On sieges, boundaries, and military creep
On sieges, boundaries, and military creep Go to Source
Are the things really burnt?
Are the things really burnt? By looking at the vestiges of the scientific archive destroyed by the fire that reduced Brazil’s National Museum to ruins in September 2018, this essay…
Decolonizing anthropology at a distance: Some thoughts
Decolonizing anthropology at a distance: Some thoughts Through the notions of distance, double critique, and colonial difference, this essay suggests a decolonization through a novel usage of colonial ethnographies. Analyzing…
Is Hagen compensation to Western restitution as gift is to commodity?
Is Hagen compensation to Western restitution as gift is to commodity? Go to Source
Humbling anthropology: Ego reflexivus and White ignorance
Humbling anthropology: Ego reflexivus and White ignorance In this essay, I propose a process of humbling anthropology in order to counter the (re)production of White ignorance. I argue that anthropology’s…
What would it mean to decolonize Detroit? How does anthropology figure?
What would it mean to decolonize Detroit? How does anthropology figure? With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developing a decolonial practice…
Caribbean–Mediterranean counterpoint
Caribbean–Mediterranean counterpoint This afterword comments on the articles collected in this special issue dedicated to the counterpoint between the Mediterranean where Fernando Ortiz grew up, and the Caribbean where he…
Annihilating the “savage slot” from anthropology: Materializing reflexive practices
Annihilating the “savage slot” from anthropology: Materializing reflexive practices Calls to “decolonize” the social sciences have reverberated in academia since at least the 1950s. Anthropology, in particular, has been marked…
The reluctant native: Or, decolonial ontologies and epistemic disobedience
The reluctant native: Or, decolonial ontologies and epistemic disobedience Anthropologists, in regular intervals, tend to ask a cardinal question: How do we know what we know? Storms about ethnography and…
Decolonizing ethnographies
Decolonizing ethnographies For this Currents section, we have called upon anthropologists across the global South and North in the attempt to mainstream the long overdue issue of decolonizing ethnographies. On…
Listening to disrupt ethnographic representations
Listening to disrupt ethnographic representations Convinced that ethnography still provides a critical tool for studying and understanding our ever-changing and complex world, I present here a case for approaching ethnographic…
Clay and earth: Excavating partialities and relations
Clay and earth: Excavating partialities and relations Inspired by the idea of “transculturation,” formulated as a contrastive metaphor and concept by Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s, this article seeks to…
Talking culture—revisited
Talking culture—revisited Go to Source
The intensive image: Transculturation, creativity and presence in the cult of María Lionza
The intensive image: Transculturation, creativity and presence in the cult of María Lionza The cult of María Lionza is an Afro-Latin American religion native to Venezuela which usually involves episodes…
Minhoto counterpoints: On metaphysical pluralism and social emergence
Minhoto counterpoints: On metaphysical pluralism and social emergence In his classic work Contrapunteo cubano, Fernando Ortiz shows how two different plants and the products they yield can be at the…
Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe
Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe In the contemporary debate concerning European integration and the “problem” of Third World immigration no less than in developments in…
True brujos and imitators: A reading of Fernando Ortiz’s Los negros brujos (1906)
True brujos and imitators: A reading of Fernando Ortiz’s Los negros brujos (1906) This article offers a reading of Ortiz’s first book, Los negros brujos (). By following the theme…
Strategies of dealing with the other: Coexistence and exclusion
Strategies of dealing with the other: Coexistence and exclusion The specific character of Ortiz’s theory of transculturation is dependent on the Cuban context in which, and for which, it was…
The lexicographic studies of Fernando Ortiz Fernández
The lexicographic studies of Fernando Ortiz Fernández This article analyzes the lexicographical studies undertaken by the distinguished Cuban anthropologist and ethnologist Fernando Ortiz Fernández concerning the Spanish spoken in Cuba.…
The fetishes of Fernando Ortiz
The fetishes of Fernando Ortiz A materialistic way to account for the continuities and discontinuities of the extended work of Cuban researcher, writer, and politician Fernando Ortiz, is to follow…