Paper short abstract:

Through the lens of 'assimilation' as a kind of movement and cultural work, my paper argues that uncertainty and disquiet should belocated in the inter-subjectivity between anthropologist and 'informants'. Inter-Subjectivity is a site of intersection of trajectories, both "real" and "imaginary".

Paper long abstract:

Through the lens of 'assimilation' as a kind of movement and work of contextualization, my paper argues that uncertainty and disquiet should be approach in terms of the inter-subjectivity between anthropologist and 'informants'. Inter-Subjectivity is understood here as a site of intersection of trajectories, both "real" and "imaginary". Various social thinkers (Gluckman and Devons, Strathern, Ardener, Gofmann, Keane) have problematized the anthropologist's work of contextualization (translation, or analytical framing), whcih is not supposed to reduce experience to theory. Experience has a temporal dimension that is embodied and biographical and is not easily expresed in language. The experience of 'assimilation' to what is or used to be a colonial ideal of civilization is, I suggest, a case in point of the double difficulty of the work of contextualization/translation: that of the subjects of expeirence and that of the anthropologist trying to make sense of their work.