Finding Old Nubian, or, why we should divest from Western tongues

In this essay, I venture to describe my own trajectory, through linguistics and continental philosophy, to becoming a philologist specialized in the Old Nubian language, in tandem with a broader analysis of the destabilizing powers of philology that resonate in both deconstruction and psychoanalysis: the problem of the material carrier of writing as that which eventually determines the reading, the humbling idea that the most abstract thought of Plato can be traced to a crumbling fourth-century papyrus. In parallel, I also address the current state of Nubiology and how I have inserted myself into the field as an advocate of both accessible scholarship and a re-anchoring of the scientific field within the local political and social context of Egypt and the Sudan

A stranger-anthropologist as advocate of Maori development projects

Item does not contain fulltextDispossessed of their land and other material and immaterial resources during the British colonization of New Zealand, and in the midst of a movement reasserting Maori historical rights and legal claims gaining momentum, Toon van Meijl was welcomed by the Maori Queen and her political entourage. In this chapter he reports how in return for permitting him to pursue his field research they expected him to act as an 'ambassador' representing Maori in their struggle to repossess confiscated lands and redress other historical injustices. As 'remote kin', that is, a 'stranger' relative to the Maori 'near kin', he is granted access to community life in all its dimensions, so that he can tell the world at large of its accomplishments. For it befits a Maori chief to adopt a restrained and detached attitude, and to 'invite outsiders to speak up on their behalf'

Ethnography and incommensurability in the aftermath of insurgency

Does ethnography in some way enact and perform what it names? If one foregrounds this performative dimension, what exactly does ethnography in the aftermath of insurgency do? The article explores these questions as they emerge in the context of ethnography in the aftermath of insurgency (insurgencia) in Guatemala, and in relation to debates in social and cultural theory. It is argued that ethnography activates—and is responsive to—performative modes of subjectification and desubjectification discussed, inter alia, with reference to notions of ‘the archive’ and ‘testimony’. The article shows that ethnography in the aftermath of insurgency conjures up insurrectionary modalities of action. It establishes realignments and relations, enacts substitutions, and arouses modes of cross-identification between subjects, directly referencing how the insurgency was sustained during the Guatemalan conflict. However, rather than crystallizing or stabilizing an account of the insurgency, ethnography deals specifically with incommensurability and the slips— or gaps—that result from oscillations between representation—as in the multiply populated archive that holds the voices of many speaking subjects—and non-representation—as in the indexical domain of the subjectless archive that is all that there is that can speak

The Ethics of Anthropology

The early history of professional anthropology is characterized by chronic ambivalence between, on one hand, participation in colonial rule (providing insights into native social and political organization) and in postcolonial economic domination (helping to overcome perceived “cultural barriers to development”) and, on the other hand, the role of culturally informed “conscience” of Western powers (revealing and denouncing social injustices and vulgar misrepresentations of exotic alterity). From the 1970s, anthropology’s critical role gradually became dominant among academic practitioners. A reflexive, critical approach to field research thus emerged from within the discipline years before the institutionalization of research ethics discourses and protocols. As funding bodies and universities came to introduce formal ethics protocols largely derived from regulations developed in relation to medical research in the 1980s, professional anthropologists first responded with irony and resistance. This was not only because the discipline had invested considerable energy over many years in questioning and reevaluating the position of the researcher and the consequences of her actions but also because the generic expectations of ethics protocols were poorly suited to a discipline based on long-term immersive field research. Anthropological departments, careers, and scholarship were built over decades of professional involvement in field research and had developed distinctive but informal protocols based on a long-standing tradition of working across regional, cultural, and social divides. We argue that the best basis for any ethics of the discipline lies in continued reflection on case studies of ethical dilemmas in anthropological research and that special attention should be paid to data ownership and protection, consent, and the treatment of incidental findings