I Am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power

I A M DY NA MITE

Writer and Auschwitz witness Primo Levi; refugee and engineer Ben Glaser; artist Stanley Spencer; Israeli ceramicist Rachel Silberstein; Friedrich Nietzsche, the dynamic philosopher. Who are they? What have they seen? What do they share? Freedom. Individuality. Existential power. The capacity and desire to live a life-project: to make one’s life one’s work. I Am Dynamite ignites an alternative theory of the self and will, wrapped up in a combustible assault upon scholarly convention. Asking why the real effort of constructing and living within an identity is so often overlooked, it examines the subjective experience of existing in the world, with the power to define and transform oneself. Nietzsche famously claimed that ‘an uninjurable, unburiable force is in me, something that gallops over rocks: it is called my Will’. Today, in contrast, we are taught to believe that social institutions determine the circumstances and scope of individual lives. But can we really write people out of the social power-equation, or subscribe to a dominant Foucauldian analytics that denies access to genuine truths and freedoms? Considering the trials and triumphs of five very different modern subjects, Nigel Rapport asks: can consciousness of being a self in the world enable control over one’s life within it? Calling for a renewed appreciation of the extraordinary within us all, this richly inventive work seeks to restore knowledge to its essential practical and moral aims – aiding and informing the lives we actually live. Nigel Rapport holds the Chair in Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His books include Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2000), The Trouble with Community (2002) and Transcendent Individual (Routledge, 1997). He has received awards from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

‘A brilliant summation of his arguments for bringing the individual closer to the centre of our anthropological concerns. … It is individuals – not society or history or circumstance – who make and unmake the world.’ Michael Jackson, from the Foreword

‘An important and contentious book. …It could stimulate a cult.’ Anthony Cohen, Principal of Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh

I AM DYNAMITE An alternative anthropology of power

Nigel Rapport

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