anthropologies

anthropologies brings together essays and visual work from accomplished artists, anthropologists, filmmakers, and historians working in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. While each work stands on its own, together they engage the creative possibilities between visual art and academic writing, asking why separate the experience of the world from the forms of knowledge and expression that arise out of this world? Lori Leonard considers portrait photography and remembrance in the radically changing context of the oil pipeline project in southern Chad. Stefanos Geroulanos traces affect, sentiment, and judgment around the figure of the murdered child in cinema. In an essay appearing for the first time in English, Georges Canguilhem examines the value of disease for the living. Pamela Reynolds presents unexpectedly beautiful maps produced during long anthropological and political work with anti-apartheid youth activists in South Africa. Julien Bonhomme offers photographs and an essay dealing with an enigmatic, prophetic graffiti artist in Gabon. Richard Baxstrom contends with death and the artifacts of memory in the familiar yet so distant American Southwest. Francois Delaporte looks at the debates surrounding the first successful face transplant in Amiens, France in 2005. Todd Meyers reflects on disappearance and institutional life in Baltimore. Lastly, Amir Muhammad puzzles out the reasons for the banning of his film, The Last Communist, in Malaysia. The book includes a DVD with four short films by Amir Muhammad, Rania Ajami, Julien Bonhomme, and James Lee.