Expert Witness: Notes toward Revisiting the Politics of Listening:
Asale Angel-Ajani
Through an exploration of what it means to conduct fieldwork in a large European prison, this article explores both the promises and the limitations of the form of anthropological engagement some have called "witnessing." I call attention to the ways anthropological witnessing is written about within the discipline and argue that the notion of "witnessing" is largely an attempt to establish the authority of the ethnographer, without ever having to enter into that long-standing debate. Finally, I attempt to grapple with the necessity—despite the growing silence in the discipline—for an anthropology that is steadfast in its commitment to what some have called "activist anthropology" and that recognizes the complex ways in which ethnographic experience is rendered.