On Academic Foucauldian-dramaturgy and Modernity in Melanesia

Abstract

This short paper offers a critical reflection on the uses of Michel Foucault's ideas and the notion ofLet me make clear from the outset that in what follows I differentiate sharply between Foucault himself and the ways his ideas are applied by so many anthropologists -especially those writing about Melanesian life-worlds. As for Foucault himself, I find his writings limited within the compass of his own inquiry and by no means do I take him as an authority on the matters of power, epistemology, sexuality, the 'hermeneutics of the self', etc., in the context of the history of (principally Western) European life-worlds, their political configurations, and so on. The ethnographic applications of Foucault's formulations in the context of Melanesia that I am familiar with come from accomplished ethnographers and scholars (e.g

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