Carole McGranahan and Gina athena Ulysse
Defined as assembly, compilation, enlisting, regrouping (of ideas, things, people, spirits; for example, fè yon rasanblaj, do a gathering, a ceremony, a protest), rasanblaj’s very linguistic formation subverted and resisted colonial oppression (M. Condé). Consider that article 16 of the 1685 French Code noir forbade enslaved of different masters to gather at any time under any circumstances. Its etymology and significations index the histories through which it emerged.
GAU: What, if anything, are you working on that would be of great interest to the anthronow readership? Remember Life is a Thing. At this point in your career, I am interested in learning more about the work you are and have been doing across so many different fields and platforms. I am particularly curious about how
you would describe or characterize aspects of your professional work and/or life as a gathering process
To begin, fill in the blanks below however you wish using these words as inspiration—prompts, if you will—thinking about rasanblaj in any of the capacities noted above.
Ideas… are constant. a soundtrack to the day. Things to make, things to write, things to be. Musings about the world, grounded in fear, excitement, curiosity, drawing energy from people’s refusals to fully surrender home, self, community. Thoughts about ethnography and theory and the storied minutiae of the overlapping articles and books I am writing and reading. Poetry. short-form genres. Tibetan buddhist practices that meet and exceed the needs of the present. The body and its strength and grace; the mind and its power and elegance; the heart and its capacity and depth. and somewhere in the mix: birds, music and thoughts of being free.
Things… are biographical. My house is full of books and art and things that inspire me and make me think and feel and grow. spices and jams, coffee mugs, tiny bowls. Things that smell good. Plants. Carpets. Textiles. Colors. Things that remind me of people, that tell a story of a life, that tell a story of connection. Things that trace a material outline of family scattered about the world, an outline filled in with imagination, memory and conversation. This thing called life requires the tangible and the abstract to come into being. It requires things to hold in our hands and things to hold in our bodies. both of these are needed.
People… are why I became an anthropologist. I wanted to learn the many ways of being in the world, about possibilities for being human other than those practices which I inherited. I wanted to learn these through knowing people, not only by reading or thinking about them. In the next town, in another part of my country, on the other side of the world, each of these are places where I sought out people and stories, trying to make sense of the world. Trying to make sense of who I was and could be in the world, of who we are and can be in it.
Spirits… protect and guide us. Their temporality and magnanimity and selflessness are sustaining. They shape what I write and how and when I write it.
GAU: Tell us how you choose the work you do.
My research topics emerge from community, in direct response to what matters as people express themselves, share their hopes and fears or gather in ceremony or protest. I mean this seriously; my work is rooted in what matters in the community of my research rather than only what matters in the academy. With anthropological and historic research there is always something new to know, new to ask, new to write in relation to a singular topic. Given that, I am sometimes surprised by the writings that unexpectedly emerge from my research. In seeking to understand the world as people actually experience it, we encounter suffering and radiance. as we bring people’s stories to the world, we make decisions about how to best share their details, their heart and their lessons. Earning the trust to be a teller of other people’s stories; and honoring that trust is a humbling responsibility.
GAU: Given your interdisciplinary approach, do you have a favorite form?
Lately I have been playing with flash ethnography, asking what insights brevity offers us for the current political moment. The flash genre is short, roughly 750 words, an ethnographic essay in full: beginning, middle and end. It stands on its own, rather than existing as a fragment from a longer piece of work. My embrace of this short form takes place alongside my writing of books; this feels comforting rather than ironic. I am intrigued by the resonance and divergence of the two endeavors. both forms have power in them. We hail brevity for its quick illumination; we choose length for the layered, luxurious way stories can unfold in context, argument and detail. We assess what is needed and write from there. Our language, our sensibilities, our concerns in and over time—they resonate, they depart, they give rise, and they do so in a range of genres that invite in multiple audiences and readers. Why would just one genre be suffi- cient? What effects do the forms we choose have in the world?
GAU: What could you do without?
War. Killing. Genocide. Hate. bigotry. Disingenuity. Indifference. Cruelty.
GAU: Any commitment to our futures?
Yes, again and again. To my children and all the children. To a future that transcends the limitations of the present. When things feel dark, I find optimism. someone, somewhere, is making art. someone, somewhere, is making music.
GAU: Do tell us, what have you been gathering?
People. I have been bringing people together. In person. In writing. In spirit. The energy of people coming together, of their knowledge and experience and lifetimes, creates something new. I find this energizing for the work that needs to be done. I find this energizing for thinking through what comes next. Creating, responding, being. I gather people.
Notes on Contributor
Carole McGranahan lives in the rocky Mountains and works in the Himalayas. she is a professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado. Contemporary Tibet is the focus of her research, conducted in and with the Tibetan community in exile. From Kathmandu and Dharamsala to new York City and Toronto, her research asks questions of empire, the production of history, the reproduction of the status quo, sovereignty and refusal, refugees, citizenship and asylum and impermanence as a buddhist component of Tibetan cultural and political life. Her publications include Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (Duke University Press, 2010), the edited volumes Imperial Formations (with ann stoler and Peter Perdue, sar Press, 2007), Ethnographies of U.S. Empire (with john Collins, Duke University Press, 2018) and Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment (Duke University Press, 2020). Currently, she is finishing a solo-authored book titled True Story: Ethnography, Refusal, and the Making of Theory and two edited volumes: The Tibet Reader (with lama jabb, Dechen Pemba, Dhondup Tashi rekjong and nicole Willock) and Ethics and Ethnography (with Erica Weiss). When possible, she writes by hand on small pieces of paper.