Paper short abstract:

This paper grapples with ethical-moral visions and versions of the past which collide with the current consensus found in secular, liberal circles. It argues that it is the ‘moral responsibility’ of anthropologists to countenance, yet not condone, even the most troubling facets of human existence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper grapples with ethical-moral visions and versions of the past which collide with the current consensus found in secular, liberal circles. Recently, anthropologists have considered their ethical and professional obligations when faced with research participants who make claims that might be deemed racist, reprehensible, or historically false. This paper argues that it is incumbent upon anthropologists to countenance, yet not condone, such viewpoints. I draw on fieldwork with memory activists in Serbia and Bosnia (who, amongst other things, question that the slaughter of over 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 constituted ‘genocide’), and Confederate re-enactors in the American South (who, amongst other things, dispute that the American Civil War was ‘caused by slavery’). At one level, I attend to the shared moral space which fieldworker and interlocutor inevitably inhabit. During fieldwork, I encounter tense situations when interlocutors implicate me in their projects, either by seeking my academic authority to lend their ideas intellectual credibility, or by challenging any sense of anthropological moral superiority by reminding me of Britain’s historic moral failings. More broadly, I suggest that in a media landscape increasingly saturated with divisive political commentary, anthropologists are perhaps uniquely positioned to sit with radically different ethical-moral visions and articulations of historical consciousness. That is not to justify; it is to listen and to probe. The paper argues that it is the ‘moral responsibility’ of the anthropologist to illuminate even the most troubling facets of human existence even – indeed especially – when those views strike us as flawed.