Anna Heitger | Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (original) (raw)

Uploads

Publications by Anna Heitger

Research paper thumbnail of Anna Heitger Chicana-Feminismus und die Dekolonisierung der Kultur-und Sozialanthropologie

ASSA Journal, 2017

The multiple identities of Chicana-feminist anthropologists break with the dichotomy of the anthr... more The multiple identities of Chicana-feminist anthropologists break with the dichotomy of the anthropological Self and the “Other” in many ways. By reflecting their own positionality in the anthropological praxis, they show how anthropology keeps reproducing colonialist and masculinist paradigms and the succeeding dilemmas. Consequently, they make us realize that the intentions towards a paradigmatic shift, discussed most importantly in the Writing Culture debate, was not enough to account for the underlying problems of our discipline by failing to integrate crucial insights of feminist and minority researchers.

Coming from the periphery of our discipline, the contributions of Chicana-feminist anthropologists propose a radical decolonization of those paradigms, relying on self-reflexivity and creative approaches tearing down existing limits and borders, crossing supposed categories with the multiplicity of their selves. As yet another consequence of the decolonization of anthropology, they propose a serious (political) participation of anthropologists in the surmounting of unequal distribution of power, which are based on the very concept of “culture”.

Research paper thumbnail of On Self-Tracking as Surveillance Practice

On_Culture, 2018

Anna Heitger, BA, born 1992 in Washington, D.C., raised in Austria, studying Cultural and Social ... more Anna Heitger, BA, born 1992 in Washington, D.C., raised in Austria, studying Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna since 2012, currently in the Master program. I aim to write from the intersection of Anthropology and STS, with theoretical frameworks of practice theory, feminist and posthuman theories, and a special interest in affectivity and the role of emotions and affects in the practices we engage in. Investigating self-tracking technologies allows me to bring together these fields of interests within a particular kind of assemblage of human body and technological device.

Research paper thumbnail of A Printer's Destiny

Irish Journal of Anthropology, 2019

This piece is a reflection on my encounter with an abandoned printer and the theoretical sentimen... more This piece is a reflection on my encounter with an abandoned printer and the theoretical sentiments evoked by this seemingly unremarkable encounter. Based on a photograph I took, I try to grasp the ephemerality of this encounter by exploring the printer’s possible past and futures and its agency through notions of materiality and Kopytoff’s “biography of things”.
During this journey the printer takes me on, I talk about the brokenness of the world that is unraveled in a close look at this picture; I talk about agency that is perhaps particularly stubborn in the case of a printer; and I talk about affectivities and entanglements that emerge between shifting materialities.
In opening up this perspective, I wish to articulate an agency that is not only mine, that is more than mine, and to bring theoretical insights into the real world of sometimes quite ordinary things that are left to face their own destiny.

Papers by Anna Heitger

Research paper thumbnail of Hope and Uncertainty in Health and Medicine

transcript Verlag eBooks, May 6, 2024

Hope too does not exist in a social and historical vacuum, it always has a story/history, and the... more Hope too does not exist in a social and historical vacuum, it always has a story/history, and the bearing of any hope has a lot to do with the consensus that prevails about this story/history and is advanced in exchange and discussion.

Research paper thumbnail of More-Than-Human Eating . Reconfiguring Environment | Body | Mind Relations in the Anthropocene

This paper is concerned with emergent more-than-human eating practices and how they might challen... more This paper is concerned with emergent more-than-human eating practices and how they might challenge received understandings of bioand geopolitics.After a brief review of the anthropology of food and eating and how its concerns may have to be expanded in the Anthropocene, we briefly analyse three empirical cases of anticipatory more-than-human eating practices: a set of artistic anticipations of future eating; microbiome research and related biohacking practices; and research on future food security in the context of planetary boundaries. We discuss how all three cases make the boundaries between body|mind|environment porous. The ›I‹ of the embodied human subject emerges as multiple—colonised and accompanied by a panoply of microorganisms. How might such a collective be subject to governance and 'self‹-technologies? We close by pleading for an experimental para-sitic anthropology that critically addresses emergent forms of bio/geopolitics in the Anthropocene.

Research paper thumbnail of Anna Heitger Chicana-Feminismus und die Dekolonisierung der Kultur-und Sozialanthropologie

ASSA Journal, 2017

The multiple identities of Chicana-feminist anthropologists break with the dichotomy of the anthr... more The multiple identities of Chicana-feminist anthropologists break with the dichotomy of the anthropological Self and the “Other” in many ways. By reflecting their own positionality in the anthropological praxis, they show how anthropology keeps reproducing colonialist and masculinist paradigms and the succeeding dilemmas. Consequently, they make us realize that the intentions towards a paradigmatic shift, discussed most importantly in the Writing Culture debate, was not enough to account for the underlying problems of our discipline by failing to integrate crucial insights of feminist and minority researchers.

Coming from the periphery of our discipline, the contributions of Chicana-feminist anthropologists propose a radical decolonization of those paradigms, relying on self-reflexivity and creative approaches tearing down existing limits and borders, crossing supposed categories with the multiplicity of their selves. As yet another consequence of the decolonization of anthropology, they propose a serious (political) participation of anthropologists in the surmounting of unequal distribution of power, which are based on the very concept of “culture”.

Research paper thumbnail of On Self-Tracking as Surveillance Practice

On_Culture, 2018

Anna Heitger, BA, born 1992 in Washington, D.C., raised in Austria, studying Cultural and Social ... more Anna Heitger, BA, born 1992 in Washington, D.C., raised in Austria, studying Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna since 2012, currently in the Master program. I aim to write from the intersection of Anthropology and STS, with theoretical frameworks of practice theory, feminist and posthuman theories, and a special interest in affectivity and the role of emotions and affects in the practices we engage in. Investigating self-tracking technologies allows me to bring together these fields of interests within a particular kind of assemblage of human body and technological device.

Research paper thumbnail of A Printer's Destiny

Irish Journal of Anthropology, 2019

This piece is a reflection on my encounter with an abandoned printer and the theoretical sentimen... more This piece is a reflection on my encounter with an abandoned printer and the theoretical sentiments evoked by this seemingly unremarkable encounter. Based on a photograph I took, I try to grasp the ephemerality of this encounter by exploring the printer’s possible past and futures and its agency through notions of materiality and Kopytoff’s “biography of things”.
During this journey the printer takes me on, I talk about the brokenness of the world that is unraveled in a close look at this picture; I talk about agency that is perhaps particularly stubborn in the case of a printer; and I talk about affectivities and entanglements that emerge between shifting materialities.
In opening up this perspective, I wish to articulate an agency that is not only mine, that is more than mine, and to bring theoretical insights into the real world of sometimes quite ordinary things that are left to face their own destiny.

Research paper thumbnail of Hope and Uncertainty in Health and Medicine

transcript Verlag eBooks, May 6, 2024

Hope too does not exist in a social and historical vacuum, it always has a story/history, and the... more Hope too does not exist in a social and historical vacuum, it always has a story/history, and the bearing of any hope has a lot to do with the consensus that prevails about this story/history and is advanced in exchange and discussion.

Research paper thumbnail of More-Than-Human Eating . Reconfiguring Environment | Body | Mind Relations in the Anthropocene

This paper is concerned with emergent more-than-human eating practices and how they might challen... more This paper is concerned with emergent more-than-human eating practices and how they might challenge received understandings of bioand geopolitics.After a brief review of the anthropology of food and eating and how its concerns may have to be expanded in the Anthropocene, we briefly analyse three empirical cases of anticipatory more-than-human eating practices: a set of artistic anticipations of future eating; microbiome research and related biohacking practices; and research on future food security in the context of planetary boundaries. We discuss how all three cases make the boundaries between body|mind|environment porous. The ›I‹ of the embodied human subject emerges as multiple—colonised and accompanied by a panoply of microorganisms. How might such a collective be subject to governance and 'self‹-technologies? We close by pleading for an experimental para-sitic anthropology that critically addresses emergent forms of bio/geopolitics in the Anthropocene.