Moving Bodies

Abstract

rELuctant WItnESSIng I have tried not to write about violence. It is an old cliché of anthropological area studies that if one wants to study kinship and political systems, one goes to Africa; hierarchy, to India; exchange, to Melanesia, and so on. Within the Caribbean, if one wants to study violence, one goes to Jamaica. I did not, however, go to Jamaica to study violence. I went to Jamaica for other reasons—some personal and familial, and some intellectual. I went to Jamaica because in my previous professional life as a dancer, I became interested in the ways artists could have a role in social transformation, the ways dancers could project a politics (as well as an aesthetic) on stage. Because the company I danced with had been working in communities with grassroots organizations to use dance and music as media through which broader kinds of sociopolitical change might occur, I wanted to see whether this could be possible at the level of the nationstate. Conveniently for me (as someone with Jamaican familial background and having spent some years of my early childhood there), Jamaican dancers had been involved in—in fact, fundamental to—just such a project. I spent several years working with dance companies, arts organizations, community groups, and other individuals and families who were involved in various ways with these nationbuilding projects—as well as with many