Paper short abstract:

This paper explores critical theory as a creative, relational act moved by critique and care to revitalise what has come before and what might come after.

Paper long abstract:

A core part of our training, as anthropologists, is growing versed in the odd and specific writing genre that is the academic essay, emphasising argument as the most valid form of theoretical engagement and expression. Yet, anthropology is a project moved by so many impulses. Against most genres of engagement learnt before one's first fieldwork, ethnography seems so differently impassioned. Ethnography, even for secular anthropologists, is a project of faith: in speaking truth to power, in the vitality of informants' lives, in the transformative possibilities of being and becoming alongside others, and in the humble value of writing it up. This is an ethnographic rigour that is instructive not just for what it reveals about the world, but also what it imparts about how to be in that world. Tender critical theory, for me, means recognising this impulse in the ethnographic project and channeling it towards others that anthropological work is peopled by: the literature one thinks with and those one speaks to, both in and beyond the academy (salient for my work in public health and in institutional reform). In this, I think of scholarly writing and speaking as intentional community-building. What comes of shifting weight from asking just, 'does it hold together?' to also asking: 'what does it hold open and who for?' This paper explores critical theory as a creative, relational act moved by critique and care to revitalise what has come before and what might come after.