Overview

Even within anthropology, a discipline that strives to overcome misrepresentations of peoples and cultures, colonialist depictions of the so-called Dark Continent run deep. The grand narratives, tribal tropes, distorted images, and “natural” histories that forged the foundations of discourse about Africa remain firmly entrenched. In Beyond Words, Andrew Apter explores how anthropology can come to terms with the “colonial library” and begin to develop an ethnographic practice that transcends the politics of Africa’s imperial past. The way out of the colonial library, Apter argues, is by listening to critical discourses in Africa that reframe the social and political contexts in which they are embedded. Apter develops a model of critical agency, focusing on a variety of language genres in Africa situated in rituals that transform sociopolitical relations by self-consciously deploying the power of language itself. To break the cycle of Western illusions in discursive constructions of Africa, he shows, we must listen to African voices in ways that are culturally and locally informed. In doing so, Apter brings forth what promises to be a powerful and influential theory in contemporary anthropology.

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9780226023519

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A counterintuitive rereading of classic anthropological texts from the colonial archive, Beyond Words proposes a brilliant solution to one of the most pressing intellectual/political issues in African studies today. Responding to trenchant critiques of anthropology's complicity with colonialism and Eurocentric thought, Apter argues that these texts - of Dogon cosmological reflection, of Tswana praise poetry - be reread as critical reflection on power and authority, as vernacular criticism that was history-making rather than history-erasing and politics-averse. - Charles Piot, Duke University

"""A counterintuitive rereading of classic anthropological texts from the colonial archive, Beyond Words proposes a brilliant solution to one of the most pressing intellectual/political issues in African studies today. Responding to trenchant critiques of anthropology's complicity with colonialism and Eurocentric thought, Apter argues that these texts - of Dogon cosmological reflection, of Tswana praise poetry - be reread as critical reflection on power and authority, as vernacular criticism that was history-making rather than history-erasing and politics-averse."" - Charles Piot, Duke University"""

Author Information

Andrew Apter is professor of history and anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society and, most recently, The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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