Experiments with Empire

Anthropology and Fiction in the French Atlantic

Justin Izzo author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Duke University Press

Published:7th Jun '19

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Experiments with Empire cover

In Experiments with Empire Justin Izzo examines how twentieth-century writers, artists, and anthropologists from France, West Africa, and the Caribbean experimented with ethnography and fiction in order to explore new ways of knowing the colonial and postcolonial world. Focusing on novels, films, and ethnographies that combine fictive elements and anthropological methods and modes of thought, Izzo shows how empire gives ethnographic fictions the raw materials for thinking beyond empire's political and epistemological boundaries. In works by French surrealist writer Michel Leiris and filmmaker Jean Rouch, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, and others, anthropology no longer functions on behalf of imperialism as a way to understand and administer colonized peoples; its relationship with imperialism gives writers and artists the opportunity for textual experimentation and political provocation. It also, Izzo contends, helps readers to better make sense of the complicated legacy of imperialism and to imagine new democratic futures.

"Experiments with Empire deserves an audience beyond the academic. Izzo makes some perceptive points about how seeing the connections between ethnography and fiction can help us reimagine the world."  -- Emilie de Brigard * The Arts Fuse *
“The book’s scope is bold and impressive…. Izzo’s study is an important contribution to research on the French Atlantic and on speculative forms in general, and it offers a fresh look at the crossings between ethnography and fiction that go beyond questions of truth and veracity, mimicry and resistance.” -- Christina Kullberg * New West Indian Guide *

ISBN: 9781478004004

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 408g

296 pages