April 3, 2007
Povinelli 290 Lecture
Elizabeth Povinelli gave a 290 lecture yesterday worth attending. The room was packed and the lecturer (whatever one might think of the piece) presented a serious effort at thought. These two facts alone make the event a red letter day in the Berkeley anthropology department. It seems so little to ask for, but one does have to wonder why there are so few such events in the department throughout the year. Certainly Berkeley could attract people who people at Berkeley want to hear from. But that’s another story…
I wanted to reflect on the talk here because I think it’s relevant to some of the conversations we’ve had in labinar settings and it intersects a good deal with the manuscript of conversations we read between George Marcus and Paul last September. And I also had questions about it that I wasn’t able (or prepared) to ask yesterday and so thought I would do so here.
Povinelli presented a critique of the ethical practice of anthropology. She was after what she called a description of anthropology’s “way of life” in three senses: as a mode of knowing; an evidence producing machine; and a set of obligations that arise from the first two. Anthropology’s method–which she argued is its distinction–is to produce evidence in partnership with other people through a dynamic of “coping” and “disturbance,” a process that ends with the “exfoliation” of information or facts. This “co-substantial” production of evidence is then circulated through the “liberal logics of individuation” such as textuality, which denudes the evidence/information it circulates of the very social relations (’social rhetorics’) that produced it. Both sides produce but the one side circulates and the other is subject to that circulation. Thus the form and method of ethnography are in ethical conflict, and this paradox is the anthropologist’s way of life. I admit this is a simplification but I think I’ve got it about right. Corrections welcome.
My questions:
1. Does this argument presuppose a particular, a very traditional, kind of anthropological encounter–that is, one where the power differential is extreme? Povinelli implied that since all anthropology shares this methodology (the co-substantial production of evidence), that it all partakes in a similar ethical practice. But what happens to her argument if one is in a fieldsite where, first, everyone is a “liberal subject,” where power relations are not so drastically unequal, and where the power and instrumentality may very well move in the opposite direction (i.e., when we are studying “up’)?
2. Does her argument presuppose an “ethnos” in the equation? What about all the anthropology that proceeds without interest or involvement with such an idea? I heard her wanting to take in all anthropology, even delimiting when one might “stop being an anthropologist.” What boundaries was she putting around “anthropology” beyond methodology?
3. Anthropologists derive evidence from many sources, so even if we accept her argument that the universal anthropological method is co-substantial production of evidence, how does it affect her argument to recognize the heterogeneity of actors who provide us with such evidence?
Finally, my overarching question is what would discussions about anthropology–its method, ethics, its “way of life”–look like if one did not necessarily proceed with the presumption that what anthropology does is provide information to the world about people who don’t know how to hold hammers (so to speak).
I wonder where Povinelli’s own argument comes from. It seems to me that her argument is not exactly coming from the social relations that she is referring too so emphatically. Euro-Americans, by contrast, are quite used to construe social relations and knowledge as two ontologically different domains. Povinelli’s concern might in the end turn out to be less anthropological and more home made than one might think at first glance.
Carlo, She would readily admit that it is being made out of “liberal logics.” She’s not trying to translate an aboriginal lifeworld. In fact, the title of the talk was “forgetting where you are,” which refers to the moment when one is only “coping” and no longer “disturbed” (these soft Heideggerian concepts she was using), the moment when one one “stops being an anthropologist.” She is an anthropologist and affirms anthropology (’liberal’ or no), but she thinks there is an ethical paradox in being so. My question was rather this ethical paradox could possibly pertain to every situation of anthropological questioning.
Thanks Mary for this synopsis. It sounds like an excellent lecture. Is there anyway that lectures of this nature could be transformed into webcasts?
I didn’t hear the lecture, but based on Mary’s summary, it sounds extremely interesting. Particularly the observation that in anthropology “both sides produce but the one side circulates and the other is subject to that circulation.” The reason that I find this interesting is because a lot of contemporary anthropology has focused on the convergence of subject and object. That is to say, anthropologists have made the argument that the subject’s problem is the analyst’s problem (I am thinking of work by Maurer, Marcus, Miyazaki, and Strathern, among others). I have always been slightly uncomfortable with this argument/observation. First, because it doesn’t seem particularly earthshaking and secondly because it makes wonder what the significance of anthropology is? That is to say, why not just read what Islamic accountants are saying on their blogs and chatrooms about Islamic financial systems, rather than read about what anthropologists have to say about what Islamic accountants are saying about Islamic financial systems?
Povinelli (and again I am relying on Mary’s summary here, since I wasn’t able to attend the lecture in person) suggests that the equivalence between anthropologists and non-anthropologists is problematic. In fact, while there may be some convergence of perspective, the anthropologist and the non-anthropologist both stand in very different places with regard the politics of the circulation of what then becomes anthropological knowledge. This strikes me as an important and interesting critique, but I am unsatisfied with the conclusion that this ethical conflict is simply “the anthropologist’s way of life,” as if it is something that we merely need to learn to live with. I find myself unsatisfied with either 1) the first position in which the anthropologist’s problem is the same as the non-anthropologists problem or 2) the notion that anthropology as a vocation means learning to live with the paradox that our forms and methods are ultimately irreconcilable. There seems to be a bigger question here that is going unaddressed. Namely, what is the significance of anthropology?
Mary: My other question was: How is Povinelli’s problem different from the issue raised by Writing Culture? I mean, haven’t we been there before? And hasn’t part of the answer been to share ethnographic authority? Finally, isn’t there a lesson in Foucault’s brilliant piece on What is an author?
I guess I would still maintain that I think she frames her problem in a very particular (Euro-American) way. But granted that I couldn’t come to the talk this might well be totally mistaken.
She explictly said, in reference to the Writing Culture critique, that hers is not a critique of ethnography but a critical of the ethical practice of anthropology (her focus being evidence making and its circulation). Thus, it’s wider focus than ethnography (that’s me extending her). About your other, earlier question, I don’t understand how describing her argument as Euro-American is a critique of it.
I think Povanelli should not worry too much about this. It has been years since I read any anthropological work — at least in the elite part of cultural anthropology — that provided “evidence” or “knowledge” about anything. Mostly it produces theory, witnessing, and some occasional name calling that passes as “politics” or “ethics.” And, of course, the main “product” of anthropology is hand-wringing about anthropology. What are the ethics of *that*??