Current Rhetorics: (Mis)Anthropological (Per)Versions

Abstract

While organising the 14th Congress on Anthropology on the theme of Anthropologies in transformation: senses, commitments and utopias, held in Valencia in September 2017, the members of the organising committee were considering the choice of subject matter for the closing lecture and deciding which eminent anthropologist should occupy that privileged position. As we had nobody on the programme and did not wish to trouble any of our colleagues with such an undertaking, we engaged in the task of creating an ad hoc character who would be sufficiently attractive for such a distinguished occasion. We immediately saw this as an unparalleled opportunity for critical reflection on academia and the exercise of anthropology. The result was the birth of one Vicent Artur, doctor in anthropology and a specialist in cultural universals, original emigrant and itinerant native, universally Malawi-Valencian and locally a citizen of the world. Locating his workplace was no easy task and the decision to place it on the shores of Lake Malawi was taken with the intention of finding a real place in the map simulation that, by virtue of being a remote and unknown university, would prove difficult for most academics to trace. We hesitated about proceeding in view of the potential ethnocentric or racist implications of such a fabrication, but eventually decided to go ahead, as our anthropologist was a true Malawi at heart, fighting for his academic and professional cause just as he might have done at the centre of the empire. The ideas behind the lecture evoked relevant issues for our anthropological Zeitgeist—such as the relative weight attributed to theoretical debates in fieldwork or the commitment acquired by ethnographers with what they deem emancipating causes—because this was precisely the theme of our congress. We hope you will feel able to excuse Professor Belda if any of these seemed inappropriate, in view of the pseudo-provocative tone invoked. And if this was the case, we should perhaps take note of any such discomfort to consider the location of these mirrors on to our anthropological soul.