Beate Binder - Ethnography, collaboration, critique...

...Lessons learned from feminist and queer anthropology.
We live in dark times - and it seems that we have not yet reached the point where the night is at its deepest and thus the day at its closest, as a song by the band Ton, Steine, Scherben hopefully puts it. These dark times present a challenge for ethnographic research. Starting from Sherry Ortner's lucid analysis of anthropological theory production (Strathern: Dark Anthropology), I will follow two lines of reasoning: First, I will follow the desire for another possible world that is so deeply embedded in feminist gender and queer studies, and think about the possibilities of doing engaged anthropology in terms of a utopian longing for the better. Secondly, I will ask how critique is possible in times of crisis and in the face of a polarised public debate. In my talk, I will take up the ongoing discourse in anthropology on the possibilities of critique while looking at feminist and queer research done in anthropology.