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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will question in a self-reflexive intersectional approach (gender, age, biographical path, origin) how my ethnographic fieldwork in an African country could not find continuity after the PhD. Nostalgia for the idealised fieldwork appeared at the turn of the fifties.

Paper long abstract:

Is Anthropology nostalgic?" is a question raised by Angé and Berliner (2014) in their introduction. In this paper, I will question in a self-reflexive intersectional approach in terms of gender, age, biographical path and country of living, how my ethnographic long duration fieldwork in a rural area in an African country could not find continuity after the thesis. The social pressure of entering adulthood, academics, and family careers has stopped the possibility of being far away from work and family locations. The injunction to succeed both 'Call for Projects', the increasing administrative work in French universities and family life did not allow me to be far away from home during a long time.

However, the main research themes have been instilled into the research programmes during my career. Nostalgia for the idealised far away fieldwork reappears at the biographical turning point of the fifties. Nostalgia can give a breath of fresh air to research that is less subject to social structure. The paper will then examine the extent to which nostalgia can be a driving force behind the research. It is not a question of regretting a past that cannot be redone, but of imagining research objects and fields of investigation that are reinvented in the light of previous ones.