Performing Bad Scaffolds: Exploring Dynamic Imaginative Niches

In this proposal, we present the folkloric performance of the Egetmann Pageant in Tramin as what we call a dynamic imaginative niche.We outline a notion of monstrous figures as “forms of trust” (cf. Ingold 2013). We suggest that the participatory enactment of such figures scaffolds material and interpersonal affective niches (Colombetti and Krueger 2015) for coping with future threats. We will develop a methodology of drawings and analysis in which we situated the monstrous figure, the Schnappviecher, in the context of both contemporary agro-pastoral communities in northern Italy and the 1940s under the influence of Himmler’s National Socialist cultural program. As we will illustrate, the enactment of “monstrous figures” in different historical situations can come to scaffold radically different feelings of belonging and shape who is included or excluded from a community. We will argue how interpersonal dynamics, of at first sight similar “socio-material niches” can either become an affirmation of rigid “bad moral habits” (Dewey 1916) or can scaffold communal exploration of new ways of relating to future threats, by affording moments of surprise in the participatory enactment of the monster.