A discussion contribution featuring students from a new module - Anthropology in the World. Exploring critical perspectives on anthropological orthodoxies, and heterodoxies, from the standpoint of critical, creative praxis.
Paper long abstract:
Headless Anthropology
In this discussion we want to present ideas emerging from a new, co-conceived third year module, ‘Anthropology in the World’, currently being rolled-out at the University of Sussex. The co-teaching of this module (between tutor, students and other participants) has opened out a range of critical perspectives on anthropological norms and orthodoxies, pertaining to neuro-diversity, ‘able-bodyliness’, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality diversities. Erasures within the matrices of ‘straight’ anthropological teaching have been taken up in our class to refract back into the discipline itself, and to wonder anew about the teaching of anthropology, from marginal perspectives. Seditious standpoints are emerging, not simple in the form of diametric critique, but as surfacing through reflections on the field of anthropological learning and knowledge-making. The photograph that we wanted to include with this abstract (but which cannot be uploaded on this submission system) is taken from one of our classes. It is of a Lego model depicting ‘headless’ anthropology students under the whip of canonical structures and teaching. We want to wonder, in our discussion, about the salience of anthropological education as it may predicate top-down knowledge production, and ontological ellipses – cutting students off at the head. We seek to connect this to other metaphors of knowledge production, and headlessness, within anthropological thinking. This is against the background, we proffer, of forms of pedagogy that may otherwise imagine themselves to be engendering creative praxis and independent thinking.
This submission is made by the module tutor, Paul Boyce, who is registered on the ASA system, but is made in the name of the whole class as a collective action. Holly Cawsey, Toju Cox, Hannah Godden, Martha Horner, Natasha Jenks, Gabe Khan, Natalia Kossyvaki, Ophelia Mancey, Mariam Pari, Lyndon Pitt, Abbie Sinfield, Tabitha Tingle, Aaron Wallace
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
Headless Anthropology
In this discussion we want to present ideas emerging from a new, co-conceived third year module, ‘Anthropology in the World’, currently being rolled-out at the University of Sussex. The co-teaching of this module (between tutor, students and other participants) has opened out a range of critical perspectives on anthropological norms and orthodoxies, pertaining to neuro-diversity, ‘able-bodyliness’, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality diversities. Erasures within the matrices of ‘straight’ anthropological teaching have been taken up in our class to refract back into the discipline itself, and to wonder anew about the teaching of anthropology, from marginal perspectives. Seditious standpoints are emerging, not simple in the form of diametric critique, but as surfacing through reflections on the field of anthropological learning and knowledge-making. The photograph that we wanted to include with this abstract (but which cannot be uploaded on this submission system) is taken from one of our classes. It is of a Lego model depicting ‘headless’ anthropology students under the whip of canonical structures and teaching. We want to wonder, in our discussion, about the salience of anthropological education as it may predicate top-down knowledge production, and ontological ellipses – cutting students off at the head. We seek to connect this to other metaphors of knowledge production, and headlessness, within anthropological thinking. This is against the background, we proffer, of forms of pedagogy that may otherwise imagine themselves to be engendering creative praxis and independent thinking.
This submission is made by the module tutor, Paul Boyce, who is registered on the ASA system, but is made in the name of the whole class as a collective action. Holly Cawsey, Toju Cox, Hannah Godden, Martha Horner, Natasha Jenks, Gabe Khan, Natalia Kossyvaki, Ophelia Mancey, Mariam Pari, Lyndon Pitt, Abbie Sinfield, Tabitha Tingle, Aaron Wallace
Academic – student collaborations
Session 1