Duke University Press Experiments with Empire: Anthropology and Fiction in the French Atlantic (Theory in Forms)

In Experiments with Empire Justin Izzo examines how twentieth-century writers, artists, and anthropologists from France, West Africa, and the Caribbean experimented with ethnography and fiction in order to explore new ways of knowing the colonial and postcolonial world. Focusing on novels, films, and ethnographies that combine fictive elements and anthropological methods and modes of thought, Izzo shows how empire gives ethnographic fictions the raw materials for thinking beyond empire's political and epistemological boundaries. In works by French surrealist writer Michel Leiris and filmmaker Jean Rouch, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, and others, anthropology no longer functions on behalf of imperialism as a way to understand and administer colonized peoples; its relationship with imperialism gives writers and artists the opportunity for textual experimentation and political provocation. It also, Izzo contends, helps readers to better make sense of the complicated legacy of imperialism and to imagine new democratic futures. Review "The book's scope is bold and impressive.... Izzo's study is an important contribution to research on the French Atlantic and on speculative forms in general, and it offers a fresh look at the crossings between ethnography and fiction that go beyond questions of truth and veracity, mimicry and resistance."--Christina Kullberg "New West Indian Guide" (11/25/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Experiments with Empire deserves an audience beyond the academic. Izzo makes some perceptive points about how seeing the connections between ethnography and fiction can help us reimagine the world." --Emilie de Brigard "The Arts Fuse" (9/1/2019 12:00:00 AM) Review “Taking up a set of important issues regarding anthropology, colonialism, and the politics of representation, Justin Izzo shows how ethnographic fictions not only demonstrate the limitations of anthropological knowledge, they become alternative anthropologies of colonial and postcolonial encounters. Experiments with Empire should be read by scholars interested in questions of empire, knowledge production, and aesthetics. It grapples with the kind of political and epistemological questions that should be central to the next generation of postcolonial studies.” Author: Gary Wilder, author of Source: Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World From the Author Justin Izzo is Assistant Professor of French Studies at Brown University. About the Author Justin Izzo is Assistant Professor of French Studies at Brown University.