“Get off my Ladder, Don’t Bring Shadow upon Me”: Images of “Blackness” in Colombian Anthropology 1930-1970

Abstract

This reflection article proposes to make an archaeological excavation of five decades (1930-1970) in the history of the anthropological discipline in Colombia in order to expose, in an exploratory way, the different ethnographic views on the “other-black”. This research was conducted through the contrapúntal historical archaeology, a theoretical-methodological proposal that involves discussing two or more interpretative perspectives, ways of looking, translating and representing that dispute the file, the locus of enunciation and the senses of the same category. In this regard, the narratives, translations, and representations that produced the Colombian anthropology on that “other-black” are visited, delving into the work of La minería del hambre: Condoto y la Chocó Pacífico (1971) from the Caribbean anthropologist Aquiles Escalante. Thus, it will be demonstrated, the regime of truth, the criteria of hierarchy, exclusion and the colonial and racist valuation that operate within the Colombian anthropological field in its epistemic and praxiological indissoluble horizons.