Prolegomenon to a theory of the anthropology of images: toward a new anthropological "image of thought"

投稿日: 2012/04/21 12:20:06

Keywords: image, becoming, affect, theory, photography, ethno-cinema

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In this article I propose to rethink anthropology through the concept of “image” developed by Bergson, Deleuze and Iwaki. The “image” conceived in this way would include our experiences (for example, those of ethnographic fieldwork) as well as (audio)visual images, and images aroused by spoken or written words. Commenting on ethnographic photographs by Malinowski, Bateson and Lévi-Strauss, as well as “ethno-cinema” by Flaherty, Rouch, Gardner and Video nas aldeias, I consider that doing anthropology is to work with “images” in their “being” and in their “becoming”. The anthropology of images would be a conceptual machine to facilitate the continuous movement between words and images, between theory and practice, and between science and art— movement which seems to me to be crucial for the anthropology of today and of tomorrow.