Speculative Anthropology

Anthropologys keen interest in fiction can be traced to the disciplines so-called literary turn in the 1980s and 90s, instigated by James Clifford and George Marcus groundbreaking anthology Writing Culture (1986). But the close connection between anthropology and literature goes back to pioneer anthropologists like Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Lévi-Strauss, who were also prominent writers. The discussion continues, and literary anthropology is now a well-established sub-field that addresses literary studies as well as creative writing. Yet, anthropologys courting of literature has largely remained unanswered. Some famous authors have a background in anthropology, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. Le Guin and Amitav Ghosh, but few - one of the exceptions being Ghosh - have reflected on the relationship between the two practices, let alone consciously attempted to fuse them.

Speculative Anthropology: A Literary History of Contamination explores the intersection between anthropology and literature from the literary side, with the perspective of the writer, rather than the critic. The title is inspired by Argentinian author Juan José Saers tentative definition of fiction as speculative anthropology and Ghanaian British philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiahs similarly tentative proposal for a literary tradition of contamination, going back to Roman playwright Terences fusion of comedy and tragedy. In this pioneer monograph, Oscar Hemer reinterprets Appiahs contamination as genre crossing and mixing, not between different literary genres but between fiction and discursive forms of writing - anthropological as well as philosophical and historical. His tentative canon of contamination explored in this volume includes, among others, Montesquieus Persian Letters, the self-ethnographies of Michel Leiris and ةdouard Glissant, Jorge Luis Borgess fictional essays, César Airas freaked-out ethnography, Chris Krauss theoretical fiction, Zoë Wicombs spectral South African history - and the exemplary philosophy-by-fiction of J.M. Coetzee.