Community of Felt Emotions

Abstract

The third chapter closely reviews how the sensation/passion/emotion invoked by the performances, when stringed together with a series of symbols and motifs that held great significance in the daily lives and belief system of the people, generated a bond that held the people together. The Bengali spectators reacted because their emotions were driven towards the cultural symbols or metaphors that they were familiar with. Described as ‘root metaphors’ or basic analogy (something that anthropologists describe as feelings or understandings specific to a culture), these symbols and motifs were common to all present in the space of performance, thereby joining them in a bond imagined through these motifs/symbols.