemagne: Chavittunatakam’s Challenges, and Some Methodological Responses - Pr Ananya Kabir (King's College London) LOCATION:Lesc – salle 308F (3e étage) - 21\, allée de l’Université\, Nanterre\, \, 9 2000\, France DESCRIPTION:

471856185 8980279195420968 335548799 8125010372 nChavittunatakam (Malayalam, ‘the stamping drama’) is a performance genre a ssociated with the Latin Catholic community of coastal Kerala. It combines theatricality, declaimed singing, percussion, and spectacular costume with the vigorous footwork that gives it its Malayalam name. The linguistic, kin etic, rhythmic, and musical elements of chavittunatakam draw on Southern In dic expressive culture. Its subject matter, however, comprises hagiographic , conversion, and crusading narratives developed during medieval European C hristianity, most conspicuously ‘the matter of Charlemagne’ which includes the exploits of the emperor Charlemagne’s nephew Roland. These features sug gest the genre’s formation through several scales of transcultural encounte rs and longue durée interactions between different groups of Europeans and locals on the Malabar Coast since the advent of the Portugues e, commencing with Vasco da Gama’s disembarkation here in 1498. Commonly ac knowledged within Kerala today as a local ‘epic’ form with European influen ces, chavittunatakam possesses low cultural capital compared to other perfo rmance genres such as kathakali, kalaripattayu, theyyam, and margamkali. It s practitioners struggle to capture spaces and resources for their art, des pite the brisk entrepreneurship in heritage economy that characterises post colonial India. Questions about visibility, patronage, marginalisation, and marketisation join the complexities of studying chavittunatakam’s performa tive, literary historical, linguistic, and philological dimensions. The cha llenges posed by those complexities have hindered systematic examination of chavittunatakam. Based on my ongoing study of creolisation as a historical process in coastal India, and on recent fieldwork in Kerala, I analyse cha vittunatakam as a creolised performance genre to present some methodologica l responses to these challenges.

* Photo : Karalsman Charitham (‘The Deeds of Charlemagne’), 28th Decemb er 2024, Gothuruth, Kerala. Photo credit: Gothuruth Sports and Arts Club

Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA is Professor of English Literature at King’s College London. Her research spans creolisatio n across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, critical philology, and the relationship between literary texts, performative cultural expression, and memory work. Professor Kabir is the author of Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature (2002), Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (2009) and Pa rtition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern South Asia (2013) . During 2013-18, she directed the ERC Advanced Grant-funded project ‘Moder n Moves’, which explored the global popularity of African-heritage social d ance; her monograph-in-progress, Alegropolitics, draws on that resea rch. She is Fellow of the British Academy, has been awarded India’s Infosys Prize in the Humanities and Germany’s Humboldt Research Prize, and is on t he editorial team of the new Cambridge University Press journal, P ublic Humanities. Her new research project is on Portuguese and Dutch interactions in fortified coastal enclaves from Brazil to Japan.

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471856185 8980279195420968 3355487998125010372 nChavittunatakam (Malayalam, ‘the stamping drama’ ) is a performance genre associated with the Latin Catholic community of co astal Kerala. It combines theatricality, declaimed singing, percussion, and spectacular costume with the vigorous footwork that gives it its Malayalam name. The linguistic, kinetic, rhythmic, and musical elements of chavittun atakam draw on Southern Indic expressive culture. Its subject matter, howev er, comprises hagiographic, conversion, and crusading narratives developed during medieval European Christianity, most conspicuously ‘the matter of Ch arlemagne’ which includes the exploits of the emperor Charlemagne’s nephew Roland. These features suggest the genre’s formation through several scales of transcultural encounters and longue durée interactions be tween different groups of Europeans and locals on the Malabar Coast since t he advent of the Portuguese, commencing with Vasco da Gama’s disembarkation here in 1498. Commonly acknowledged within Kerala today as a local ‘epic’ form with European influences, chavittunatakam possesses low cultural capit al compared to other performance genres such as kathakali, kalaripattayu, t heyyam, and margamkali. Its practitioners struggle to capture spaces and re sources for their art, despite the brisk entrepreneurship in heritage econo my that characterises postcolonial India. Questions about visibility, patro nage, marginalisation, and marketisation join the complexities of studying chavittunatakam’s performative, literary historical, linguistic, and philol ogical dimensions. The challenges posed by those complexities have hindered systematic examination of chavittunatakam. Based on my ongoing study of cr eolisation as a historical process in coastal India, and on recent fieldwor k in Kerala, I analyse chavittunatakam as a creolised performance genre to present some methodological responses to these challenges.

* Photo : Karalsman Charitham (‘The Deeds of Charlemagne’), 28th December 2024, Gothuruth, Kerala. Photo credit: Gothuru th Sports and Arts Club

Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA is Professor of English Literature at King’s College London. Her research spans creolisation across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, cr itical philology, and the relationship between literary texts, performative cultural expression, and memory work. Professor Kabir is the author of&nbs p;Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature (200 2), Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir&n bsp;(2009) and Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern S outh Asia (2013). During 2013-18, she directed the ERC Advanced G rant-funded project ‘Modern Moves’, which explored the global popularity of African-heritage social dance; her monograph-in-progress, Alegropolitic s, draws on that research. She is Fellow of the British Academy, has be en awarded India’s Infosys Prize in the Humanities and Germany’s Humboldt R esearch Prize, and is on the editorial team of the new Cambridge University Press journal, Public Humanities. Her new research project i s on Portuguese and Dutch interactions in fortified coastal enclaves from B razil to Japan.

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