Resumen de The Social Sciences between Importation and Reappropriation: Anthropology and other Disciplines
Drawing on postcolonial debates about the decolonization of anthropology in the Maghreb and the Middle East, I distinguish between “importation” [al-iqtibās] and “reappropriation” [al-tawṭīn] as the two ways that have been used to approach Western?/colonial knowledge in the region. Importation in an earlier form considered the imported knowledge finite, to be adopted without ado. In its new form, however, it is not averse to change, but it follows in the footsteps of the Euro-American innovators. Being open to innovations coming from elsewhere is, in itself, a good ferment for thinking. Yet it should not stand in the way of a creative striving towards an autonomous new tradition of anthropological discourse, which can be achieved through reappropriation, which I use to describe the way in which formerly colonized subjects engage from a position of both subject and object with the knowledge produced about them by colonial scholarship. Using the example of anthropology, which was rejected as a result of the call to decolonize knowledge from European hegemony, I contend that the decolonization of the social sciences entails an undertaking to reshape, rather than reject, such knowledge as critics consider to be inherently colonial. I argue that the task of ridding the social sciences of their colonial imprint, and rebuilding them with the aim of producing an autonomous discourse can be achieved through anthropology. We will only be able to free ourselves of intellectual dependence if we succeed in decolonizing this field and achieving its autonomy
