[Linganth] Charles Briggs on Unlearning

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
I interview Charles Briggs today on the CaMP blog.

https://campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb:
A provocative theoretical synthesis by renowned folklorist and
anthropologist Charles L. Briggs, *Unlearning* questions intellectual
foundations and charts new paths forward. Briggs argues, through an
expansive look back at his own influential works as well as critical
readings of the field, that scholars can disrupt existing social and
discourse theories across disciplines when they collaborate with theorists
whose insights are not constrained by the bounds of scholarship.

Eschewing narrow Eurocentric modes of explanation and research foci, Briggs
brings together colonialism, health, media, and psychoanalysis to rethink
classic work on poetics and performance that revolutionized linguistic
anthropology, folkloristics, media studies, communication, and other
fields. Beginning with a candid memoir that credits the mentors whose
disconcerting insights prompted him to upend existing scholarly approaches,
Briggs combines his childhood experiences in New Mexico with his work in
graduate school, his ethnography in Venezuela working with Indigenous
peoples, and his contemporary work—which is heavily weighted in medical
folklore.

*Unlearning* offers students, emerging scholars, and veteran researchers
alike a guide for turning ethnographic objects into provocations for
transforming time-worn theories and objects of analysis into sources of
scholarly creativity, deep personal engagement, and efforts to confront
unconscionable racial inequities. It will be of significant interest to
folklorists, anthropologists, and social theorists and will stimulate
conversations across these disciplines.
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