Chapter 2. The Swiss Carnivals of Payerne and Lausanne: Place-making between the mise en scène of Self and the Other(s) Monika Salzbrunn ABSTRACT: The Swiss cities of Lausanne and Payerne are growing increasingly diverse, with 42% and 38% of their populations comprised of foreign residents respectively. How does this diversity impact festive traditions as well as the way cultural self-identification is put on stage? The Brandons de Payerne, a local carnival that has been celebrated 120 times since 1870, tends to put the imagined other on stage (the French, the Roma, etc.). These celebrations are strongly interconnected with city life, history and governance. Whereas several floats in the past expressed ambiguous messages and stereotypes of particular groups, in 2017, a giant swimming pool with women wearing burkinis was meant to symbolize a message for tolerance. The aim of the present chapter is to analyze the way representations of alterity are performed in Payerne. In the last part of this chapter, I provide a counter-example of a different, more recent festive event in order to highlight my findings by contrasting them with a case where certain groups do not perform the other but themselves during carnival: In Lausanne, the picture is slightly different and the carnival tradition more recent. A Fête du Soleil was invented in 1982 and became in 1996 the Carnaval de Lausanne. Responding to a general European demand for exoticism, the organizers have incorporated immigrant groups as such, turning the initial classic carnivalesque Othering by masquerades into a reification of the (invented) Self. KEYWORDS: Brandons, carnival, Othering, performance, place-making, wordplay Introduction: carnival as a moment of place-making and mise en scène of Self and the Other(s) Feasts are a mirror of social and cultural changes over space and time1 and have a transformative potential for both individuals and societies, as the 1 See the introduction to the present volume.
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