Heidelberg University Publishing

ABSTRACT Lily King’s novel Euphoria (2014) reimagines the 1931 American Museum of Natural History Expedition to the Sepik River in New Guinea, centring on the professional and romantic dynamics among fictionalized versions of the historical anthropologists Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson. This triangular constellation has garnered significant attention from reviewers. In addition, Euphoria has attracted interest from anthropologists due to its exploration of the discipline and its ethnographic methods. This paper examines the allegorical potential of King’s novel, which not only alters the names of the protagonists but also changes key factual elements of the expedition. Using various textual techniques, such as characterization, narration, and evocation of implicit readership, the novel captures different shifts in the field of anthropology’s history. While exposing the entanglement of science with colonialism and the ways in which ethnography is engaged in ‘doing and undoing’ subjectivities, lives, people, and cultures, Euphoria also grapples with the conventions of the adventure romance. This paper argues that the novel’s dual commitment—to advocating a postcolonial perspective while operating within the Western literary marketplace—prompts discussion of the cultural limits of narrative. Drawing on Mary Louise Pratt and Sara Ahmed’s critique of ethnographic texts, which often prioritize the agency of their knowing scientist subjects over the presumedly unknowing, indigenous ‘objects’ in anthropological encounters, this paper analyses Euphoria to acknowledge both the relevance of contemporary fictional reconstructions of historical scientific expedi­tions but also the complicities stemming from culturally specific scripts.

KEYWORDS anthropological encounter, ethnographic text, expedition narrative, Margaret Mead, the Pacific