What Is Genealogy? An Anthropological/Philosophical Reconsideration

Genealogical analysis in the present begs reconsideration of Nietzschean and Foucauldian precursors in relation to the ethical subject position of the subject, on the one hand, and application to concrete contexts of lineal connection asserted diversely across cultural time and space, on the other. This paper considers how the relation between genealogy and history has emerged in anthropologically relevant ways since Foucault, including comparisons and contrasts with selected recent philosophical treatments, with implications for contemporary understandings of subversion, resistance, and the critical assessment of truth claims, including concerning veridiction itself. Developments in anthropology resonate with many features associated with genealogical analysis in Foucault’s latter works. In selected respects, the subversive process of problematizing received accounts of historical and cultural development articulates with the subversive process of ethnographic investigation, whereby received Western or other assumptions are defamiliarized by being thrown into contrastive cultural relief. The more general relation between genealogical analysis and the critical understanding of modernity is discussed, including in relation to contemporary political genealogy and ‘inter-genealogical’ analysis

On the Political Genealogy of Trump after Foucault

How would Foucault have viewed Trump as President, and Trumpism in the US more generally? More realistically, how can we discern and insightfully apply genealogical insights after Foucault to better comprehend and act in relation to our current political situation in the US? Questions of factuality across a base register of asserted falsehoods are now prominent in American politics in ways that put assertions of scholarly objectivity and interpretation in yet deeper question than previously. The extent, range, and vitriol of alt-Right assertions and their viral growth in American media provoke progressivist resistance and anxiety, but how can this opposition be most productively channeled? This paper examines a range of critical perspectives, timeframes, and topical optics with respect to Trump and Trumpism, including nationalist, racist, sexist, class-based, and oligarchical dimensions. These are considered in relation to media and the incitement of polarized subjectivity and dividing practices, and also in relation to Marxist political economy, neoliberalism/neoimperialism, and postcolonialism. I then address the limit points of Foucault, including with respect to engaged political activism and social protest movements, and I consider the relevance of these for the diverse optics that political genealogy as a form of analysis might pursue. Notwithstanding and indeed because of the present impetus to take organized political action, a Foucauldian perspective is useful in foregrounding the broader late modern formations of knowledge, power, and subjectivity within which both Rightist and Leftist political sensibilities in the US are presently cast. At larger issue are the values inscribed through contemporary late modernity that inform both sides of present divisive polarities—and which make the prognosis of tipping points or future political outcomes particularly difficult. As such, productive strategies of activist opposition are likely to vary under alternative conditions and opportunities—including in relation to the particular skills, history, and predilection of activists themselves. If the age of reason threatens to be over, the question of how and in what ways critical intellectualism can connect with productive action emerges afresh for each of us in a higher and more personal key

Good Company and Anger: the Culture and Sociology of Sorcery Among the Gebusi of the Strickland Plain, Papua New Guinea. (Volumes I and II).

This thesis considers the relationship between good company (kogwayay) and anger (gcf) among the Gebusi, a society of 450 persons living in the lowl and rain forest of the Western Province, Papua New Guinea. "Good company" is the Gebusi's word for their customs and culture as a whole. The concept embodies their pre-eminent orientation to social life, as evidenced in strong communality, amity, camaraderie and pronounced conflict avoidance within the community. At the same time, the Gebusi are subject to short bursts of homicidal violence within the community. The vast majority of this violence is directly related to sorcery accusations. The Gebusi per annum homicide rate for 1940-1982 is one of the highest ever reported, and 32.7 percent (129/394) of the adult deaths during this period were homicides. The opposition between good company and anger/sorcery is traced through various dimensions of Gebusi social life. An extended case study conveys the poignant Gebusi experience of sorcery inquests. The ethos of Gebusi life and their beliefs concerning sickness and death are described, using anger and good company as organizing principles. In the middle chapters, empirical analysis reveals that imbalances in sister exchange ( and in the marital deployment of women generally) are the major structural features of 253 sorcery attributions. However, Gebusi culture in many ways precludes awareness of these patterns, while also reinforcing them through the dominant orientation of good company itself. Later chapters analyze the good company/anger schism as it is manifested in Gebusi ritual feasts, narratives and spirit seances. It is concluded that Gebusi good company and anger are necessarily related, and that understanding this relationship requires the close articulation of a symbolic and a sociological analysis.Ph.D.Cultural anthropologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159681/1/8401383.pd

Substance, Sex, Gender, and Marriage: Baruya and Gebusi Across Decades of Change.

International audienc