ABSTRACT
Since Descartes, the 'self' in European intellectual discourse has been literally 'self-evident'. The thinking self, by virtue of its thinking, constitutes its own existence. Self looks at reality, measuring and describing, and so has being. Other becomes object, resource for self's own projects. Measured and described, other constitutes self's self-consciousness (Heidegger 1978:247282). And so in anthropology, the anthropologist describes the other, and thus 'is' anthropologist. Other is means for anthropology's being, resource for anthropology's projects. Asad (1975), Said (1978) and others have shown how far imperialism and colonialism have held 'the other' in thrall for such uses. As European powers took indigo, spices, flax and timber for European production and consumption, so too people were taken—as labour, but also as 'curiosities', exhibited as savages, noble or ignoble, produced as exotic oddities for European consumption.
