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“Extreme Ethnography: France and the Exploration of North Africa”

University of Washington (April 7, 2014)

A central theme in my research was the French construction of ethnographic representations of North African peoples. While the French experience in North Africa routinely employed disguises to avoid attracting attention, not until recently did I begin to pay attention to the extremes to which they were willing to go, or what this said about the times in which they were conducted. What connects their antipathy and paranoia about Morocco and Moroccans, I began to wonder, and the legacy of French social science? What can a consideration of their narratives teach us about the perils and pitfalls of studying the other? This lecture seeks to answer these questions.