Illustrious dead ... or not so much?

Reflections on the dialogue with uncomfortable archives, banished practices and questionable attitudes of our disciplinary ancestors

Abstract

In this work I reflect on how Anthropology has been establishing dialogue with its past through time and how institutional discourses have generated models that impact current research. The review of Runa's articles related to the History of Anthropology allows an approach to the conformation of that field of studies and to the ways of referring –or not– to the figures of the past in the different stages. To this I add my own research experience on Juan Bautista Ambrosetti, to argue that the identification of data on practices and discourses –today inadmissible– shared by subjects considered pillars of our history can produce discomfort when confronted with inherited model constructions, although they also constitute a possibility of reflection and modification of current practices.