Pigmei, europei e altri selvaggi

Examples of exoticism and symbols of primitive men for many, the Pigmies came into contact with Europeans in the nineteenth century. They were observed and ‘measured’ by scientists, exhibited in theatres and zoos together with apes. During the twentieth century, however, anthropologists began to study their world against Western prejudices: certain elements of the aesthetic reflection of the Pigmies, for example, is no less refined than that of Michelangelo, and their art of the division of prey excels in complexity. For Stefano Allovio, reflecting on the marginality of the Pigmies also meant reflecting on the marginality of anthropologists within intellectual communities where resistance to the many different possible approaches to ‘scientific activity’ remains strong. Just as the Pigmies deserve better recognition, anthropologists too – much more like the Pigmies than one would imagine – are entitled to request greater acknowledgment by the academies and halls of learning. Acting on the frontiers, peripheries and in the margins between cultures, the natural habitat of anthropology, does not mean being condemned to insignificance and marginality: culture feeds off interdependence and, far from being the inheritance of a few, is much more universally distributed and divided than one might think.