The Shattered Echo Chamber: Experiences of #AmAnth2016 in the Wake of the Election

From the Studio: Cultural Anthropology Responds to Trump

Photo by Zach Korb, licensed under CC BY NC.

As anthropologists convened for the 2016 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, just one week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, attendees and presenters expressed a range of reactions that could be seen, like fingerprints, on every aspect of the conference. From hardly surprised, shocked, despondent, and resistant to hopeful, shattered, tearful, and renewed, presenters radically rewrote and recrafted their papers and presentations to respond to how the election results shifted the context for their scholarship. Many conversations revolved around how we had moved from a hopeful to a hateful future, and around the urgent need to find hope again. The reflections collected in this Dialogues series are an attempt to capture this moment in Minneapolis, as anthropologists began to consider how to challenge the president-elect’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, and generally vicious invective and those whom his words have emboldened. This is a snapshot of a discipline in motion, reeling but also invigorated.

Posts in This Series

Gazing and Talking Back

Gazing and Talking Back

I disembarked from the plane to Minneapolis in the early evening of Tuesday, November 14, one day prior to the official kickoff of the 115th installment of the ... More

Silence and Privilege Renegotiated

Silence and Privilege Renegotiated

It is an understood fact that privilege and silence are strongly correlated. History tells us that those with racial, gendered, class, or religious power will i... More

The Private and the Public

The Private and the Public

Late last year, I initiated a petition at the University of Pennsylvania asking the university administration to “collectively condemn the increasingly dangerou... More

Postelection Shell Shock, Resilience, and the Dangers of Desensitization

Postelection Shell Shock, Resilience, and the Dangers of Desensitization

The world was rearranging itself around me while I processed words from a liquid-crystal display.—Ben Lerner On the morning of November 9, I woke in the predawn... More

What Do I Tell My Students?

What Do I Tell My Students?

As I attempted to put words to paper for my presentation at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, I could not shake the election. Inst... More

“Some of Us Have Memory”: On Shock, Race, and the Long History of Theorizing the Impossible

“Some of Us Have Memory”: On Shock, Race, and the Long History of Theorizing the Impossible

The annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is a moment to recharge and refresh; I always find great presentations featuring scholars w... More

Light Struck: On Stories, Art, and Work among the Broken Pieces

Light Struck: On Stories, Art, and Work among the Broken Pieces

I was weary when I set out for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and wearier still when I arrived. I had been excited to giv... More