ABSTRACT
This chapter comes with a trigger warning regarding issues of racism, colonialism, and misogyny. Bronislaw Malinowski freely uses the N-word in his diaries. He stressed the need to learn the local language properly and to engage in everyday life in the society under scrutiny, in order to learn its categories “from within”, and to understand the often subtle interconnections between the various social institutions and cultural notions. In 1967, Malinowski’s widow, his second wife Valetta Swann, decided to publish his private diaries covering his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands from 1914 to 1915 and 1917 to 1918. The diary notings present a raw, unexpurgated detailing of Malinowski’s most private thoughts and feelings – a vent for his roller coaster of emotions and thoughts that had no place in academic writing. It is not just the words used but also the sentiments behind them and the context that surround them that clearly demonstrate Malinowski’s underlying sentiment.
