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Paper short abstract

Actor1: Do conference panels inevitably rely on polarization? A2: No. (tense music) A1: Can this polarization be challenged/subverted? A3: Hope so. A2: I think about an anthropological drama. Someone to document it. A director. A camera. A3: Yup, to bring in conferences the performances. (bass tone)

Paper long abstract

PROLOGUE

A1: Do conference panels inevitably reproduce, or have they the potential to challenge the various polarizations that increasingly characterize the contemporary world?

A2: If I didn’t believe the challenge potential existed, I wouldn’t be here.

A1: Are panels inescapably reliant on individuated presenters, clear speaker–audience divisions, and the separation of ethnography’s messy knowledge from orderly academic venues?

A3: I don’t have an exact answer, but I’ve heard anthropology’s ideal to blur the lines.

(Applause)

A1: And about newer, shorter conference formats like lightning talks?

A2: Well… sometimes fewer is better; sometimes fewer is only fewer.

A1: Do the formal constraints of academic conferences reproduce or even reinforce other polarizations alongside the strict boundaries between selves and others that they mobilize and the hierarchical and authoritarian political projects these frequently underwrite?

A4: Sure, but… Don’t you feel that we’re simulating a focus group? And now I’m even breaking the fourth wall… This is already a transformation!

A1: Could we imagine other, more relational modes of differentiation?

A2: Think so. Someone says EASA 2026 might be a good opportunity to stage them.

(laughter)

A3: We can start with irony and the willingness to play...

A2: …and no wall with the audience.

(Applause)

A4: And what about the gap between fieldwork dialogue and co-creation, and the ways our research gets standardized when we present it.

(Silence)

A2: Yeah…

A3: … very sad.

A1: Guess we’ve outlined something, don’t you think?

To be continued… (See you, space cowboy).