Jane E Goodman | Indiana University (original) (raw)
Papers by Jane E Goodman
Citation is a foundational dimension of human language and social life. Citational practices attr... more Citation is a foundational dimension of human language and social life. Citational practices attribute utterances to distinct speakers, beings, or texts. They also connect temporalities, joining past, present, and future discourses, documents, and performance practices. In so doing, citational practices play a pivotal role in linking particular articulations of subjectivity to wider formations of cultural knowledge and authority. We explore how this linkage operates via production formats, participant structures, genre conventions, and ideologies of personhood. We then consider approaches to citation in the domain of legal discourse, an arena that relies on specific, patterned forms of citation that are historically rooted, institutionally perpetuated, and subjectively reenacted.
This article examines the construction of state and regime in Algeria through performance and nar... more This article examines the construction of state and regime in Algeria through performance and narrative. It is ethnographically centred around a series of events surrounding the demolition, relocation, and reconstitution of a local theatre. I argue that even as Algerians position themselves discursively outside the political regime and deny that they can impact its decisions, they also find pragmatic ways of working with it in order to shape their own futures. I show how narratives of regime omnipotence and citizen impotence simultaneously haunt and fuel various creative means for engaging with the state.
Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnograp... more Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnographic representation to
political and historical context. Interestingly, the work of Pierre Bourdieu has largely escaped such contextualization, despite the significance
of Bourdieu's ideas to anthropological theorizing. Today, many of Bourdieu's central concepts float free from the context out
of which they arose—the Kabyle region of Algeria. This article addresses this omission by reading Bourdieu's early works against each
other to reconstitute aspects of his methodology and fieldwork. Focusing on his choice to represent the Kabyles of his early work in
prose, and those in his later work via proverbs, I suggest that key premises of Bourdieu's theory may not be supported by historical and
ethnographic evidence. I consider how Bourdieu's position as a young social scientist grappling with ethnographic responsibilities in
colonial wartime led him to privilege his interlocutors' accounts in some studies while expunging them from others.
Scholars of democracy from Tocqueville to Habermas have long considered the proliferation of so-c... more Scholars of democracy from Tocqueville to Habermas have long considered
the proliferation of so-called voluntary associations as a sign of a flourishing
civil society and as central to the rise of democratic modernity. I contend that
the Algerian theatrical and musical associations of the reformist period anticipate
another kind of civic history: a history of displays of unanimism in public life. I
am interested in how and why Algerians learned to produce public displays of
agreement for particular audiences (including themselves) at particular historical
moments. I emphasize three factors that contributed to the production of unanimity:
the achievement of tawḥī
d or unity in the Islamic reform movement, vernacular
practices of consensus-based argumentation, and French colonial legal and
surveillance mechanisms. The essay engages theories of civil society, colonialism,
and performance. It draws primarily on material from the French colonial
archives for the city of Constantine, Algeria.
Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofin- tertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's... more Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofin- tertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper explores how genres can support the
emergence of new forms of self-recognition and promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expressive forms. Via double-voiced parodies of religious chants known as adekker, the new Berber singers call into question the "magical" powers of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that saints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this in- terplay ofgenres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new song's secularist vision.
Chapter 12. Performing Laïcité Gender, Agency, and Neoliberalism Among Algerians in France
Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity by Cynthia J. Becker
Museum Anthropology, 2009
We share walls: language, land, and gender in Berber Morocco - By Katherine E. Hoffman
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009
Ethos, 1998
Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofintertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's B... more Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofintertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper explores how genres can support the emergence of new forms of self-recognition and promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expressive forms. Via double-voiced parodies of religious chants known as adekker, the new Berber singers call into question the "magical" powers of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that saints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this interplay of genres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new song's secularist vision.
Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism:Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism
American Ethnologist, 2002
Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation
American Ethnologist, 2006
American Ethnologist, 2002
In this article, I explore how colonial, nationalist, and media interests converge around the col... more In this article, I explore how colonial, nationalist, and media interests converge around the collection of oral texts. Moving from the French colonial project of collecting native lore to the nationalist project to recover indigenous heritage to the embedding of village songs in contemporary world music, I examine how oral texts from Algeria's Kabyle Berber region have been variously configured as signs through which social differences are imagined and hierarchically ordered. I foreground the history of intertextual penetration between North African poetic productions and Western aesthetic categories, [genre, intertextuality, oral text, colonialism, world music, Algeria] French Colonel Adolphe Hanoteau had a mission. As part of the pacification program France was carrying out during the 1860s in its newly conquered territory of Kabylia, Hanoteau had been charged with finding out what the natives in this recalcitrant Algerian Berber region were up to. In addition to monitoring their activities from his various administrative positions in the Bureaux Arabes, as the offices for indigenous affairs were known, Hanoteau set out on a personal quest to collect Berber poems and songs. 1 The result: a nearly 500-page collection of more than 50 poems and songs through which, the colonel maintained, the Berber spirit could be unveiled. A century later, Kabyle geology student Hamid-soon to be better known through his stage name Idir-set off on a related trek. School vacations would find him journeying to Berber villages to mine not stones, but songs. Polished, set to guitars and percussion, and engraved on vinyl, Idir's songs hit the world music stage in 1973, launching a cultural revival through which Berbers would "rediscover" their identity and origins. During the hundred or so years between the two figures, several dozen collectors-Kabyle and French alike-traced a similar path, generating a plethora of anthologies and recordings of Berber "oral texts," as they are called today. 2 In this article, I critically examine the shifting relationship between claims of unmediated transparency and configurations of social difference. I suggest that a collector's claim of transparency-whereby an oral text is thought to capture unreflexively an essence or spirit of a people-is the very place where an investigation into the construction of difference should begin, for such a claim presumes rather than problematizes the relationship between a poetic text and its producer(s). In addition, it distracts attention from the contingent relationship between the collector and the situation of collection. Attending to these relationships, I show how poems have been entextualized, recontextualized (Bauman and Briggs 1990), or replicated in ways that allowed them to participate in constructions of Berber difference at discrete historical moments. In so doing, I situate oral texts as constitutive ingredients of three major metadiscursive traditions: the French colonial and social science literatures, American Ethnologist 29(1 ):86-122.
Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation:Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation
American Anthropologist, 2006
The Journal of North African Studies, 2004
Dancing toward "La Mixite": Berber Associations and Cultural Change in Algeria
Middle East Report, 1996
activist Mammeri in 1980. By analyzing the relationship between metapragmatic discourse and metap... more activist Mammeri in 1980. By analyzing the relationship between metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function in each poetry collection, the article shows how Berber culture has been variously configured as an object of ethnographic knowledge.
Citation is a foundational dimension of human language and social life. Citational practices attr... more Citation is a foundational dimension of human language and social life. Citational practices attribute utterances to distinct speakers, beings, or texts. They also connect temporalities, joining past, present, and future discourses, documents, and performance practices. In so doing, citational practices play a pivotal role in linking particular articulations of subjectivity to wider formations of cultural knowledge and authority. We explore how this linkage operates via production formats, participant structures, genre conventions, and ideologies of personhood. We then consider approaches to citation in the domain of legal discourse, an arena that relies on specific, patterned forms of citation that are historically rooted, institutionally perpetuated, and subjectively reenacted.
This article examines the construction of state and regime in Algeria through performance and nar... more This article examines the construction of state and regime in Algeria through performance and narrative. It is ethnographically centred around a series of events surrounding the demolition, relocation, and reconstitution of a local theatre. I argue that even as Algerians position themselves discursively outside the political regime and deny that they can impact its decisions, they also find pragmatic ways of working with it in order to shape their own futures. I show how narratives of regime omnipotence and citizen impotence simultaneously haunt and fuel various creative means for engaging with the state.
Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnograp... more Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnographic representation to
political and historical context. Interestingly, the work of Pierre Bourdieu has largely escaped such contextualization, despite the significance
of Bourdieu's ideas to anthropological theorizing. Today, many of Bourdieu's central concepts float free from the context out
of which they arose—the Kabyle region of Algeria. This article addresses this omission by reading Bourdieu's early works against each
other to reconstitute aspects of his methodology and fieldwork. Focusing on his choice to represent the Kabyles of his early work in
prose, and those in his later work via proverbs, I suggest that key premises of Bourdieu's theory may not be supported by historical and
ethnographic evidence. I consider how Bourdieu's position as a young social scientist grappling with ethnographic responsibilities in
colonial wartime led him to privilege his interlocutors' accounts in some studies while expunging them from others.
Scholars of democracy from Tocqueville to Habermas have long considered the proliferation of so-c... more Scholars of democracy from Tocqueville to Habermas have long considered
the proliferation of so-called voluntary associations as a sign of a flourishing
civil society and as central to the rise of democratic modernity. I contend that
the Algerian theatrical and musical associations of the reformist period anticipate
another kind of civic history: a history of displays of unanimism in public life. I
am interested in how and why Algerians learned to produce public displays of
agreement for particular audiences (including themselves) at particular historical
moments. I emphasize three factors that contributed to the production of unanimity:
the achievement of tawḥī
d or unity in the Islamic reform movement, vernacular
practices of consensus-based argumentation, and French colonial legal and
surveillance mechanisms. The essay engages theories of civil society, colonialism,
and performance. It draws primarily on material from the French colonial
archives for the city of Constantine, Algeria.
Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofin- tertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's... more Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofin- tertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper explores how genres can support the
emergence of new forms of self-recognition and promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expressive forms. Via double-voiced parodies of religious chants known as adekker, the new Berber singers call into question the "magical" powers of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that saints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this in- terplay ofgenres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new song's secularist vision.
Chapter 12. Performing Laïcité Gender, Agency, and Neoliberalism Among Algerians in France
Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity by Cynthia J. Becker
Museum Anthropology, 2009
We share walls: language, land, and gender in Berber Morocco - By Katherine E. Hoffman
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009
Ethos, 1998
Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofintertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's B... more Through a close study of the multivocal plays ofintertextuality in the "new songs" of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper explores how genres can support the emergence of new forms of self-recognition and promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expressive forms. Via double-voiced parodies of religious chants known as adekker, the new Berber singers call into question the "magical" powers of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that saints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this interplay of genres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new song's secularist vision.
Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism:Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism
American Ethnologist, 2002
Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation
American Ethnologist, 2006
American Ethnologist, 2002
In this article, I explore how colonial, nationalist, and media interests converge around the col... more In this article, I explore how colonial, nationalist, and media interests converge around the collection of oral texts. Moving from the French colonial project of collecting native lore to the nationalist project to recover indigenous heritage to the embedding of village songs in contemporary world music, I examine how oral texts from Algeria's Kabyle Berber region have been variously configured as signs through which social differences are imagined and hierarchically ordered. I foreground the history of intertextual penetration between North African poetic productions and Western aesthetic categories, [genre, intertextuality, oral text, colonialism, world music, Algeria] French Colonel Adolphe Hanoteau had a mission. As part of the pacification program France was carrying out during the 1860s in its newly conquered territory of Kabylia, Hanoteau had been charged with finding out what the natives in this recalcitrant Algerian Berber region were up to. In addition to monitoring their activities from his various administrative positions in the Bureaux Arabes, as the offices for indigenous affairs were known, Hanoteau set out on a personal quest to collect Berber poems and songs. 1 The result: a nearly 500-page collection of more than 50 poems and songs through which, the colonel maintained, the Berber spirit could be unveiled. A century later, Kabyle geology student Hamid-soon to be better known through his stage name Idir-set off on a related trek. School vacations would find him journeying to Berber villages to mine not stones, but songs. Polished, set to guitars and percussion, and engraved on vinyl, Idir's songs hit the world music stage in 1973, launching a cultural revival through which Berbers would "rediscover" their identity and origins. During the hundred or so years between the two figures, several dozen collectors-Kabyle and French alike-traced a similar path, generating a plethora of anthologies and recordings of Berber "oral texts," as they are called today. 2 In this article, I critically examine the shifting relationship between claims of unmediated transparency and configurations of social difference. I suggest that a collector's claim of transparency-whereby an oral text is thought to capture unreflexively an essence or spirit of a people-is the very place where an investigation into the construction of difference should begin, for such a claim presumes rather than problematizes the relationship between a poetic text and its producer(s). In addition, it distracts attention from the contingent relationship between the collector and the situation of collection. Attending to these relationships, I show how poems have been entextualized, recontextualized (Bauman and Briggs 1990), or replicated in ways that allowed them to participate in constructions of Berber difference at discrete historical moments. In so doing, I situate oral texts as constitutive ingredients of three major metadiscursive traditions: the French colonial and social science literatures, American Ethnologist 29(1 ):86-122.
Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation:Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation
American Anthropologist, 2006
The Journal of North African Studies, 2004
Dancing toward "La Mixite": Berber Associations and Cultural Change in Algeria
Middle East Report, 1996
activist Mammeri in 1980. By analyzing the relationship between metapragmatic discourse and metap... more activist Mammeri in 1980. By analyzing the relationship between metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function in each poetry collection, the article shows how Berber culture has been variously configured as an object of ethnographic knowledge.