Theory in Furs

Was will die Anthropologie? Freuds analysis of masochism can serve as a lens with which to explore the longstanding anthropological interest in powerless or disenfranchised people. Recent anthropological work can be examined not only in the terms encouraged by its own diegesis as a relation between anthropologist and the powerless but also as elements in a constellation that includes anthropology as a discipline and capitalism. Exploration of the libidinal structure within which our discipline has taken shapethat is to say, the structure that gives not just possibility and meaning but also pleasure to the practice of anthropologycan shed light on the nature of the pleasure that anthropologists derive from identification with the powerless.