We Are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropology Theory Courses - Part 2: Letting Canon and Theory Burn

By Elise Ferrer, Nada Bahgat, and Madison Shomaker

This piece is the second of four installments in the series “We are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropological Theory Courses.” (Read the series introduction here.) 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.

Jobson’s “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn” was assigned on the first day of class. For many in our cohort, new to the department and anthropology in general, we began the program assuming a discipline that was stable (and not burned). Therefore, a question that contemplated obsolescence admittedly caused discomfort. But after initial discussion, a classmate powerfully asked: “Would anyone really care if anthropology burned?”

The combination of Jobson’s and our colleague’s provocations became semester lighthouses. Doubting permanence raised important inquiries on the necessity of anthropology. Holding the discipline at arms-length enabled a freedom to abandon old habits and an invitation to explore new ones, to contemplate burning both as eradication and as letting go.

The class and syllabus forced us to see what many have known for decades: there is much to abandon, including traditional methodologies, approaches of studying culture and people, limited theory that does not reflect the reality of the people’s lives, anthropology’s colonization and exoticization of cultures. We reckoned with how anthropology has failed, often violently, people both in and outside the discipline. We returned frequently to Gina Athena Ulysses, who noted how certain scholars find academic homes in cultural studies, arts, or other humanities because anthropology was hostile for their existence. That said, we found that many of us—following the inspiration conferred in the discussion An Anthropology of Abolition / Liberation with Aimee M. Cox, Savannah Shange, Christen Smith, and Deborah Thomas—were more interested in utilizing anthropological tools and spaces for more radical work, rather than seeing anthropology as an end onto itself.

Reimagining anthropological foundations also meant interrogating two central elements of anthropology and disciplines more broadly—canon and theory. Raising questions or critiques of anthropological doctrine can be written off as offensive, or antithetical, to canon and theory. Such defensiveness demands that we go deeper—what even is canon? How should we think about it? What is theory, and who can create it?

On Canon

The question of canon was foretold even before the first class; the course description promised to “explore anthropological social theory by reading sources frequently omitted from the traditional ‘canon,’ yet have been central to the development of the discipline.” From the beginning, we examined not just specific canonical texts but grounding perceptions and logics that guarded ‘canon’ with assumed permanence, logic, linearity, and singularity.

As new graduate students in an introductory theory class titled The Craft of Anthropology, it was imperative to question canon within our specific temporal and spatial contexts. Denoting theories, theorists, or methods as “craft,” whether begrudgingly or intentionally, conveys a sense of stability and prestige. In this, craft and canon are co-conspirators. Craft is obedient and knowable. The canon is framed as a static, obvious entity, a whole defined by its unchallenged parts. For anthropology, the canon points to Malinowski and Boas, Morgan and Durkheim, debates on functionalism versus structuralism. There is a prescriptive, right-and-wrong way to learn anthropology.

This certainty sets expectations, especially for students; it implies that there is a formula for knowledge. Therefore, rethinking the canon was rethinking norms and expectations of epistemology and pedagogy more broadly; it meant changing outlooks on both the class and scholarship for the rest of our academic careers.

Throughout this class, we challenged the specifics, the givenness, and the language of canons and unveiled its problematic elements.

In undermining specifics, we developed and sharpened a critique of existing “canon,” whose limits are defined by white, Western institutions, which elevate certain voices alongside the (strategic) erasure of others. We understood that many prominent thinkers weren’t even the originators of their purported ideas; ideas were appropriated from the “observed.” An example of this is Morgan, whose kinship theories were lifted from his time with indigenous thinkers, specifically Ely S. Parker.

We also reframed our understanding of canon from an almost divine, unshakable proverb to a set of priorities and decisions. These choices were/are not made to paint objective truth or convey a historically accurate set of events but are rather in the service of power. Take for instance the work of Anténor Firmin, a Black, Haitian scholar and statesman from the late 1880s. Not only did Firmin refute biological determinism and posit a view of cultural relativism decades before Boas, but Firmin also advocated for a holistic, interdisciplinary anthropology that contemporary scholars are still trying to actualize. It begged the question—asked explicitly by our professor—“Why isn’t this anthropological canon?”

This created a struggle in how to even talk about this syllabus and the canon it validates. Many will define a syllabus such as this, one that has primarily Black and Brown scholars and anti-hegemonic tones, as new, alternative, diverse, or marginalized. They have just as much right—if not more—to be the anthropological canon. Not only were these works published earlier than, or simultaneously with, “canonical” works, but their holistic nature offers better possibilities for traversing the histories of anthropology and the social sciences. They open space to rethink our origins and recenter the discipline with anti-hegemonic logics and ideals.

This also assumes that the texts and sources exist within the standard structure. Rethinking canon will also require fundamentally rethinking the structural maze through which canon is sourced. A common discussed was translation and the hegemony of English-centric scholarship. Non-native English speakers must translate to English if they hope to have broader recognition, while native English speakers do not have the same expectations for creating accessibility. As we think about building a new canon, there is a recognition that, so long as canon is defined by white, Western norms and demands, the canon is an inherently biased and limited artifact.

On Theory

In our broader context of unsettling disciplinary norms, we struggled too with how to conceptualize and discuss theory. As Catherine Lutz identified, theory is usually posited as universal, widely applicable, and stripped of specificity, whether to the speaker or a context. The implication of this objectivity is that those who can make theory are most closely aligned with power and privilege – white, male, cis-het, wealthy, able-bodied, and based in Western locales. There’s also an assumption that theory must be formally sanctioned, notably by first being scribed and then approved by an authoritative body. Theory also becomes a fight for origins and ownership, who can brand and trademark their concepts, usually along individualistic lines.

But if we see theory as ideology, a framework, and a rubric with which to understand the world, then just as everyone has ideology, theory is made and deployed by everyone. Not only does everyone have the capacity to do theory, but everyone does theory by having specific ideas about themselves and the world and then acting upon those ideas. The institutionalization of theory has contributed to a false idea that it is an infallible force, rather than something mundane and egalitarian.

Theory is ephemeral and embodied. There are lessons that come from being in and of the world, that (to listen to Black feminism) moving through the world in certain bodies and identities offers deep knowledge into how the world works.

This “untraditional” theory dominated our readings and focused on thinkers whose theory didn’t follow the white-structured norms of academia. In Barracoon, Zora Neale Hurston platforms the theory of Kossula; Kossula deeply understands ideas about home, belonging, power, and race from his experience of being kidnapped and brought to the United States on the last-known enslaving ship, without needing a sanctioned degree to do so. In looking at writings from the Combahee River Collective, the collective challenges the hierarchy, scholarly ownership, and white modes of discourse through their credits to 1000s of unnamed, activist elders, their insistence on a collectivist approach, and their commitment to “Black women's style of talking/testifying in Black language about what [they] have experienced.” For Katherine Dunham, with dance and community building as her unit of analysis, she explored how theory can be physical, not solely written, and how culture can be enacted versus observed.

Even broader, we dismissed the separation of theory, method, and ethics, instead centering on their intimacy and connection. Ethics is theory is methods. Every researcher has a “why” that they are satisfying, and these whys can be stated or unconscious. But because there is always a why, there is no “neutrality” or “objectivity,” no theory without ethics, and no ethics without specific methodology. Every decision has moral or political outcomes. The Combahee River Collective built their theory while doing, their ethics and goals were inseparable from their world vision. We see theory building in Mākereti’s The Old Time Māori, where she refused to translate various aspects.

By the end of the semester, we began to see canon and theory as the rules that we want to break and kin that we choose. In Part II of this series, what it even means to be an anthropologist.

References

American University. n.d. “Master of Arts in Public Anthropology.” Accessed May 12, 2023. https://www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/ma/ 

Benton, A. 2017. Reading the classics. Ideology, tautology, and memory. Ethnographic Emergency (blog).

Buell et al. 2018. “Decanonizing Anthropology” Footnotes (blog). https://footnotesblogcom.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/decanonizing-anthropology/

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.

Combahee River Collective. 1983. Combahee River Collective Statement. In B. Smith (Ed.), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (pp 264-274). New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

Buell et al. 2018. “Decanonizing Anthropology: Reworking the History of Social Theory for 21st Century Anthropology: A Syllabus Project” Footnotes (blog). https://footnotesblogcom.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/decanonizing-anthropology/

Deloria, E. C. (1944). Speaking of Indians. New York: Friendship Press.

DuBois, W.E.B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk.

Eastman, C. A. (Ed.), Red Hunters and the Animal People (pp. 177-199). New York: Harper & Brothers.

Fanon, F. 2003. Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. (Originally published in 1963).

Fei, H. (1939) Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Firmin, A. 2000. The Equality of Human Races (Positivist Anthropology). Translated by Asselin Charles. Introduction by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban. New York: Garland Publishing.

Gattey, Emma. n.d. “Makereti : Māori ‘Insider’ Anthropology at Oxford” Oxford and Empire Network. Accessed May 12, 2023. https://oxfordandempire.web.ox.ac.uk/article/makereti

Hurston, Z. N. 2018. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” New York: Amistad.

Jenks, Angela. Twitter Post. July 16, 2019, 2:58 pm. https://twitter.com/angelacjenks/status/1151204579389792256

Lutz, Catherine. 1995. The Gender of Theory. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon, eds., Women Writing Culture/Culture Writing Women, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2323826

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde, Revised, 110–13. The Crossing Press Feminist Series. Berkeley, Calif: Crossing Press, c2007.

“MA in Public Anthropology | American University, Washington, DC.” n.d. Accessed May 14, 2023. https://www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/ma/.

Makereti (Sometimes Chieftainess of the Arawa Tribe, Known in New Zealand as Maggie Papakura). 1938. The Old-Time Māori. London: Victor Gollancz.

Nine Network. 2007. KETC | Living St. Louis | Katherine Dunham. (YouTube video,25:56).

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). 1978. Katherine Dunham. Arlington, VA: Macneil-Lehrer Productions. (Video).

Simpson, Audra. 2007. “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship.” Junctures, 9

Simpson, Audra. 2014. “Constructing Kahanawà:ke as an ‘Out of the Way’ Place: Ely S. Parker, Lewis Henry Morgan, and the Writing of the Iroquois Confederacy.” in Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (pp.67-94). Durham: Duke University Press.

Ulysse, G. A. 2017. Why Rasanblaj, Why Now?: New Salutations to the Four Cardinal Points in Haitian Studies. Journal of Haitian Studies 23 (2): 58-80.

Ulysse, G. A. 2018. How do you overturn history in 400 years? In G. A. Ulysse (Ed.) Because When God Is Too Busy: Haïti, me and THE WORLD (pp. 66-71). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ Press.

Ulysse, G.A. 2019. “Homage to Those Who Hollered before Me/Meditations on Inheritances and Lineages, Anthropological and Otherwise.” Anthropology News, April 8, 2019.

Walker, Alice. 2018. Foreward to Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” New York: Amistad.

Watkins, Rachel. 2019. An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology. Historical archaeology. 53. 10.1007/s41636-019-00224-5.

Yale University, “An Anthropology of Abolition / Liberation with Aimee M. Cox and Panelists,” YouTube Video, 1:28:50, April 6, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-BTMpj9KYI.

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.