North Atlantic Universals: Analytical Fictions, 1492–1945

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph

doi:10.1215/00382876-101-4-839

Cited by 146 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Rather, Dominican reproductive subjects inhabit modern mindful bodies that improvise a shifting openness to enchanted readings of corporeal symptoms, appearances, and sensations. Such readings constitute a quotidian empiricism that draws as much on biomedical bodily concepts as Afro‐Creole ones (infused with latent Amerindian understandings), and are posited in relation to the idea of an alienated Cartesian subject, a ‘North Atlantic universal’ (Trouillot ) that Caribbean subjects interchangeably relate to (by virtue of their modern, individualized colonial experience: Mintz – note the dismissal of ‘de symptom’ as ‘mind over matter’ above) and stand apart from (as we see with critical Dominican responses to the medical DNA test as a less reliable alternative to ‘de symptom’ or ‘sit and watch’; or any oppositional Creole practice: Besson ; Wilson ). This case study of men's mindful participation in reproduction suggests a mode for approaching diverse and mutable bodily ontologies from the ground up (Harris & Robb ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When ‘blood speaks’: naming the father and the mystics of kinship in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean

Heron

2018

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article explores the mystical implication of fathers in reproduction in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean. It traces naming acts that assign paternity at various points in the filial life course, each attempting to disambiguate paternity. Confronting a recurring anthropological problematic – the problem of paternity (paternity's inherent putativity) – the article argues that Dominicans contest uncertain physical fatherhood through the proverb ‘blood speaks’. The article elaborates how relatedness reveals itself in the subtle bodies of kin at three moments: through a local version of the couvade (‘sympathetic pregnancy’); in elders’ post‐partum ritual scrutiny of children's bodies for familial resemblances; and during serendipitous encounters in later life. The article highlights how physical fatherhood is disclosed in fathers’ and children's symptoms, appearances, and sensations, revealing their kinship in transpersonal terms. Therefore, blood ‘speaks’ to counter broad‐brushed narratives of Caribbean fatherly absence by revealing the physical and spiritual significance of fatherhood. Herein, the article revives classic anthropological debates on legitimacy, the couvade, and Caribbean kinship, whilst contributing to contemporary theorizations of blood and naming.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When ‘blood speaks’: naming the father and the mystics of kinship in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean

Heron

2018

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…the unfolding of spirit-in an entity" (Benjamin, cited in Bracken 2007:148). Even if anthropology has been a leader in the critique of the "North Atlantic universal" of modernity (Trouillot 2002), it remains ruled over by the deity of progress, such that with the exception of a few classics we are obliged to keep teaching, ideas tend to lose value in proportion to their longevity. But theories are also old things that, if allowed to unfold within us, provide new platforms for reflection on contemporary theoretical issues.…”

Section: Reply Affective Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

The Affectiveness of Symbols: Materiality, Magicality, and the Limits of the Antisemiotic Turn

Newell¹

2018

Current Anthropology

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In response to an oft-encountered stance against semiotic or symbolic analysis in current anthropological theory, I argue for a broader understanding of semiosis as inherently both affective and material. Affect theory and new materialism move away from conceptualizations of human subjectivity and cultural construction and toward an ontological framework focused on material entities and vital flows. By meshing their language with that of classic symbolic anthropology, I demonstrate how the materiality of symbols produces and transmits affect and that, indeed, the efficacy of ritual is based on the manipulation of affect. Rather than thinking of signs as delimited representations fixed in structures, I emphasize their indeterminacy and ambiguity as the source of their social efficacy. Drawing on my research on affectively charged material objects in the storage spaces of US homes, I demonstrate that the affective force of these things stems from their open-ended and often unrecognized chains of semiotic associations. Ultimately, I present semiotic affect as a way to return to theorizing the social as an intercorporeal force that precedes the conscious determination of the subject. The sign is an encounter rather than an act of recognition. And it can only be felt or sensed: signs act directly on the nervous system. (Marks 1998:38) Matter can shimmer with undetermined potential and the weight of received meanings.

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“…Their arguments about “human rights” may speak of “North Atlantic universals” and their projection as humanity's global telos. But “humanity” also exposes the particularity of such universals and offers not so much a local interpretation of these universals as an alternative to them (Trouillot ). West Africans in Angola adopt their own script of how humans inhabit the earth and relate to one another.…”

Section: Alternative Humanisms and Forms Of The Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

West African strangers and the politics of inhumanity in Angola

Gaibazzi

2018

American Ethnologist

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Since 2002, Angola has increasingly resorted to illegalization, deportation, and predatory policing to manage immigration. The resulting abuses lead Muslim West African migrants, especially those from the Mande ethnolinguistic area, to denounce Angola's lack of “humanity.” Their takes on inhumanity cannot be sufficiently explained by either conventional understandings of human rights or biopolitical theories of legal exclusion and bare life. Instead, Mande notions of hospitality, empathy, and the “human right” to survival enable migrants to navigate Angola's regimes of clientelism. Inhumanity results from the state's repression and predation, which prevent migrants from negotiating with their “hosts” on affective‐ethical grounds rather than solely on legal ones. Departing from Western Enlightenment, Mande humanism provides an alternative perspective from the South for analyzing how life and politics connect. [empathy, migrant illegality, deportation, humanism, hospitality, human rights, West African traders, Mande, Angola]

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North Atlantic Universals: Analytical Fictions, 1492–1945

Cited by 146 publications

References 22 publications

When ‘blood speaks’: naming the father and the mystics of kinship in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean

When ‘blood speaks’: naming the father and the mystics of kinship in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean

The Affectiveness of Symbols: Materiality, Magicality, and the Limits of the Antisemiotic Turn

West African strangers and the politics of inhumanity in Angola

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