MAX FORTE

Maximilian C. Forte is a professor of anthropology in Montreal, Canada. His opinions are his own and writes here entirely in a private capacity and not as a representative of any institution, which remains unnamed for these reasons. He is the author of Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post)Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago (2005), and the editor of Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival And Revival (2006) and Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Transnational and Transcultural Indigeneity in the Twenty-First Century (2010).

For more, please see the main site for the Zero Anthropology Project. What follows is a very brief synopsis.

He started this site back in October of 2007, when it was called “Open Anthropology” and resembled more of a blog than it does now. On this site Max writes about militarism, the militarization of the social sciences, U.S. foreign policy, imperialism, decolonization, the Human Terrain System, the Minerva Research Initiative, and AFRICOM. He also writes about anthropology after empire, and occasionally items about the Caribbean, with a mixture of humorous pieces, video posts, and fiction. His articles on Zero Anthropology have covered topics pertaining to Canada, the U.S., Trinidad & Tobago, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Greece, Gaza, Libya, and Afghanistan. All of these articles are listed on the Contents page of this site, and categorized here. Also see the parent site for this project. Max is also a founding member of Anthropologists for Justice and Peace (AJP).

Max sometimes goes by the name of Dr. Rat (after being “accused” of defending “the rat people” of Afghanistan); he also goes by 1D4TW (“One Day for the Watchman”).

Here are some of Max’s main series on Zero Anthropology (to be updated as more material is added):

The ZERO SERIES (in progress):

1. Welcome to ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY: The End of the Beginning of the End
2. 0.20: “Potentially Dangerous Implications for the Practice of Anthropology Today”
3. 0.19: Questions about Colonialism and Anthropology: Epistemology, Methodology, and Politics
4. 0.189: Stanley Diamond & Claude Lévi-Strauss on the Nature and Future of Anthropology
5. 0.185: Terms of Incorporation, Concepts of Domination
6. 0.18: Anthropology and the Rise of the Social Sciences within the Structures of Knowledge – Immanuel Wallerstein
   
7. 0.179: Imperialism, Americanization, and the Social Sciences
8. 0.178: The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination
9. 0.171: Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: Vassos Argyrou

The HTS & MILITARIZATION SERIES (2010):

1. 02 February 2010: Bibliography and Archive: The Military, Intelligence Agencies, and the Academy (with special reference to anthropology) – Documents, News, Reports – subsequent updates to be found here.
2. 28 February 2010 (with subsequent updates): Mapping the Terrain of War Corporatism: The Human Terrain System within the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.
3. 04 March 2010: Multiplying Human Terrain Dreams of Victory and Fortune.
4. 19 March 2010: Information Traffickers of the Imperial State: American Anthropologists and Other Academics.
5. 27 March 2010: AFRICOM, Human Terrain, Empire, and Anthropology.
6. 27 March 2010: Mercenary Humanism.
7. 27 March 2010: CIA Feminism.
8. 04 April 2010: 100 percent (Militarized) American.
9. 20 May 2010: Imperial Instruction: The Human Terrain System’s Academic Trainers, Part 1.
10. 20 May 2010: Imperial Instruction: The Human Terrain System’s Academic Trainers, Part 2.
11. 21 May 2010: Human Terrain System Criticized by U.S. Congress.
12. 28 May 2010: Time Line and FAQ for the Human Terrain System and Responses by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Association.
13. 29 May 2010: The Pentagon’s “Other” Human Terrain System?
14. 29 May 2010: Changing Fortunes in Washington: The Evolution of House Armed Services Committee Reports on the Human Terrain System.
15. 30 May 2010: SCRATs: AFRICOM after the Human Terrain System.
16. 03 June 2010: Human Terrain System Video News: John Stanton, and the AGS Bowman Expeditions in Mexico.
17. 07 June 2010: A Major Report of a Minor Exception, or a Minor Report of a Major Problem? The American Anthropological Association’s CEAUSSIC vis-à-vis the Human Terrain System, Part 1.
18. 07 June 2010: A Major Report of a Minor Exception, or a Minor Report of a Major Problem? The American Anthropological Association’s CEAUSSIC vis-à-vis the Human Terrain System, Part 2.

The WIKILEAKS SERIES (2010): here you can get a complete list of all of my articles, wherever published, focusing on Wikileaks.

Max has also written over 200 posts on HTS, Minerva, and the militarization of academia, since this blog began–those items are all listed here.

ARAB REVOLUTIONS, LIBYA WAR SERIES (2011):

1. The Fall of the American Wall: Tunisia, Egypt, and Beyond
2. EE: Report #11, Focus on Egypt
3. Encircling Empire: Report #12, FOCUS ON EGYPT: Revolution and Counter-Revolution
4. The American Anthropological Association and Egypt: It’s Mostly About the Artifacts?
5. Egypt and the Clinton Doctrine
6. Encircling Empire: Report #13—Revolution, Intervention, Anthropology
7. Globalization, Compression, and the Desire for Intervention
8. Encircling Empire: Report #14—Foreign Military Intervention in Libya: A Report on Neo-colonial dependency and humanitarian imperialism
9. The Libyan Revolution is Dead: Notes for an Autopsy
10. The Humanitarian-Militarist Project and the Production of Empire in Libya
11. Libya and the Passive Repeaters: Deploying Depleted Information Warheads
12. Libya: What Revolution? Whose Revolution?
13. The War in Libya: Race, “Humanitarianism,” and the Media, published in Essays on Empire at Open Salon

AL JAZEERA

Starting in August of 2010, Max began authoring a series of monthly columns for Al Jazeera (Arabic and English websites):

1. 08 August 2010: نواقص في تسريبات ويكيليكس
2. 17 September 2010: الهجوم على ويكيليكس.. هل من مخرج؟
3. 16 February 2011: مصر والإمبراطورية الأميركية
4. 22 February 2011: “The Clinton doctrine: US reaction to events unfolding in the Arab world reveals the emergence of more insidious approach,” Al Jazeera English.

COUNTERPUNCH

Also starting in August of 2010, a series of articles began to be produced for CounterPunch:

1. 14 December 2010: Notes from the Insurrection: The Wikileaks Revolution
2. 02 August 2010: Reason for Celebration, Cause for Concern: The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary — reprinted by Alternet as “7 Reasons Why We Should Celebrate Wikileaks, and 8 Reasons It’s Not the Panacea Some Are Calling It: The release of thousands of documents from the failed war in Afghanistan is a major milestone that should be celebrated. But it also opens up questions about Wikileaks.”
3. 11 August 2010: Unhinged at the US State Department and Pentagon: A War on Wikileaks? – also republished on Mathaba — also translated into Spanish, appearing on Spain’s Rebelión, “¿Guerra contra Wikileaks? Desquiciados en el Departamento de Estado y el Pentágono;” and the latter became the basis for this article in the Venezuelan newspaper, Correo del Orinoco, “EEUU amenaza a los soldados que busquen consultar los documentos – El Pentágono pretende callar a Wikileaks.”

MONTHLY REVIEW

In the media:

Max Forte has also been interviewed or quoted, or his articles reprinted, in the following media, with the latest  instance appearing first:

1. Interviewed by Phil Taylor, CIUT 89.5 FM, “The Taylor Report” (on liberal imperialism, “humanitarian” interventionism, human rights, and the media), August 15. Click here  for the podcast.
   
2. Interviewed by Brendan Stone, CFMU 93.3 FM, “Unusual Sources” (on Libya, race, mercenaries, and the media), 27 April 2011. The podcast is also available here, and here.
3. Interviewed by War News Radio for “Leaked,” 29 October 2010.
4. Interviewed for: “Coverage of the G20 proved Twitter’s news edge,” by Antonia Zerbisias, The Star, 11 July 2010.
5. Interviewed by War News Radio for “The Human Terrain,” 18 June 2010.
6. The Dominion, “Building Heroes: Professors protest Project Hero as military PR ploy,” by Cameron Fenton, 31 May 2010.
7. Reproduction of article on AFRICOM, “SCRATs: AFRICOM after the Human Terrain System,” in The Accra Mail of Ghana, 02 June 2010, and in Modern Ghana, 01 June 2010.
8. Interviewed on Al Jazeera Arabic, In Depth, Monday, 19 April 2010:
   
9. The Dominion, “The Ethnography of an Air-Strike: Canada’s military academics in the Afghan war and at home,” by Cameron Fenton, 12 April 2010.
10. Zero Anthropology was featured in the American Anthropologist‘s Public Anthropology Reviews: “Blogging Anthropology: Savage Minds, Zero Anthropology, and AAA Blogs,” by David H. Price, American Anthropologist, 112 (1) March 2010, pages 140-142 (available here and here).
11. Reproduction and translation into Farsi of “America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution,” click here.
12. Reproduction and translation into Arabic of “America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution,” on Al Jazeera or here.
13. Reproduction of “America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution,” on Mathaba or here.
14. Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt): Date line: #IranElection.
15. As-Safir (Lebanon): «إيران إيليكشن»: «تويتر»
    بدلاً من الخيار العسكري على إيران؟.
16. CubaDebate: Twitter, del miedo y las ilusiones.
17. Boston Globe: Anthropologist’s War Death Reverberates.
18. Derek Walcott’s response to Max on the BBC.
19. Newsday (Trinidad): A Brief Overview of the History of Arima’s
    Indigenous People.
20. UAE’s The National on the Human Terrain System.
21. Washington Post: Military’s Social Science Grants Raise Alarm.