Animism, Relatedness, Life: Post-Western Perspectives (original) (raw)
2009, Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Both present academic theories and local native peoples' beliefs and practices are the result of complex colonial histories, and sometimes even evolved in curious interactions. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that scientific and local native theories are usually on opposite sides of the colonial border. In this article I explore the colonial and decolonizing potential of the ‘animistic turn’ in archaeology, focusing on my own trajectory of research. Following Latin American post-colonial writers on ‘border thinking’ (thinking from the border instead of about it), my account here can be described, in short, as a move from research on animism to research from animism.
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This paper questions whether archaeological thinking and practice have become post-colonial and ethically and politically aware and sophisticated,and comments on a number of instances (militarization of archaeology, sponsorship by ethically tainted global corporations, global publishing practices, the declaration of western metropolitan museums as ‘‘universal’’) where neo-colonial regimes of truth and practice are present, even amongst groups and organisations that advocate de-colonisation. It proposes that new theoretical insights are generated at the moments of inevitable and at times necessary confrontations with these neo-colonial regimes. Finally, it conjures up the figure of new global immigrant in order to not only highlight their plight and the need for archaeologists to fight racism and xenophobia, but also to point out that the exilic position, the on-going questioning of our deep-left attachments to nation-states, institutions and structures, provides the space for radical critique and for new ontological possibilities to emerge. _____________________________________________________
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