Écriture alternative en forme de « coffret à bijoux » : Pour une restitution matérielle et sensorielle de la parenté tamoule

Abstract

Research on kinship in India has always been rendered from the perspective of the structural anthropology developed by Louis Dumont, apart from a few more biographical and sensitive ethnographies (Trawick, 1990 ; Kapadia, 1995 ; Clark-Decès, 2014). However, the use of alternative writing, such as collage, audiovisual and scenography, to render kinship studies is non-existent. This article is a reflexive review of the alternative writing methods used during the fieldwork and for the writing of the thesis manuscript. The latter submitted for the viva-voice was physically presented to the jury in the shape of a jewellery box wrapped in perfumed velvet and containing genealogies with plastic gemstones, multimedia and poetic passages. This form of writing also stems from a desire to get as close as possible to the materiality of the social, and therefore to make tangible the sensory aspect existing in the experience of Tamil kinship relationships. This field result was only possible by paying attention to the material elements and the interactions between humans and objects through the ethnography of jewellery boxes. The study of sensory aspects in Tamil kinship has been an ignored area of research in South Asia until now. The material culture approach allows us not only to renew studies about Indian kinship, but also to think differently its writing, particularly through the jewellery box.