FROM THE BOOK

"…It is important to acknowledge that "carnival" is an expansive term… It refers to annual per-Lenten celebrations and rituals such as Fasching in Germany, Carnevale in Venice, and Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago (among many others), but also to road shows, traveling circuses, vigorous festivals, roadside attractions and amusement parks. Moreover, as the great Russian writer Mikhail Bakhtin pointed out, carnival situations can also arise in the midst of normal, daily life. In Bakhtin's terms, the 'carnivalized moment' or the 'carnivalized situation' are those moments when the normal rules, values, hierarchies and modes of apprehension are temporarily suspended in favor of a brand new freedom, which can be simultaneously ungainly and exhilarating, bewildering and liberating. These carnivalized moments do not seek to transcend normal life; they don't try to substitute a keen new consciousness for an enervated one. Instead, both mundane and carnivalized life exist together, and one moves between the two, entering the carnivalized situation in order to be tested and transformed and then returning to one's normal life--perhaps shaken, perhaps deepened--with some of the wisdom that one has gained…"

Sabine Russ and Gregory Volk, excerpted from their essay in Carnival Within: An Exhibition Made in America.