On Knowing When to Cut

by Alex

I’m excitedly working on a paper that I’ll be giving at the AAAs that will serve as the hinge between my interests in Melanesia and technology. It’s going very well. Since most people present will be technicists, I feel like I’m a little defensive about invoking concepts such as ‘taboo’ and am trying to write in such a way as to convince people of its relevance. Still, I have to know where to stop. Consider, for instance:

“Taboo, of course, is a subject of constant interest to anthropologists because it is a continual concern to the vast majority of humans on the planet – those of you present who do not consider yourself so concerned can prove me wrong by, for instance, waiting for your mother to menstruate, having sex with her, and then killing and eating her.”

This sentence, for instance, is too outrageously over-the-top to let disappear entirely but too wierdo to include in a formal paper. I guess that’s why god made blogs ;!)