Decolonizing Author/ity in Anthro Thought

Laura Nader said, “Anthropologists of the future will have a greater responsibility

for what they choose to study as well as how they study” (Nader, 303). Yet the question

stands as to whether or not the thought process backing the anthropologist is

single-handedly the most important factor in the entire system. This factor is theory. In

Anthro Theory’s Week 2 Lecture Outline, theory was defined as “an explanation of

events that has its own vernacular and offers us an overarching concept that provides

observational thinking” as well as “a set of ideas and principles that inform human

practices and/or series of events” (Shahrokhi, Wk 2 Lecture Outline). In my own eyes, I

found theory to be the conversational thinking behind situations, cultures, and

civilizations in which the past is compared to the present and eventually, the future. It

means that history can be affected and we usually can understand where it gets changed.

This biggest switch is found within the knowledge collected during the said historical

moments. However, knowledge itself is such a precarious concept that something such

as theory can completely tip the scales. With this comes many specific aspects such as

how something will be affected by the voice, authority, authorship, and finally,

production of knowledge. Any and all of these things will change the way knowledge is

held and created, especially from someone in a position of power or from someone

struggling for that power. The single best example I have run across during this week's

readings is the concept of feminism theory.

In Saba Mahmood’s Feminist Theory, Agency and the Liberatory Subject: Some

Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt, Mahmood argues that feminist theory will

further the scholarly understanding of how power interacts with the moral autonomy of
an individual. It is in this way that feminist theory has the “power” to change things such

as history and even society. However, it must first be explained what was occurring

prior. Mahmood explained feminist scholarship in the “Agency, Resistance, Freedom”

section of their article by contemplating how women were seen as opposed to how they

are viewed now after some sense of feminist theory has been implanted in a country

such as Egypt. While starting off the explanation of the women’s mosque movement in

the Middle East, Mahmood says, “...they pursue practices and ideals embedded within a

tradition that has historical accorded women a subordinate status, and they seek to

cultivate virtues that are associated with feminine passivity and submissiveness (e.g.,

shyness, modesty, perseverance, and humility…)” (Mahmood, 37). Women were

following this narrative that benefited in barely any way. However, that narrative is

beginning to change as Mahmood notes when talking about feminist scholarship and

theory, “This scholarship performed the worthy task of restoring the absent voice of

women to analyses of Middle Eastern societies, showing women as active agents who

live an existence far more complex and richer than past narratives had suggested”

(Mahmood, 37-38). Here Mahmood is showing an example of what happens when a

theory is applied to a societal situation. Women became more empowered in the Middle

East, constantly challenging the power/authority held over them by men and by their

government. As well as showing how powerful their own voice can be when they apply

those feminist theories. This change not only allows for a better life and future for

women but also creates a place for more inclusive knowledge to be included. The

information that will now be recorded for the future and the knowledge that will be

found later comes from that change in authority and voice, without that shift, women

would never be included in those narratives and they would be strictly male. Theory was
an absolute necessity for the feminist movement because they used it to gain access to

otherwise forbidden knowledge and give others access to their own hidden stream of

knowledge. This is one of the most important steps in creating a more inclusive,

educational pool of wisdom.

As for inclusivity, there is still the conversation about how authorship, audience,

and methods connect to explain the theory behind something. All three things directly

correlate at least slightly and Lila Abu-Lughod in her article “Writing Against Culture”

touches on what I think connects this.

“I explore how feminists and halfies, by the way, their

anthropological practice unsettles the boundary between self

and other, enable us to reflect on the conventional nature and

political effects of this distinction and ultimately to reconsider

the value of the concept of culture on which it depends”

(Abu-Lughod, 135).

Abu-Lughod is saying that in anthropology and even regular academic life, culture is

incredibly dependent on the information we learn from, especially when it comes back

to power, readership, and context. She later explains that anthropologists should be

urged to gather factual information to use as a power against the unwritten cultures of

the past that seek to disclude prevalent peoples and cultures, the “other”. We need the

full context of a power dynamic struggle with complete understanding before we can

ever even theorize about that situation, place, thing, civilization, culture, etc. In my

GHS, Latin America Contact Zones, we are talking about Spanish colonialism and how

there was little to know about the indigenous peoples before philosophers dared to

challenge the ever-present “power”, once again old, white men. It is the same concept
here. To understand and theorize, we must combine all of our best scholarly practices

with an open mind free of any type of bias.

Speaking of colonialism, all these things lead back to the central idea of

decolonizing theory. Without all of the different opinions, thoughts, viewpoints, etc., the

knowledge that we possess would be so extremely limited that we would never be able to

understand the other individual. It is so incredibly important to study this kind of theory

when discussing anthropology in order to grasp all types of understandings. If we only

had the white, old, male, narrative that once made up our history books, we would never

be able to grasp what life was like for the women pioneers or conquistadors or more

importantly, the people suffering because of them. It is imperative that we include all

discussions of theory when surrounding the overarching topic of anthropology so as to

not limit our understanding to the first authoritative voice that passes over our book

chapters.
Works Cited

- Nader, Laura. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained From Studying Up.”

Reinventing Anthropology, 1972, pp. 284–311.

- Shahrokhi, Sholeh. “Lecture Outline: What is Theory?” Week 2 Outlined: Intro to

Anthro Theory, 2022.

- Mahmood, Saba. “Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some

Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt.” 2006, pp. 31-71.

- Abu-Lughod. “Writing Against Culture.” Recapturing Anthropology: Working in

the Present, 1991, pp. 137-162.