Foreword

Next article FreeForeword The return of ethnographic theoryGiovanni da Col and David GraeberGiovanni da ColUniversity of Cambridge and David GraeberGoldsmiths, University of LondonUniversity of CambridgeGoldsmiths, University of LondonPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTake an ethnographer. She has spent more than thirty months in the Bocage in Mayenne studying witchcraft. 'How exciting, how thrilling, how extraordinary...! Tell us all about the witches', she is asked again and again when she gets back to the city. Just as one might say: tell us tales about ogres and wolves, about Little Red Riding Hood. Frighten us, but make it clear that it's only a story; or that they are just peasants: credulous, backward and marginal. Or alternatively: confirm that out there there are some people who can bend the laws of causality and morality, who can kill by magic and not be punished; but remember to end by saying that they do not really have that power. . . .Jeanne Favret-Saada, Deadly words (1977 1980)We might say that the Melanesian concept of the person as a 'dividual' (M. Strathern) is just as imaginative as the possessive individualism of Locke; that understanding the 'philosophy of the Indian chieftainship' (P. Clastres) is just as important as commenting on the Hegelian doctrine of the State; that Maori cosmogony is on an equal par with Eleatic paradoxes or Kantian antinomies (G. Schrempp); that Amazonian perspectivism is just as interesting a philosophical challenge as comprehending the system of Leibniz. . . . Indeed, if it is a question of knowing what matters in evaluating a philosophy—its capacity to create new concepts—, then anthropology, without looking to substitute for philosophy, remains a powerful philosophical tool, capable of airing the stuffy ethnocentric corridors of our philosophy, while freeing us in passing from so-called 'philosophical anthropology'.Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, And(2003)Traduttore, Traditore.Italian AdageSome journals are defined by their colors, other by their names. HAU is the green and black one, basking under the flag of its Ouroboros—the vital self-reflexive and self-recreating snake happily eating its own tail. As for the choice of name, HAU stems from what Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in his generous endorsement of the journal calls "the felicitous equivocation." Since what is Marcel Mauss' reading of the Maori term hau as "Spirit of the Gift" if not the quintessence of everything that is equivocal, everything that is inadequate, but also, everything that is nonetheless endlessly productive and enlightening in the project of translating alien concepts? But take note: when we say "alien" we are speaking of alien concepts, which are by no means limited to those drawn from strange and romantic places; HAU has no intention of limiting itself to the highlands of Papua New Guinea or forests of Amazonia: we actually agree that the exotic is the domain of ethnography, but that's because good ethnography makes everything exotic. HAU is a call to revive the theoretical potential of all ethnographic insight, wherever it is brought to bear, to bring it back to its leading role in generating new knowledge. Above all, we see ethnography as a pragmatic inquiry into conceptual disjunctures. To adopt a provocative phrase from Ardener (1987), HAU is fascinated by "remote areas," but sees such remote areas as those singularities or pockets of any social space-jungle or city—inhabited by "event-richness," conceptual vagueness or even unusual social boredom. Remote areas are not just awaiting stranger-kings: they are full of treacherous stranger-concepts, that need to be invited in, hosted as honored guests before they can be recognized as affines, and eventually, even ancestors.We are not claiming to be saying anything particularly new here.1 Rather, by adopting the term hau as a mark of our enterprise, we are placing ourselves within a particular stream of anthropological scholarship that over the last three decades has addressed such disjunctures, and the moments or events of "speculative wonder" or "positive equivocation" to which they give rise. Concepts like hau, after all, are not simply "floating signifiers" in Lévi-Strauss' sense (1950 1987)—capable of accommodating any meaning or the absence of it. They are events, unclassifiable remainders that rearrange preconceived notions and categories by juxtaposing different cultural images and positions (cf. da Col 2007; Humphrey 2008). This is a process which, as Marilyn Strathern suggests, often takes "the form of a negation or an inversion of a relationship between familiar terms" (1990a: 205) or as she also puts it, a "bifurcation" (2010) that can lead the anthropological analysis down unexpected routes. Bifurcations appear everywhere in ethnographic theorization, by working out distinctions, contradictions and caesuras between what we think of as nature and culture, us and them, the human and the non-human, the immanent and the transcendent, the religious and the economic, the moral and the material. They often end with frustrations paralleling the ones suffered by Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar (1985) in his attempt to isolate and analyze a single wave in the sea: born of the realization that it is ultimately impossible to keep that many perspectives in one's mind simultaneously.Starting from here, we could attempt a definition of ethnographic theory: it is a conversion of stranger-concepts that does not entail merely trying to establish a correspondence of meaning between two entities or the construction of heteronymous harmony between different worlds, but rather, the generation of a disjunctive homonimity, that destruction of any firm sense of place that can only be resolved by the imaginative formulation of novel worldviews. In this sense, ethnographic theory does not operate so differently from what Hofstadter (1980) described as the challenge of translating Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, with its host of portmanteau words, from English into another language. By attempting to establish an equivalence between two "nonsensical" words, one necessarily ends up having to use one's own imagination, inventing terms and concepts, inaugurating new connections from old verbal categories. Needless to say what we are describing here is very different from a mere romantic invocation of cultural incommensurability. Geoffrey Lloyd once noticed that no anthropologist has ever returned from the field announcing that he or she could understand nothing (2004: 4). Or as Umberto Eco (2004) notes, one should not only be preoccupied by the ontological constraints but also with the licenses of dire quasi la stessa cosa— of "almost-saying" the same thing when translating—and accepting that linguistic incommensurability does not entail incomparability but a comparability in becoming. And most of us probably agree that 95% of what we learn in the field (whether Tibet, Madagascar or upper-class London) quickly comes to make intuitive "sense" to us. As for the remaining 5%, it is not so much incomprehensible, utterly alien, as excessive—at least in terms of the efforts required for its conceptualization. HAU is especially interested in hosting "ethnographic translations" of those excessive remainders, remainders or wonders that arise when worlds are (happily, productively) out of joint.The widespread excitement HAU has elicited since its announcement, it seems to us, is a direct result of its ambition to return anthropology to its original and distinctive conceptual wealth—to critical concepts we bring from the field, whether exotic or urban—and thereby, to return ethnography not only to the forefront of theoretical developments in the discipline, but by doing so, making anthropology itself relevant again far beyond its own borders. HAU aims to put all those endlessly productive difficulties that result in the comparison of different forms of life—whether "savage minds" or the creativity of urban movements, science at home or villages afield—back on the intellectual agenda; to put them to work for the benefit of all. The challenge we pose to our fellow anthropologists is therefore to produce ethnographically grounded, theoretically innovative engagements with the broadest possible geographic and thematic range.GenealogiesBut, above all, I had always been grateful to Pascal . . . for his determination, inseparable from that concern, always to seek the 'reason of effects', the raison d'être of the seemingly most illogical or derisory human behaviors—such as 'spending a whole day in chasing a hare'—rather than condemning or mocking them, like the 'half-learned' who are always ready to 'play the philosopher' and to seek to astonish with their uncommon astonishments at the futility of common-sense opinions.Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian meditations(2000)The seed that was to grow into HAU was planted last February, when Giovanni first posed the question of why it was that anthropology did not have a general scope, high-end, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that would replace the demand for copyrights with the liberation of "copy left." True, there were a handful of (mostly shamefully neglected) examples of "gold" open-access journals with an established tradition of reputable scholarship. But they remained mostly inhouse publications, venues for graduate students or even brilliant yet regional or subject-specific journals (e.g., Asian Ethnology, Tipiti, Museum Anthropology Review— thank you Jason Baird Jackson). Some magnificent open-access journals were not geared towards an English language audience (e.g., Mana). Access was also incurring the risk of being wrongly associated with "easier-access" (and less quality control) for authors or even (God forbid) "intellectual accessibility." Another concern he felt was not really being met by existing institutions was speed of publication. Junior scholars are haunted by the anxiety of lengthening their CVs, overwhelmed by fierce competition for academic posts and fellowships. Yet they are still expected to wait two years to get an article into a high-end journal. Consider the overflowing of ideas during PhD writing-up seminars, AAA meetings and EASA workshops. How often do scholars hesitate to share their best ideas, fearing their concepts may be parasitized on the long route towards a printed article or monograph? Would not one solution be a journal capable of publishing peer-reviewed manuscripts within six months of submission and also capable of delivering those original ideas to the largest possible audience?Justin Shaffner soon came on board, bringing with him important editorial experience with presses and printed journals, and also with various digital initiatives such as the Open Anthropology Cooperative and The Melanesian. Next came Morten Nielsen, who helped with the initial steps of the journal's foundation. Then came David Graeber—bemused by his installation in that odd form of divine kingship encompassed within the enigmatic role of Editor-at-Large—and finally, Stéphane Gros, who rapidly became the very backbone of the journal—literally—a relentless yet gentle figure working out of the spotlight, processing manuscripts with Mandarin-like efficiency. If you are reading this piece, please know that Stéphane probably inspected it three times during his breakfast, even after sending it to copyeditors. The "editorial assistants" quickly became vital companions in HAU's venture: Rachel Douglas-Jones (later "promoted" to Associate Editor for her flawless talent in leading the Marketing and the Art departments of the journal), Mylene Hengen (our generous translator), Harriet Boulding and Amiria Salmond with their immaculate copyediting and last but not least Philip Swift, our marvelous jack of all editorial trades.Organizationally, HAU's was conceived out of feeling that the discipline was suffering the domination of commercial publishing and that the pursuit of human knowledge was being severely damaged by the extraction of shamelessly priced subscriptions in a time when most scholars are operating under severe financial constraints. Intellectually, it developed out of a sense of frustration with the lack of original insights arising from the discipline, and the resulting sense that anthropology was, at least in terms of its relation to other fields of scholarship, committing a kind of intellectual suicide.Consider: In 1913, Sigmund Freud published a series of essays under the title Totem and taboo (1913 1952) inspired by the works of Frazer (1906–1915) and Robertson Smith (1889 1995).In 1931, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote a series of reflections that came to be known as Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (1967 1993), in which he mapped out a theory of magic that would ultimately lead him to write his Philosophical investigations (1963).In the late 1940s, Jean-Paul Sartre, determined to write a work on existential ethics, spent months struggling over the problem of the Kwakiutl potlatch— which, he was convinced, ought to have pointed a way out of the dilemma of an Hegelian master-slave dialectic, even if it superficially seemed to present a perfect instance of the very sort of struggle for recognition Hegel described in it (cf. Sartre 1983 1992: 373-79). Can we imagine something similar happening with concepts drawn from contemporary anthropology?It is actually hard to think of any major European thinker of the first half of the twentieth century who didn't feel the need to come to terms with anthropological concepts of one sort or another. Concepts lifted directly from ethnographic work— words like mana, shamanism, totemism, potlatch, taboo—or those that had emerged from anthropological analysis—like magical thinking, divine kingship, kinship systems, the gift, sacrificial ideologies or cosmogonic myths—were heated topics of intellectual debate; concepts that everyone, philosophers included, had to take seriously.Nowadays the situation is reversed. Anthropologists take their concepts not from ethnography but largely from European philosophy—our terms are deterritorialization or governmentality—and no one outside anthropology really cares what we have to say about them. As a result, we have become a discipline spiraling into parochial irrelevance. Meanwhile, older anthropological debates are treated as if they never happened. Deleuzians and Speculative Realists write about the ontology and the elusiveness of life (cf. Thacker 2010), and their reflections are gravely debated in other disciplines, without anyone even noticing the rich anthropological literature on mana. Lacanians fiercely debate topology without anyone remembering what Leach (1961) or even Lévi-Strauss (1985 1988) had to say on the subject.2 Even more weirdly, anthropologists themselves draw on Foucauldian notions of biopower, blandly accepting his premise that sovereign power's concern with the health, fertility, and prosperity of a population is some kind of modernist break with all previous political practice, apparently completely oblivious about the vast anthropological literature on "divine kingship" in their own discipline, which is, precisely, about the concern of sovereign power with the health, fertility, and prosperity of populations.How did it happen? How can one explain such a colossal failure of nerve?One reason might simply be the immensity of the task with which anthropology was faced. Not too long ago, it was still possible to write a history of the idea of love, or truth, or authority, starting in ancient Greece or Rome—or perhaps the Old Testament—and proceeding entirely through European sources. If one wished tobe cosmopolitan, one might compare how such matters are treated in the tradition of "Western philosophy" with those in in other words, with a to the of and But in the and even a like Marcel when he wished to be had a limited of ethnographic to draw was also still possible to them in and to one or two to for even those who did to anthropology could do so that's no result, we might is an odd kind of In a are less and even in the old the forms of knowledge seems But at the same the of our knowledge of different intellectual is simply not just our to the intellectual from to Anthropology has from to to Tibet, an apparently of what can best be often reflections on the of and the that are from forms of with any particularly over any was an of How could anyone have over all this if the by scholars of other was a but nonetheless very sense of was just too much to But could all other simply be would not that be even Even to one over another seemed what To all would be simply such a the anthropological of the was to a for which it was never In anthropology has been since its a between and just as it remains it a of through which it was possible to simply all anthropological knowledge as and and as not knowledge at all. This those who wished to write of love, or truth, or to once again with or through or the de and end with or without ever the of perspectives from outside the tradition of often than in of an on the philosophical tradition comes as a as a that necessarily be to the tradition because it is that those in contemporary think outside it. In the even anthropologists have come to any attempt to create theoretical terms that arise from their own ethnographic but those developed by on the philosophical the has been to who with other because it of authority, since it that other once also be as from a intellectual tradition than from as a more anthropological would have reason it has been so to ourselves is the very nature of contemporary theory is the of its towards an ethnography of how knowledge is in between departments and is a with the of the discipline in the passing of one the of that HAU has since its is by the to a of the concept relentless and being with during PhD writing-up seminars, only to be for the term in or on the of a work like and their magic never seems to be as as a new and term from a European one which can an interesting new of and with the anthropologists are to be still with their ethnographic and In such a The that it to the situation of themselves for from the of to in the of what we call other words, for reading to the intellectual of and seems to completely process may entail an interesting how do in essays or during the of The and the digital have the very process of the of an which to the and of and and the use of like the most are by philosophers who are doing an in original and of entirely through the of digital and (e.g., the that "speculative is through essays and open-access the of an anthropology is not to through to old or but to a or if a of a has been to an lack of for for students and the all our and have our but also have their they have the of leading to the of and for concepts through a who has work the role by in general essays on and the older and more such as of (1987), the and in or even the various of the the late Umberto Eco a similar process in his reflections on the role that were to in and about the of what he and the "intellectual by is an yet it often an intellectual one a with a of in his that he could never them all. he to use any of them since they to get up and Yet he still has the feeling that he has of the of those the this to in reading and in the something in his the by there is a risk of in that never be (1977 da Eco the of resulting from up and most of his insights could be to the of might be as for the of an journal to about the of the digital but all we are really here is to be more a inquiry into the social of the and of academic knowledge. In this sense, from a of we may to the situation an of academic which would benefit from on the social life of the of contemporary to does not we are not interested in rather, that we are interested in a different of with it. is that in our we have to an by Marilyn Strathern in the in which she and in a way that how there are productive to a of of or concepts to how our think within that ontological all to have become anthropologists could with the of of conceptual and they simply not the of by philosophical and would our that are not actually what and they and return to the in which philosophers like and themselves to ethnography for its conceptual on everything from to of the In the words of Bourdieu, inspired by makes of philosophy" are less interested in anthropologists to the and another intellectual about the of or the of the you and more with those the between and anthropology, are to think about what makes the two and at the same to create their own conceptual (our here to between anthropology and history has been just as The of as examples of for reflections to challenge or has been by social and anthropologists from The of the (1889 to examples would be magnificent of Maori religious analysis of the in of and in of the system in and on the anthropology of (our here to and our initial on we quickly we were not quickly a for a return to ethnographic theory was out in but as yet without The to HAU's with a yet to to and academic to the idea and make our required the of those scholars who had nothing to in terms of and journal those who could to in The and the that our initial soon became what an it was to his first as Marilyn Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Favret-Saada, and many them were and more of the of digital anthropology who such as and two the of the anthropology The of and to of ethnographic was not a but a The was there was something and on the months and is still Some that we have a or not this is the we by the from all over the the quality of the and the and of the authors who have our with their work or also grateful to who recognized the of a journal with a of a and journals should all our established who do not need to