For inquiries on this reading group please contact Batu Kaya at batu.kaya@mail.mcgill.ca or Hallie Wells at halliewells@gmail.com.

This reading group is framed around a set of questions: What are the relations between anthropology and speculation — meaning, are there ways of speculating anthropologically, and/or of anthropologizing speculatively? What kinds of commitments — ethical, theoretical, and otherwise — have undergirded past forms of speculative anthropology or anthropological speculation (which are never quite past)? And what future possibilities (which are never only future) might we imagine for these endeavours, which are deeply embedded in the real lives of real people as they ask how things might be otherwise? What can a deeper engagement with the meanings and applications of speculation reveal about anthropology as a scholarly discipline versus a communal undertaking? How does speculative anthropology critique and contribute to the ways we envision the field, our subjects, and anthropological methods in general?