"Anthropology's reverb is the sound of humans, listening." (Almost Stefan Helmreich 2016)

“The letter sequence "v-e-r-b" in reverberate might make you think at first of such word-related brethren as proverb, verbal, and verbose, all of which derive from the Latin noun verbum, meaning "word." In fact, reverberate comes from a much different source: the Latin verb verberare, meaning "to whip, beat, or lash," which is related to the noun verber, meaning "rod." Reverberate entered the English language in the 15th century, and one of its early meanings was "to beat, drive, or cast back." By the early 1600s, it began to appear in contexts associated with sound that repeats or returns the way an echo does.”[1]

Anthropology reverberates in the lives of its practitioners and beyond. It drives them to new places, teaches them new crafts, leads them to undertake personal transformations, and generates works that can subtly shift the worlds we inhabit. Through ethnography, they weaves words, images, sounds, and many other means between and throughout humble media interventions.

The books gathered under this banner are publishings rather than publications. Some began as shared field books, part of a graphic ethnographic workflow. Others are shared reflections on event-based research processes (call them exhibitions or workshops). Some are explorations of forms that would not find their way through a conventional press. All of them are experiments in publishing and in anthropology.

Stefan Helmreich analyzes the rhetorical loops that bring scientists to speak, draw, and listen to gravity waves. He has a luminous sentence to bring it all together: “Gravity’s reverb is the sound of humans, listening.” (2013) Thinking of anthropology through its reverb effect leads us to turn inward to understand more about the outward impact of our practices. Yet, this is far from postmodern navel-gazing—it is much more a reappraisal of the fundamental sophistic process that can cut across the philosophical dominion of critical theories that have indeed run out of steam. It’s no longer enough to convince through airtight arguments. The time has come for radical listening, for holding spaces for resonating alternatives that are not emanating from the impulses of a bunch of unimaginative villains.

Asserting, declaring: that is the etymological origin of the word “verb.” Re-verbing anthropology as verb-ing again anthropology suggests to reaffirm its actual effect on the world, and a move to stop hiding behind the notion that we are “only” describing things. We do describe things, as they appear to us. As we do this, we are broadcasting something important about ourselves. We carry with us other lineages of fieldworks and other life experiences, and with them, the atmospheres that have transformed us and our kin. They seep into our work and conversations, dark or vibrant, hollow or joyful.

Why would we let anthropology burn, again?