Duke University Press From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures

Historical anthropology: critical exchange between two decidedly distinct disciplines or innovative mode of knowledge production? As this volume’s title suggests, the essays Brian Keith Axel has gathered in From the Margins seek to challenge the limits of discrete disciplinary epistemologies and conventions, gesturing instead toward a transdisciplinary understanding of the emerging relations between archive and field. In original articles encompassing a wide range of geographic and temporal locations, eminent scholars contest some of the primary preconceptions of their fields. The contributors tackle such topics as the paradoxical nature of American Civil War monuments, the figure of the “New Christian” in early seventeenth-century Peru, the implications of statistics for ethnography, and contemporary South Africa's “occult economies.” That anthropology and history have their provenance in―and have been complicit with―colonial formations is perhaps commonplace knowledge. But what is rarely examined is the specific manner in which colonial processes imbue and threaten the celebratory ideals of postcolonial reason or the enlightenment of today’s liberal practices in the social sciences and humanities. By elaborating this critique, From the Margins offers diverse and powerful models that explore the intersections of historically specific local practices with processes of a world historical order. As such, the collection will not only prove valuable reading for anthropologists and historians, but also for scholars in colonial, postcolonial, and globalization studies. Contributors. Talal Asad, Brian Keith Axel, Bernard S. Cohn, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Nicholas B. Dirks, Irene Silverblatt, Paul A. Silverstein, Teri Silvio, Ann Laura Stoler, Michel-Rolph Trouillot Review " From the Margins exemplifies the best of current thinking in anthropology. It cuts through a haze of recent theoretical developments in the discipline and opens the way for new syntheses. With this exemplary piece of intellectual history, Brian Axel and the authors he has assembled also provide the conditions for a renewal in the dialogue between anthropology and other discursive fields."--Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony "There is a great deal of talk in academia about the promise of interdisciplinary work, but the dialogue between anthropology and history is one of the few cases that already exhibits a substantial payoff. This volume corroborates that dialogue as vital, fruitful, and very much a site of innovation. From the Margins, thankfully, does not represent yet another 'normal' discipline."--Dan Segal, Pitzer College From the Back Cover ""From the Margins " exemplifies the best of current thinking in anthropology. It cuts through a haze of recent theoretical developments in the discipline and opens the way for new syntheses. With this exemplary piece of intellectual history, Brian Axel and the authors he has assembled also provide the conditions for a renewal in the dialogue between anthropology and other discursive fields."--Achille Mbembe, author of "On the Postcolony" About the Author Brian Keith Axel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Swarthmore College. He is the author of The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora,” also published by Duke University Press.