Decolonising scholarship in South African anthropology has met with an ingrained scepticism about ethnographic valorisations of forms of life that claim to be indigenous. This scepticism comes from a very long history of opposing ethnological essentialisms created in the colonial mode. I argue that the anxiety is misplaced, because decolonising ethnography positions the indigenous not as an essence but as a standpoint of critique. I go on to argue that decolonising work in anthropology affords new ways of configuring the gesture of ethnographic estrangement that lies at the heart of ethnography’s capacity to challenge existing conceptions of humanity and of the social forms that mediate its nature.

南非人类学的非殖民化奖学金遭到了人们对声称是土著人的生命形式的人种学价值的根深蒂固的怀疑。这种怀疑来自于在殖民模式下形成的反对民族学本质主义的悠久历史。我认为这种焦虑是放错了地方，因为非殖民化的人种志学定位的不是土著人的本质，而是批评的立场。我继续指出，人类学中的非殖民化工作提供了新的方式来配置人种学差异的姿态，这是人种学挑战现有的人类观念和介导其性质的社会形式的能力的核心。