Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Attending to the production and reception of critique produced by anthropologists’ interlocutors, in the field and in the archives, can help shore up the project of critical ethnography called for by Didier Fassin. A comparison of two moments of critique initiated by Fayiz Sayigh on behalf of Palestinians struggling against Israeli colonialism highlights the ways that the same kinds of critique of power gain traction in different institutional and historical contexts. The expansion of critical ethnography to include a historical ethnography of critique itself, tracing the effects of critique or its dissipation in the past, would yield further insights into the nature and power (or weakness) of the practice of critique today.

Keywords

Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS)colonialism critique historical anthropology occupation Palestine United Nations Zionism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

(2017) Determining emotions and the burden of proof in investigative commissions to Palestine. Contemporary Studies in Society and History 59(2): 385–414.

Amnesty International (1975) Report on Torture, London: Duckworth.

Comaroff

(1985) Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Cowan

(2003) Who’s afraid of violent language? Honour, sovereignty and claims-making in the League of Nations. Anthropological Theory 33(3): 271–291.

Fassin

(2015) The public afterlife of ethnography. American Ethnologist 42(4): 592–609.

Fassin

(2017) The endurance of critique. Anthropological Theory 17(1): 4–29.

Feldman

(2015) Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Geuss

(2002) Genealogy as critique. European Journal of Philosophy 10(2): 209–215.

Langer

(1975) With My Own Eyes: Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1967–1973, London: Ithaca Press.

10.

Lewis P (1991) U.N. repeals its ’75 Resolution equating Zionism with racism. New York Times, 17 December. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/world/un-repeals-its-75-resolution-equating-zionism-with-racism.html (accessed 6 April 2017).

11.

Sayigh F (1946) Note on the Palestine Problem: Submitted to the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee, prepared on behalf of the National Party. Beirut, 19 March 1946. No publisher.

12.

Sayigh F (1976) Statement made at the 2134th meeting of the Third (Social, Humanitarian & Cultural) Committee of the General Assembly on 17 October 1975. In: Zionism: ‘A Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination’; Four Statements Made at the U.N. General Assembly. New York: Office of the Permanent Observer of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United Nations.

13.

Scott

(2007) History-writing as critique. In: Jenkins

(eds) Manifestos for History, London: Routledge, pp. 19–38.

14.

Shehadeh

(2002) Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine, New York: Penguin Books.

15.

Wheatley

(2015) Mandatory interpretation: Legal hermeneutics and the Arab and Jewish petitions to the League of Nations. Past and Present 227: 205–48.

Finding indigenous critique in the archives: Thoughts on Didier Fassin’s ‘The Endurance of Critique’

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References