Description

Book Synopsis
Explores how anthropology can come to terms with "colonial library" and begin to develop an ethnographic practice that transcends politics of Africa's imperial past. This book develops a model of critical agency, focusing on a variety of language genres in Africa situated in rituals that transform socio-political relations.

Trade Review
"A counterintuitive rereading of classic anthropological texts from the colonial archive, Beyond Words proposes a brilliant solution to one of the most pressing intellectual/political issues in African studies today. Responding to trenchant critiques of anthropology's complicity with colonialism and Eurocentric thought, Apter argues that these texts - of Dogon cosmological reflection, of Tswana praise poetry - be reread as critical reflection on power and authority, as vernacular criticism that was history-making rather than history-erasing and politics-averse." - Charles Piot, Duke University"

Beyond Words Discourse and Critical Agency in

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    A Hardback by Andrew Apter

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      Book details

      Publisher The University of Chicago Press
      Published 1 July 2007
      ISBN-13 9780226023519
      978-0226023519
      ISBN-10 0226023516
      Also in:
      Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics Colonialism and imperialism

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Explores how anthropology can come to terms with "colonial library" and begin to develop an ethnographic practice that transcends politics of Africa's imperial past. This book develops a model of critical agency, focusing on a variety of language genres in Africa situated in rituals that transform socio-political relations.

      Trade Review
      "A counterintuitive rereading of classic anthropological texts from the colonial archive, Beyond Words proposes a brilliant solution to one of the most pressing intellectual/political issues in African studies today. Responding to trenchant critiques of anthropology's complicity with colonialism and Eurocentric thought, Apter argues that these texts - of Dogon cosmological reflection, of Tswana praise poetry - be reread as critical reflection on power and authority, as vernacular criticism that was history-making rather than history-erasing and politics-averse." - Charles Piot, Duke University"

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