Despite decoloniality, the epistemological location of the anthropologist from the ‘South’ remains a challenge. This paper questions the politics of celebrating the ‘South’ as an emancipatory embodiment of radical alterity whereby the ‘good’ ‘Southern’ anthropologist is confined to her/his own geopolitical location. Critiquing the international division of intellectual labour and the performance of prescribed roles in the practice of Anthropology, this chapter seeks to expand the epistemological horizon of the ‘South’ by articulating personal experiences of intellectual choices, and interviewing ‘Southern scholars’ based in the northern hemisphere to comment on unwitting academic trajectories like working on one’s own country and presenting oneself as a Southernist in the North. Isn’t it time for a ‘Southern attitude’ that entitles the anthropologist from the South to put forward her/his own praxis and intellectual lineages, without claiming radical alterity? The chapter offers the notion of the “frontier” as a productive way to move beyond the reified celebration of radical alterity, focusing instead on the interconnections that shape knowledge production.
