Indigenising Anthropology with Guattari and Deleuze by Barbara Glowczewski
Reviewed by James Perez
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 1
Excerpt | Anthropologist Barbara Glowczewski has been conducting fieldwork with indigenous people around the world, focusing largely on the Warlpiri of Australia, since the late 1970s. Indigenising Anthropology with Guattari and Deleuze is a collection of essays written by Glowczewski that spans over four decades. The French scholars Pierre-Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze are included in the title as Glowczewski was enrolled in seminars with the two men while conducting her early work at the University of Paris. Hence, the ideologies of these two French academics assist in informing the direction of the research. The fourteen essays by Glowczewski are organized into five different sections and follow a chronological trajectory beginning from the early 1980s to the late 2010s. This structure provides snapshots regarding different eras of anthropological research (how fieldwork was conducted and the different theoretical lenses through which people were viewed) and also speaks to how the Warlpiri have changed over time. The text, in its entirety, is currently relevant as grounded theory and postcolonialism are becoming more and more prevalent within many fields of academia. Ethnographic research is focusing more on creating theories from the data collected (rather than applying theories to data), allowing narratives to speak for themselves, and providing a way for once silent and minority voices to be heard in the traditional Western world. Hence, the assortment of essays by Glowczewski serves as a starting point to discuss where academic research has been, where it currently is, and gestures towards the possibilities of future work.
Key words | Indigenous people, Aboriginal Culture, Warlpiri, Australia, Dreaming, Rhizome, Anthropology, Ethnography, Western Modernity, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari
James Perez (jperez@coloradomesa.edu) is Assistant Professor in the Mass Communication Department at Colorado Mesa University, USA. He completed his PhD at the University of California, San Diego, which focuses on language use within reality television courtroom programs. His current research interests focus on linguistics as related to law, public relations, and gender.
MLA Citation for this Book Review:
Perez, James. Review of Indigenising Anthropology with Guattari and Deleuze by Barbara Glowczewski. Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 20 March. 2024, pp. 3.7–3.11, https://ellids.com/archives/2024/03/6.1-Perez.pdf.