Senior Research Seminar with Dr Alice Elliot (Goldsmiths)
A tale of four miscarriages: loss, comparison, difference
This paper is about shared loss within and beyond ‘the field,’ and the conceptual and political questions it opens for the classic anthropological problem of comparison, particularly in terms of the tensions between ‘sameness’ and ‘difference.’ Reflecting on a decade-long relationship of research and friendship emerging from my Moroccan fieldwork, I address the striking connections and deep divergences brought up by our similar – but not equal – experience of multiple miscarriages. Working with Lila Abu Lughod’s essay ‘A tale of two pregnancies,’ I trace the possibilities and dangers of assuming similar events are ‘the same’ for anthropologist and ‘interlocutor’ – as well as the possibilities and dangers of assuming they are different. In doing so, I return to debates on alterity within and beyond the discipline, and trace the power of loss to make and unmake anthropological knowledge and practice
Lecture room A in the Arts School, https://map.cam.ac.uk/Lecture+Theatre+A#52.203448,0.119533,17