Paper Short Abstract:

Anthropology took shape as a discipline via travelogues and expedition reports in English, French and German. But what if its foundational texts had been written in Esperanto or Portuguese? This paper proposes speculating about the past as a method to reimagine anthropology’s (im)possible futures.

Paper Abstract:

In 1931, Joseph Scherer (1901-1967) embarked on a world tour, travelling from California to Japan, then to China and several countries in Asia and Europe. Once back in the US, Scherer gave talks across the country and published an ethnographic-like book analysing the meticulous notes he kept about the societies and cultures he encountered. Interestingly, all his communication while abroad, as well as his book and talks, were in Esperanto.

From Scherer’s extensive travels to Tibor Sekelj’s (1912-1988) books on his expeditions to Nepal, India and Latin America, as well as Vasili Eroshenko’s (1890-1952) accounts on Siam and Burma, Esperanto speakers are notorious for their globetrotting and travel-writing. In many ways, Joseph Scherer’s travelogues preceded yet resemble Claude Lévi-Strauss’ ‘Tristes Tropiques’, exhibiting a quasi-scientific pretension of preserving the world’s cultural diversity through comprehensive documentation. In writing cultures, these Esperanto speakers also sought to predict what the future could look like if people shared a common language and could communicate freely across borders.

Speculating from Esperanto speakers’ speculations, this paper asks: what if anthropology had been shaped by ethnographic-like accounts written in languages other than English and French, such as Joseph Scherer’s travelogues in Esperanto or Carolina Maria de Jesus’ memoirs of Brazil’s urban working classes in Portuguese? I argue that (1) speculation and prediction are not solely about envisioning the future but also involve reimagining alternative pasts, and (2) speculation can give us a glimpse of what other languages and approaches to storytelling can contribute to anthropological theory and practice.