Professor Marilyn Strathern, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, (University of Cambridge)
Beings out of time, being out of time
One of the virtues of ethnography is that it speaks of present times. But there are also various ways in which anthropologist might find themselves ‘out of time’. Using past events to illuminate current ones is often controversial, but then there are also events not assimilated at the time of observation and that have to wait for ‘time’ to catch up with them. Scholars, for whom time is often marked by the growth and senescence of intellectual paradigms, create an acute problem for themselves by invariably preferring to be at the point of growth. That said, time may be cut in other ways by those of anthropology’s interlocutors for whom generativity lies in anything but the present. The speaker takes advantage of the intimacy of a seminar format to offer some rather preliminary thoughts.
Lecture theatre A, Arts School is located here: https://map.cam.ac.uk/Lecture+Theatre+A#52.203448,0.119533,17