Anthropology and the Modern World…?

I am revisiting Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World, over the next couple of days while reading Robinson Crusoe for Dr. Kristin Bluemel’s class on The Novel in English.

In particular, I plan to consider Trouillot’s first chapter, “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness.” In this chapter Troillot himself creates a pretty convincing narrative regarding the construction of the savage slot within “Western” Imperialism, how that slot was imagined and portrayed in literature (ahem… Robinson Crusoe), and finally how the discipline of anthropology later emerged as a “A Discipline for the Savage” and was institutionalized, along with many social sciences, as part of a nationalist project.

Of course, the basics of this argument seem old hat by now. And certainly there are striking parallels with the narrative of the “The Rise of English” that Terry Eagleton provides, but I hope that pairing Trouillot with Crusoe will illuminate my understanding of the development of the novel form specifically. Trouillot discusses literary content, but not form, while making essentially the same comparisons between literature and philosophy that Ian Watt does in The Rise of the Novel, but perhaps I can go in a slightly different direction by considering the “cultural” aspects of imperialism that Watt largely neglects and the form of the novel, which Trouillot is, of course, not addressing.

Yes, I am reading things not related to Elizabeth Stoddard

I have just received and am very excited to read Ruth Behar ’s most recent book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba.

Author Bio

After Castro’s rise to power in 1959, four-year-old Ruth Behar and her family left Cuba, along with most of the island’s other Jews. But even as a child Behar felt the pull of her native country and wondered what happened to the Jews who had remained. In her latest book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, the noted anthropologist, writer, and documentary film-maker recounts her journey back to Cuba and the Jewish communities she discovers there. Behar’s other books include Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story and The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. She has also published essays, poetry, and short fiction; her documentary Adio Kerida/Goodbye Dear Love: A Cuban Sephardic Journey, has been shown all over the world. Behar is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and the recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.