Extreme Ethnography: France and the Exploration of North Africa

The Mediterranean Studies Forum

in collaboration with the Center for African Studies and French Culture Workshop

presents 

Professor Edmund Burke III (University of California at Santa Cruz)

"Extreme Ethnography: France and the Exploration of North Africa"

In the process of completing his new book, Edmund Burke became fascinated with the mindset and bodi ly practices of French explorers and early ethnogra phers of Morocco in the period. For the honor and glory of France, these men undertook lengthy study missions covering thousands of kilometers in the High Atlas Moun tains Traveling in disguise, often clad in rags, sometimes barefoot, they constantly feared being denounced as spies. Seen from the present, their behavior appears extreme if also heroic. Burke uses these explorers to raise questions about the fin-de-siècle politics and culture of the Third Republic and the madness that was French colonialism in its final paroxysm.

Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III is Research Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Cruz where he directs the Center for World History. He is the author of numerous books and articles including The Environment and World History, 1500-2000, ed. with K. L. Pomeranz, (University of California Press, 2009); Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics, ed. with D. Prochaska, (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (University of California Press, 2nd edition, 2005). He has recently completed The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam, 1890-1925 (under submission) from which this talk is derived.