Beyond “Good Politics, Unspecified”

“Politics” has long been a source of attachment in anthropological analysis—as an ethnographic object and as a signal of virtue. Yet politics often remains black boxed. Why? Explanations that appeal to person-centered meanings in ethnography are only partial. This article points to an unspecified core at the center of the anthropology of politics: the presuppositions and commitments of the author. Terming this “politics, unspecified,” I propose a strategy of specifying political heuristics. This practice employs decolonial citation and experimentation to clarify presuppositions about what activities, sites, and aims count as politics and to create space for reflecting on author commitments. I demonstrate this by interrogating politics, unspecified in my past research on psychotherapeutic care in Russia. A braid of poststructural theory, Black political philosophy, and Savannah Shange’s Progressive Dystopia creates a constellation of concepts that helps me specify my political heuristics. Through such an exercise, we anthropologists may not only deepen the anthropology of politics but also better meet the political urgencies of the day. More importantly, we can return to some of anthropology’s legacies of engagement with the world and with each other in politically charged times, using our scholarship as a basis for building solidarity across difference.