Week 10: Repugnant others

ANTH 3623: Reconciling justice with anthropology (Semester 1, 2026)
May 4, 2026

Main reading: Rosa and Bonilla (2017); Rosa and Díaz (2020)

Other reading: da Silva and Larkins (2019)

Agenda for class

  1. Poll on extra-time options for Week 13 presentations Go to https://menti.com and use code 6515 9337. Vote for one time that you could attend if your presentation was not during the Week 13 class.

  2. Discussion questions

    • What is “dehumanization”? What causes dehumanization? What are the most important or significant kinds of dehumanization?
    • If the nature of colonial domination is ontological, what does “equality” mean? Is equality a meaningful standard of justice if we accept Rosa and Diaz’s argument?
    • What is anthropology’s contribution to the specific kinds of dehumanization we see now, or that we have identified as most important? Does anthropology need to change?

  3. Writing workshop

    • Sharing our progress; describing the writing process; identifying friction
    • Discussing ways to make progress
    • Making plans for next week

References

Rosa, Jonathan, and Yarimar Bonilla. 2017. “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity, and Unsettling Anthropology.” American Ethnologist 44 (2): 201–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12468.
Rosa, Jonathan, and Vanessa Díaz. 2020. “Raciontologies: Rethinking Anthropological Accounts of Institutional Racism and Enactments of White Supremacy in the United States.” American Anthropologist 122 (1): 120–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13353.
Silva, Antonio José Bacelar da, and Erika Robb Larkins. 2019. “The Bolsonaro Election, Antiblackness, and Changing Race Relations in Brazil.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 24 (4): 893–913. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12438.