Overview

Stuart McLean claims that anthropology stands tolearn most from art and literature. He insists that experiments with languageand form are a performative means of exploring alternative possibilities ofcollective existence, new ways of being human and other than human, and thatsuch experiments must therefore be indispensable to anthropology's engagementwith the contemporary world.

Full Product Details

Author:   Stuart J. McLean
Publisher:   University of Minnesota Press
Imprint:   University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 21.60cm
ISBN:  

9781517902728

ISBN 10:   151790272
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   22 November 2017
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

Contents Prologue Part I. Anthropology: A Fabulatory Art 1. An Encounter in the Mist 2. Talabot 3. Fake 4. Anthropologies and Fictions 5. Knud Rasmussen 6. The Voice of the Thunder 7. Metaphor and/or Metamorphosis 8. “They Aren’t Symbols—They’re Real” Part II. In Between 9. Liminality: An Old Story? 10. The Dead Have Never Been Modern 11. The God Who Comes 12. Between the Times 13. Anthropology ≠ Ethnography 14. Fabulatory Comparativism Part III. Gyro Nights: Inhuman Culture/Inhuman Nature 15. Islands before and after History 16. Papay Gyro Nights 17. The Time of the Ancestors? 18. In the Beginning Were the Giants 19. Tiamaterialism 20. Blubberbomb 21. A Globe of Fire 22. Nighttime Afterword: Anthropology Is Art Is Frog Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

""In Stuart McLean’s brave and beautiful book, the question is how do we live now. But here, living is a social-aesthetic-political-material fabulation of virtualities, events, and singularities. Context and history are not givens but modes of engagement, expressive media exceed human intentions, and anthropology carries forward the worlding of alternatives.""—Kathleen C. Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects ""Fictionalizing Anthropology productively and creatively extends, expands, revitalizes, and modifies a very old and long abandoned anthropological tradition: comparison. Stuart McLean creates a vibrant theoretical framework to rethink representation in literary and anthropological theory.""—Eduardo Kohn, McGill University ""Fictionalizing Anthropology asks us to jump into the void and apprehend the puzzling, unlimited repository of philosophical concepts given by the universe, individuated itself through myths, metaphors, performance art, bodily fluids, Inuit spirits and cunning trickery."" —European Association of Social Anthropologists

In Stuart McLean's brave and beautiful book, the question is how do we live now. But here, living is a social-aesthetic-political-material fabulation of virtualities, events, and singularities. Context and history are not givens but modes of engagement, expressive media exceed human intentions, and anthropology carries forward the worlding of alternatives. --Kathleen C. Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects Fictionalizing Anthropology productively and creatively extends, expands, revitalizes, and modifies a very old and long abandoned anthropological tradition: comparison. Stuart McLean creates a vibrant theoretical framework to rethink representation in literary and anthropological theory. --Eduardo Kohn, McGill University

In Stuart McLean's brave and beautiful book, the question is how do we live now. But here, living is a social-aesthetic-political-material fabulation of virtualities, events, and singularities. Context and history are not givens but modes of engagement, expressive media exceed human intentions, and anthropology carries forward the worlding of alternatives. --Kathleen C. Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects Fictionalizing Anthropology productively and creatively extends, expands, revitalizes, and modifies a very old and long abandoned anthropological tradition: comparison. Stuart McLean creates a vibrant theoretical framework to rethink representation in literary and anthropological theory. --Eduardo Kohn, McGill University

In Stuart McLean's brave and beautiful book, the question is how do we live now. But here, living is a social-aesthetic-political-material fabulation of virtualities, events, and singularities. Context and history are not givens but modes of engagement, expressive media exceed human intentions, and anthropology carries forward the worlding of alternatives. -Kathleen C. Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects Fictionalizing Anthropology productively and creatively extends, expands, revitalizes, and modifies a very old and long abandoned anthropological tradition: comparison. Stuart McLean creates a vibrant theoretical framework to rethink representation in literary and anthropological theory. -Eduardo Kohn, McGill University

Author Information

Stuart McLean is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is author of The Event and Its Terrors: Ireland, Famine, Modernity and coeditor of Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing.

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