El juego del tropo en la práctica política tamil: de vida, luz de luna y jazmín

Abstract

This paper examines the tropological characteristics of declarations of praise subordinates offer to their political leaders within the democratic practices of mid-1990's Tamilnadu, India. Praise by subordinates is an ancient cultural logic in the production of power in the Tamil lands, a logic by which the praiser participates in the greatness of the praised at the very moment of naming that greatness. Following a discussion of a general anthropology of tropes, the paper outlines a uniquely. Tamil tropic paradigm called akupeyar, “transformed words”, a tropology that favors contiguity or indexicality -metonymy or synecdoche-. These relationships of meaning characterise the relationships political supporters evoke in the praise of their leaders. The paper ends with a discussion the work of the tropologically oriented scholars, A.K. Ramanujan and Roman Jakobson, who argued that some tropes can be seen as “master tropes”, i.e. as organizing paradigms of a culture, a people, or an epoch.