When reading Exceptional Violence, especially alongside the Murchison reading, I couldn’t help but break up my analyses into two distinct parts: the book’s content/main research and the formation/structure of the presentation of her argument. From the content perspective, I found her approach to be particularly well-structured as she centered around the theme of violence and continuously elaborated on the historical, social, economic, and political dimensions that impact its presence in contemporary Jamaica. I am familiar with Deborah Thomas from some of her other books and from her talk last semester. Her lifelong preoccupation in anthropology seems to be a commitment to the decolonization of the discipline as a whole. I noticed on several occasions that she referenced commonly used methods or assumptions that have been used in anthropology and how she was working against those tendencies in her own research in order to dispel stereotypes and biases associated with Jamaican culture.
I liked that she created her own framework through which she expected the reader to view her research. Thomas’ “reparations logic” allows the reader to better understand her goals of clarifying the connections (“conspiracies are uncovered, lies are revealed, facades fall away, and suddenly what everyone knew was true all along is finally legitimated.” (5)) and acknowledging accountability. This is the first of her many metaphors used to explain her unique perspective on the issue of violence in Jacks Hill Village. Another is her insistence on understanding “citizenship as a set of performances and practices directed at various state and non-state institutions or extraterritorial or extralegal networks…” (6) However, when reading this, my next question was: Who establishes what performances and practices are implicit in citizenship and how do they change? As anthropologists, we often find ourselves analyzing a force that acts upon a population but find it difficult to determine the source of said force.
In terms of Thomas’ main structure of her introduction and chapter 1, I was happy to see many of the themes presented in the Murchison reading. Although a book differs from a research proposal in many ways, there was still a pretty straightforward statement of the problem, lots of literature review, background, methodology, and even a general summary of her findings/chapter overview. If I’m honest, this is kinda a tough read. Her language and references required a lot of rereads and filtering of important information, but I was happy to see that anthropological data can be presented in more creative ways than simply in a journal article. Her incorporation of real stories and her connection to her informants made the reading more engaging. Now thinking of my own project, I know I will have to focus closely on finding relevant published material but am excited to see how I can incorporate literature or other creative sources into attempts to gain insight into my topic.