Oral Presentation Session

Reviewed by: Society for Cultural Anthropology

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Primary Theme: Inequality

Secondary Theme: Anthropocene

(3-1125) Ethnographies of the Extreme

This panel critically engages with the concept of “extreme anthropologies” (Kuldova 2017) in terms of theories, field sites, and method(ologies). By grappling with the boundaries of extremity in arguably extreme times, panelists explore the potential for “the extreme” to clarify, subvert, and even dismantle oppressive power structures that pervade everyday life from ethnographic encounters.

Idealistic extremity is revealed in the navigating of everyday life within our neoliberal world of bureaucracy (Graeber 2015; Gupta 2012). Extremity makes sensible the often invisible politics that underlay the processes and aesthetics of our social worlds (Ranciere 2004). Extremity can take shape in engagements with hyperobjects (Morton 2013)—entities that exceed spatiotemporal specificity, such as conceptualizations of nuclear deterrence, interplanetary encounters, or global atmospheric politics. And by examining the boundaries of the extreme, we consider ways in which life is lived “otherwise” (Povinelli 2011), either through relegation to or by carving out seemingly extreme “exilic spaces” at the edges of capitalism (Grubačić and O’Hearn 2016).

Further, panelists grapple with extremity in the production of ethnographic knowledge, in their site selections and method(ologies). By engaging in experimental and/or multimodal ethnographic methods and presentation (Collins et al. 2017; Elliott and Culhane 2017), we reveal how engagements with the extreme may serve as what Foucault (2005) described in his Hermeneutics of the Subject as “paraskeuē.” In other words, we ask: how might articulating “the extreme” as a site or method for research serve as our “ethnographic equipment” with which we use to do “work” on ourselves as anthropologists?

Organizer(s)

• Courtney Cecale

  PhD Candidate
  Uni

Chair(s)

• Courtney Cecale

  PhD Candidate
  Uni

Presenter(s)

• Courtney Cecale

  PhD Candidate
  Uni

• Martin Pfeiffer

  PhD Student
  University of New Mexico

• Lindsey Feldman

  Assistant Professor
  University of Memphis

• Michael Oman-Reagan

  Memorial University

Organizer(s)

• Taylor Genovese

  Ph.D. student
  Arizona State University

Chair(s)

• Taylor Genovese

  Ph.D. student
  Arizona State University

Presenter(s)

• Taylor Genovese

  Ph.D. student
  Arizona State University

• kevin shaw

  independent researcher

• Deana Weibel

  Grand Valley State University

Presentations:

• 4:15 PM - 4:30 PM

  Waiting for Disaster: Working Through the Politics of Disaster Management
  Courtney Cecale – Uni
• 4:30 PM - 4:45 PM

  “i wanted to draw a penis here but my best friend said this place is sacred”: Nuclear Semiotics in Spaces of Official Nuclear Heritage
  Martin Pfeiffer – University of New Mexico
• 4:45 PM - 5:00 PM

  Fighting wildfires with prisoners: the methodological, ethical, and theoretical implications of extreme fieldwork in Arizona’s Inmate Wildfire Program
  Lindsey R. Feldman – University of Memphis
• 5:00 PM - 5:15 PM

  Summoning AI in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
  Michael P. Oman-Reagan – Memorial University
• 5:15 PM - 5:30 PM

  In the Shadow of Despots: Extremism, Zealotry, and Abolitionist Anthropology
  Taylor Robert Genovese – Arizona State University
• 5:30 PM - 5:45 PM

  "It’s A Lot More Impressive When You Do It with Control": Multimodal Dynamics of Skill, Progress, and Self-Management in Aerial Arts Training
  kevin louis shaw – independent researcher
• 5:45 PM - 6:00 PM

  The Overview Effect and the Ultraview Effect : How Extreme Experiences in/of Outer Space Displace and Magnify Religious Beliefs in Astronauts
  Deana L. Weibel – Grand Valley State University