Anthros, are you citing Clifford Geertz for coining the phrase “Deep Hanging Out?”

Well, that’s wrong.

"Deep Hanging Out" comes from Chicano poet-anthropologist Renato Rosaldo. (Thread) 1/

I just saw a student credit Geertz for this and so I looked this up.

Sure enough, the #1 hit says Geertz. No shade to cyborganthropology; Geertz wrote a NY Review of Books piece titled “Deep Hanging Out” (1998) but never mentions Rosaldo. 2/

Geertz does credit James Clifford. (Aside: he also credits Clifford for “contact zones” when the term comes from Mary Louise Pratt. Isn't this exhausting?). 3/

In fact, Rosaldo coined this phrase in 1994. Clifford himself cites Rosaldo. Here are some possible citations you can use if you cite this phrase: 4/

1) Rosaldo, R. 1994. “Anthropology and ‘the Field’.” Conference held at Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz. February, 18-19.

2) Rosaldo cited in Clifford (1996:5). “Anthropology and/as Travel,” Etnofoor9, no. 2 (1996): 5–15.

5/

3) Rosaldo cited in Clifford, 1997. “Spatial Practices” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Eds. Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson. UC Press. p. 219. 6/

Why does it matter?

It matters because citational histories and Latinx erasure matter. (see also C. Smith Cite Black Women https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/ ). 7/

It matters personally to me because I saw revolutionary possibility in anthropological methods through Renato’s teaching that I never saw in The Interpretation of Cultures. I’d had a lot of white male anthro professors before I stumbled into his class & thought “yes, finally!” 8/

Coming from him “deep hanging out” was not voyeuristic & invasive (deep extraction) but a necessarily relational process of holding knowledge & the techniques of its production together. It wasn’t masterful but humble, convinced of the power of what others held as ‘mundane’... 8/

... and pretty much always willing to laugh at itself.

Rosaldo was a feminist and his deep hanging out was situated (Haraway) and partial (Strathern)—making for a different kind of culture and a different kind of truth. 9/

Related: I just read Genetic Ancestry (Torres Colón & Benn Torres) which makes an incredible argument about what might happen if we locate anthropology’s genealogy in Firmin instead of Boas. https://www.routledge.com/Genetic-Ancestry-Our-Stories-Our-Pasts/Torres-Colon/p/book/9780367026240

See also: The Decanonizing Anthropology Syllabus; https://footnotesblog.com/2019/02/15/decanonizing-anthropology/comment-page-1/; The DecanoniZINE https://footnotesblog.com/2020/06/11/the-decanonizine/; and decades upon decades of Faye Harrison's scholarship https://anthro.illinois.edu/directory/profile/fvharrsn 11/ (forgot to number 10)

Their point, which is mine here too, we can make different futures for ourselves by attending to different pasts.

Let’s see what happens if we align ‘deep hanging out’ with Latinx feminist poetic-politics & not with Geertz’ (Levi-Strauss’) interpretative symbolic cultures. 12/

These differences may be subtle, but they are real and important.

tl/dr: Don’t cite Clifford Geertz for Deep Hanging Out. Cite Renato Rosaldo (full citations above). 13/Fin

Ug! Fell into the trap I'm critiquing, citing Haraway & Strathern above. Renato was in conversation with them, especially Haraway/Santa Cruz. But here's the reading list from his Cultural Citizenship syllabi (2006) to give a better sense of where "deep hanging out" took him/us.