Sunday, March 23, 2008

indigeneity

just a small entry to comment how hard i am finding to get the readings of indigeneity to be of interest. as I have done, i do think that using stuart halls ideas to think about indigenous difference is interesting, as do for example tania li. i am finding hard to follow in any case the debates that either reify indigenous identity politics as an example of resistance or on the contrary point to the problems and risks of making specific articulations that do not succeed in connecting beyond local - specific conjunctures. of course both positions have a point, but i do think they are both intellectually and politically problematic. i think in any case, the celebration or the critique is hard to make a judgement of the mechanisms and effects of those articulations, and get beyond the conjunctures that provoke a particular configurations. politically it is both problematic to engage in celebration without critique and as it is to propose that a particular engagement and connectivity is not enough. i guess is not enough for our desires of indigenous transforming the world? i do think, (as holoway said recently) that opening cracks is always a start and always necessary and of course to keep being critical about what is done with that. i find the indigeneity-anthropology relation so entangled is hard to get out.
a much more interesting debate is worked in the Geaprona building on the concept of aboriginality and connected to Gorssberg, but i only now realize this (and of course i access to the sources) by seing the context of the debate. so the notes on ethnicity and indigeneity are getting to be drawn in a regular notebook.

2 comments:

Jon said...

"i find the indigeneity-anthropology relation so entangled is hard to get out."

Understandably so, as indigeneity is so central to the discipline. And yet you've decided to work on indigenous people... How to cut the gordian knot?

Unknown said...

that is why, my dear, i really think aboriginality as a concept is a more interesting option
Ana, deciles a tus amigos que vuelvan a Becket 1988 and maybe some of la tía Briones
Beso
lk