Finding indigenous critique in the archives: Thoughts on Didier Fassin’s ‘The Endurance of Critique’

Attending to the production and reception of critique produced by anthropologists’ interlocutors, in the field and in the archives, can help shore up the project of critical ethnography called for by Didier Fassin. A comparison of two moments of critique initiated by Fayiz Sayigh on behalf of Palestinians struggling against Israeli colonialism highlights the ways that the same kinds of critique of power gain traction in different institutional and historical contexts. The expansion of critical ethnography to include a historical ethnography of critique itself, tracing the effects of critique or its dissipation in the past, would yield further insights into the nature and power (or weakness) of the practice of critique today.