Journeying Between Desire and Anthropology

A Story in Suspense

Bibliographic Data

ID18988937
AuthorsAnita Lundberg (0000-0002-0271-4715, UNSW Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume11
Issue1
Pages24-41
Publication date2000-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Australian Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-8811 • E-ISSN: 1757-6547
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1835-9310.2000.tb00261.x
OpenAlexW2103596255
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited29

Anthropology is a discipline based on the motif of the journey and ‘the myth of the eternal return’. This is the journey out to the ‘other’in order to return to constitute ‘self, and this movement is a movement of desire. The desire is for wholeness, for self‐presence, for a unified self. It is a desire for origins. And this desire is evident in anthropological practices as it is in myths and fairytales—all tell stories that speak of the desire for a separate, an original, self. Yet ‘the myth of the eternal return’reveals that the enactment of the story is itself originating. The origin is not a thing to be hunted down and appropriated—it is no thing. Like the archetypes which flow through stories, it is alive in the telling. The story I tell in this paper is about my own desires. It speaks of the desire to undergo the rite of passage of anthropology, and of how this journey was interrupted by the anthropologist who always journeys before me. And yet. it is through the inextricable relations with the writings of the “other‘ anthropologist that alluring moments of different desiring are fleetingly revealed. In the end. my relations with anthropology tell of a paradox: of the desire for a transcendental journey in order to constitute self and the seductive desire for immersion—to lose self, the story remains in suspense

Aesthetics · Archetype · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Mythology · Reflexive pronoun · Rite · Rite of passage · Self · Sociology · Transcendental number · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Philosophy

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