Maja Nazaruk offers a panoramic view of Vincent Crapanzano’s anthropologically-poetic thinking about the ineffable aspects of life such as otherness, the outer limits of the body, and chthonic pain. In her view, the signature summation of Crapanzano’s work is to be found in his spell-working ethnographies from Morocco, South Africa, Algeria, and France as well as the United States of America. By parsing the first sections of his opus on imaginary horizons, the Polish scholar unveils the anthropologist’s impulse to resort to the rhetorical device of literary slippage—shifting meaning and the indeterminacy of meaning, in his intention to convey the “irreality of the (native’s) imaginary.” Slippage is the pivot that makes Crapanzano switch between alterity (how the native feels foreign) and the themes of the body and trauma (that are coincidentally perceived as being foreign even to the persons to whom they belong). By bringing them to the common denominator of inquiry-driven prose poetry that underscores cultural critique and literary anthropology, Crapanzano offers a contemplation of the undefined nature of human existence. Delving into the problem of signification and of substance in the works of Judith Butler, Cathy Caruth, Elaine Scarry, Talal Assad, Mariella Pandolfi, Terence Turner, Johannes Herder, and Lacan, takes on special relevance.



Maja Nazaruk explores Vincent Crapanzano’s poetic anthropology, focusing on themes like otherness, the body, and trauma.



Vincent Crapanzano is Anthropology’s philosopher – a vocation he has pursued in a uniquely eclectic, and rigorous, style. His work engages with psychology (psychoanalytic, phenomenological), literature (poetics, discourse analysis), and ethnography. The latter, pursued over a long career, in Morocco, South Africa, France and North America, has developed a signature approach: intimate cross-cultural attentiveness conjoined with broad theoretical questioning. The result is always provocative and open-ended. The same can be said of Maja Nazaruk’s way with Crapanzano’s complexities – her “abstract embroidery” that connects scientific knowledge and poetry, anticipating a revitalized literary anthropology.



James Clifford, Author of The Predicament of Culture (1988), Routes (1997), and Returns (2012).