Here we open up the special issue with an introduction to the topic of decolonizing anthropology through the consideration of the emotionality of race, racism, and whiteness within the classroom and the discipline. Focusing on the European Classroom as a construct, we reflect on what the implications of decolonizing anthropology are for teaching the discipline, particularly in regard to the positionality of “European Others” (El Tayeb, 2011) as students and educators. While demands for structural changes in the discipline and the restructuring of canons and curriculums have been widely proposed, the role of affect and emotions in relation to colonialism, race, and whiteness in the decolonizing process have been addressed only marginally. We offer a contribution to the conversation through the focus on emotions, taking these as a form of knowledge and political action. Bringing together literatures on postcolonial studies, decolonial theory with critiques of anthropology, we suggest a space for thinking about the emotional dimensions of decolonization within the university and across disciplines and describe the contribution of each article included herein that show the power that comes from thinking critically about the emotionality of the classroom, and the role of emotions in reproducing colonial epistemics.
This paper is a creative, poetic and experimental intervention in the form of collective reflections and writings on Anthropology, as the discipline we have experienced and/or been a part of within the University. It is also a reflection on the process of how the authors came together to form the River and Fire Collective. As a collective we have studied, worked and taught in more than 15 universities, and the aspects we point to here are fragments of our experiences and observations of the emotionality of the discipline. These are experiences from different forms of Anthropology from Northern Europe and settler-colonial contexts including Great Turtle Island Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. In a metaphorical manner we invite the reader to our collective fireside dialogues and reflections, to be inspired, to disagree or agree and to continue a process of transformation. The paper sets out to provocatively question whether Anthropology is salvageable or whether one should ‘let it burn’ (Jobson, 2020). Exploring this question is done by way of discussing decolonial potentialities within the discipline(s), the classroom and exploring fire and water as a radical potential to think through the tensions between abolition and transformation. The reflections engage with concepts of decolonization, whiteness/white innocence, knowledge creation and -sharing, the anthropological self, ethics and accountability and language. The paper emphasizes Anthropology’s embeddedness in colonial narratives, structures and legacies and draws attention to how these colonial, able-bodied realities are being continuously reaffirmed through multiple educational practices and methodologies. It suggests that collectivity in writing, thinking and being is part of a healing process for those of us feeling our way through colonial continuities and prospective potentialities of Anthropology.
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