{"id":7804,"date":"2021-02-23T00:07:55","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T23:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/?post_type=detours&#038;p=7804"},"modified":"2021-02-23T15:31:33","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T14:31:33","slug":"thank-you-for-your-work-and-leadership","status":"publish","type":"detours","link":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/detours\/thank-you-for-your-work-and-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Symmetrical Asymmetry in Anthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<style>\n\t.dkpdf-download-icon { height: 1.5rem; }\n<\/style>\n\n\n\n\t<div class=\"dkpdf-button-container\" style=\" text-align:right \">\n\n\t\t<a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours\/7804?pdf=7804\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t<img src='\/wp-content\/themes\/boasblogs\/dkpdf\/download_red.svg' class=dkpdf-download-icon'\/>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t\n\t\t<!-- <a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours\/7804?pdf=7804\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"dkpdf-button-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-file-pdf-o\"><\/i><\/span> Download PDF<\/a> &rarr; -->\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n<p><em>Congratulations to Erhard on his 60<sup>th<\/sup> birthday!\u00a0 And welcome to Baby-lon.\u00a0 The Babylonians used a base 60 numbering system \u2013 still apparent when we tell the time, or count the degrees in a circle \u2013 so by this metric you are in reset mode.\u00a0 Back to zero and counting \u2013 the day of your birth indeed.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I recently looked at Erhard\u2019s presentation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hkw.de\/en\/app\/mediathek\/video\/76720\">Of Mimicry and White Men<\/a> at the HKW in November, 2019.\u00a0\u00a0 In it, he talks about two Jean Rouch movies (Le Jaguar and Les Ma\u00eetres Fous).\u00a0 There are lovely points scattered throughout (whiteness as a precarious term; documentary going from asymmetrical \u2013 scenes of subjects looking into the camera being automatically cut, to these scenes being the point).\u00a0 What I want to explore a little is his discussion of \u2018anthropology in reverse\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In a typically contrarian move, he says that there can be no such thing \u2013 the discipline is by its nature asymmetrical.\u00a0 When we saw \u2018savages\u2019 as children with strange gods, as madmen, as children \u2013 the \u2018savages\u2019 simultaneously and symmetrically produced the same asymmetry \u2013 \u2018we\u2019 were mad, children who worshiped an eldritch god.\u00a0 \u00a0His core point is that anthropology in reverse should be reversed from both these asymmetries \u2013 concentrating on the hybrid, the mestiza, on Anzaldua\u2019s borderlands.\u00a0 The move to reverse is not about handing over the camera to the Other, it crucially is about recognizing mixture and adaptation on both sides.\u00a0 The people who achieve this \u2013 such as Taussig in <em>The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America<\/em> are themselves interstitial within academia.\u00a0 They mimic the symmetry of their subjects, and so are excluded.\u00a0 Anthropology in reverse is artful, figurative.<\/p>\n<p>Towards the end, he remarks that \u201cThis is a serious thing and a laughing matter\u201d.\u00a0 What a fitting tribute indeed to his own work, which is ironic, playful and deeply serious.<\/p>\n<p><em>Thank you for your work and leadership, Erhard!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7814\" style=\"width: 570px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7814\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7814\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/bowker.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"368\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7814\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Downey, <em>Hepewe<\/em>, 1976 &#8211; 77. Photograph by Juan Downey. Courtesy the Juan Downey Estate, Marilys B. Downey. [A shirtless man holding a film camera outdoors.]<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"autor":[512],"class_list":["post-7804","detours","type-detours","status-publish","hentry","autor-geoffrey-c-bowker"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours\/7804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/detours"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours\/7804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7816,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/detours\/7804\/revisions\/7816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autor?post=7804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}