In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno warn against aesthetic forms that produce passive political subjects malleable to authoritarian projects (1987). They locate the origins of this deceptive aesthetics to the Enlightenment. The papers on this panel find distinct genealogies in the production of different state aesthetic projects, focusing on how these distinct political projects mobilize aesthetics in different ways, offering distinct conceptions of political subjectivity and governance. Within an emergent anthropology of political aesthetics, the prominence of ideological performativity has been specifically noted in relation to the constitution of political subjects (Aptel 2005, Askew 2002, Kaur 2005, Roy 2007, Werbner et. al 2014). In diverse geographical contexts, we look at how political movements and regimes relate their political projects to specific aesthetic formations. Cults of personality are constructed around sexualized figures of personalist desire; infrastructure and architecture not only represent, but are part of the active transformation of the citizen into the revolutionary subject; the spectacles of gatherings, demonstrations, and marches are presented as performative interventions into the workings of global capitalism. In these diverse contexts, form and content are interwoven•the medium is the message. This relationship between form and content is perhaps most visible in the spirit of high modernism that pervaded Soviet architecture. The built environment was meant to reflect the authoritarian domination of nature by science and social and economic progress (Scott 1998). The high modernist project was aimed at social engineering through a physical environment that emphasized a processual movement toward the creation of the New Man. Aesthetics were part of a utopian project with the power to transform its inhabitants into a new political subject. Built space became an ideological conduit of the state. The pedagogical spirit of high modernism has much to reach out outside of the USSR and the sphere of architectural imaginaries. Populist and mass politics often rally around figures that are deified and reified as incomparable•the only true representatives of the people. The physical appearance and style of these figures come to be an intensified focal point for a political gaze hyper-attuned to the discourse, rhetoric, and dispositions employed by this beloved object of their attention. Together, we interrogate the interstices between aesthetics and ideology in distinct political and regional contexts: Through investigating the spectacular and mass actions of the AKP supporters (demonstrations, rallies, campaigns), we analyze how populist subjects see their political acts as productive of economic values and threatening messages for political enemies; reflecting on the architecture of East Germany, we contemplate how built environment imbues citizens with notions of community and collective political identity; in Guatemala, we see how naming and ideology are intertwined; in Argentina, we elucidate how cults of personality conflate political prowess with sexual desirability and feminine vulnerability. Raymond Williams expressed interest in the aesthetic manifestations of political, social, and economic processes (1977). Following in his footsteps, our turn towards examining aesthetics in the sphere of political projects furthers transdisciplinary inquiries into the relationship between emotion, affect, performance, superstructure, and ideology.

Widowhood and Political Performances of Vulnerability

Sensing the Political: Aesthetics, Imaginaries, and Infrastructures

technical paper

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Julia Fiermann

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Presentations

Widowhood and Political Performances of Vulnerability