some reflections on the native anthropologist

Abstract (English)

The figure of the native anthropologist has been the site of both suspicion and promise. Many important interventions around positionality and the colonial history of anthropology as a discipline have been written around this figure by POC and postcolonial, queer anthropologists such as Michel Rolph Trouillot, Kirin Narayan, Kath Weston to name a few. They have reflected on how the native anthropologist carries the weight of the word "native," which has its genesis in the classificatory gaze of the colonizer/ anthropologist. Thus, native/queer anthropologists working on their "own" people embody a tension that flits between suspicion of compromised research, or the romance of emancipation for anthropology. Can the inclusion of those who have been the objects of anthropological study within the hallowed house of anthropology be done with the house intact? This paper opens this question towards the future of knowledge production within the discipline of anthropology.