We Are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropology Theory Courses - Part 1: Setting Out on a Theoretical Journey

By Elise Ferrer, Nada Bahgat, and Madison Shomaker

This piece is the first of four installments in the series “We are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropological Theory Courses.” This series explores the rethinking and challenging of traditional anthropological canon that we experienced in our Fall 2022 graduate course The Craft of Anthropology II at American University in Washington, D.C.

“Where do you know from?” [1]

This seemingly simple question, posited by our professor Thurka Sangaramoorthy to the incoming graduate cohort of Public Anthropology students at American University in the fall of 2022, was discussed every week for the semester. It also becomes the fundamental consideration for the authors of this series. As a foundational social theory course required for the degree, this course section of the Craft of Anthropology utilized a modified version of the Reworking the History of Social Theory for 21st Century Anthropology syllabus.

The syllabus—just like Sangaramoorthy’s prompt—established a quest for redefining theory. The syllabus and class were a journey of questioning the theory we know, thinking of the theory we need and wish for, and interrogating the limitations within the anthropological canon to produce it. During that journey, our class traversed a winding road of emotions each week while sitting with theory, and attempting to see, feel, and reckon with it. By engaging with this course and syllabus, our classroom and readings became a cognitive and emotional space that expanded and challenged who and what we imagine as our intellectual lineage. It questioned and destabilized broader epistemological, pedagogical, and ontological norms experienced and felt within the discipline and within our own minds.

This series seeks to bring you back with us to explore the theory of feeling in conversation with scholars who have too often been neglected in theoretical conversation.

We have two main goals in this series. First, we provide the original curators of the Reworking the History of Social Theory for 21st Century Anthropology syllabus—graduate students like us— with documented outcomes and afterlives of their intellectual and emotional labor. Second, we invite the wider anthropology community to join our communal mission to rethink the anthropological canon, and to connect with theory through our relations with others, as we did. Join us as we interrogate questions like: What even is canon? How is the role of the researcher defined? How does our desire affect our interaction with theory? Where can anthropology go from here? The next installment in particular explores what happens when we open the floor for the future of anthropology to discuss the merit of the discipline’s very existence as it stands.

“Where do you know from?” The question was an invitation to attend to the diverse forms of one’s engagement with others. The process required grappling, sitting, and pondering. As much as it was rethinking our own identities through tracing our processes of knowledge, interaction, and production, it was an illuminating experience of the different scales of knowledge we had not intensively contemplated before. Unpacking the question within our stories was a way to reveal the unconventional ways of experiencing theory, through being, feeling, and relating.

The scholars studied in this course are, and have always been, the anthropological canon whether or not they have been merited as such. They are not alternative scholars, this is not an alternative syllabus, and we are not alternative students. In the fall semester of 2022, our cohort of 7 female and gender-nonconforming individuals experienced theory through art, practice, and feelings. We experienced feelings as theory as we engaged with the possibilities and material praxis of learning from a decolonized, anti-racist, and unsettled anthropological canon. In reading this series, we hope you consider, as a researcher, student, professor, scholar, or activist: where do you know from?

References

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Chua, Liana, and Nayanika Mathur. 2018. “Introduction.: WHO ARE ‘WE’?” In Who Are “We”?: Reimagining Alterity and Affinity in Anthropology, edited by Liana Chua and Nayanika Mathur, 1st ed., 34:1–34. Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvw049n2.5.

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Cite As

Elise Ferrer, Nada Bahgat, and Madison Shomaker. 2024. “We Are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropology Theory Courses.” American Anthropologist website, Feb 13.