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In Mourning: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2020
ABSTRACT This year‐in‐review article places 2020 sociocultural works within the portal formed by pandemic loss. Moving in the mode of Black feminist praxis, the article stays with wake work (Sharpe) as an analytic to consider articles and born digital media for how they were moved by the situated pr...
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Published in: | American anthropologist 2021-12, Vol.123 (4), p.931-947 |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | ABSTRACT
This year‐in‐review article places 2020 sociocultural works within the portal formed by pandemic loss. Moving in the mode of Black feminist praxis, the article stays with wake work (Sharpe) as an analytic to consider articles and born digital media for how they were moved by the situated practices and affects produced through dying from normality and the horizons they summon and grieve. Specifically, Sharpe's formulation of wake work as a labor of vigilant attendance is upheld as a method for how anthropology might mourn the dead while reckoning with Black being in modernity. Prevalent keywords from popular discourse in 2020 organize the article conceptually, putting the force of public debates around “preexisting conditions,” “law and order,” “staying at home,” and being “all in this together” to bear on anthropological analyses of patriarchy, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. Overwhelmingly, the feelings that shape and are shaped by the violent delineations that make human and nonhuman forms of life more or less risky in capitalist modernity were persistently resurrected across these virtual dialogues. The inability to do anthropology as usual afforded an important moment for pause to consider more deeply the political and material investments at the core of the discipline's raison d’être in 2020. Rather than rush toward a return to normality, the article propounds staying in the wake. Such a labor demands that anthropology feel for how to be relevant to coalitions in the making, not as experts but as fellow processioners through a threshold still becoming. In this mode, the future may be gleaned not only by what we are ready to fight for but also for whom and how we mourn. [sociocultural anthropology, wake work, uprisings, care, pandemic, portal]
Resumen
Este artículo sobre la revisión del año 2020 coloca los trabajos socioculturales dentro del portal formado por la pérdida de la pandemia. Moviéndose en el modo de la praxis feminista negra, el artículo se queda con el trabajo de activación (Sharpe) como datos de análisis para considerar los artículos y los medios digitales originados por cómo ellos fueron movidos por las prácticas y afectos situados producidos a través del morir de la normalidad y los horizontes que ellos convocan y hacen el duelo. Específicamente, la formulación de Sharpe de trabajo de activación como una labor de un atender vigilante se mantiene como un método por el cual la antropología podría hacer el duelo a los |
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ISSN: | 0002-7294 1548-1433 |
DOI: | 10.1111/aman.13662 |