This post begins from a persistent feeling of insincerity that has accompanied many of my fieldwork interactions. When I first started noticing the feeling, I attributed it to a particular aspect of the setting where I am doing fieldwork. Working among scientists involved in epidemic control in China, there are simply a lot of things that cannot be directly stated in a straightforward fashion. As another foreign expert working in the area of epidemic disease told me, when he tried to ask permission to do a research investigation in a straightforward manner, he would simply be told: that is impossible. But perhaps strangely, this did not necessarily mean that it was impossible. It just meant for the most part that asking permission, stating one's intentions in a sincere manner, led to inevitable difficulties. Again and again I have found myself stating my intentions in vague or obfuscated ways, often playing the role of someone researching 'society' or 'cultural practices', as a way to keep a conversation going, to avoid a reaction of surprise, confusion, anger, suspicion, etc. I have, to adopt the analytic distinction in the Studio #2, employed performative speech. Again and again I have felt myself to lack courage and sincerity.

In a way this insincerity, it seems to me, exemplifies an ethical dilemma within the classical fieldwork interaction. Participant-observation is a practice which, by its very nature, involves performing the semblance of participation while at the same time placing that interaction in a context external to the situation itself, changing its meaning.  There is something about the practice of understanding an other way of thinking that, at least apparently, requires--not a relativist suspension of judgment exactly--but rather a suspension of the expression of judgment.

Now, the goal of Prof. Rabinow's anthropology of the contemporary and experiments with new ethical approaches to anthropology, has been to challenge the poverty of the classical participant-observer position. Adjacency requires more than moving between the poles of participation and observation; it demands the practice of frank-speech within the local world and dialect of the fieldwork setting. As the Studio # 3 describes, “Second-order practices are disruptive in that (at a minimum) they make visible existing habits and dispositions; this visibility often leads to the recognition or demand that such dispositions and habits are insufficient and inadequate on one or another register. It frequently produces responses characterized by irritation, indifference, and the assertion of power to block or silence second-order observations.” If second-order practices are to be disruptive, however, the term 'observation' must include an aspect in which observations are spoken. [Perhaps this is internal to Luhmann's idea of second-order observation. Nicholas Langlitz, in his response to Stefan Helmreich's critique of Collier, Lakoff, and Rabinow “Anthropology of biosecurity”) suggests as much, writing that second-order observation, as reflexivity, inherently alters the system.]

If it is likely that frank-speech will lead to the blockage or silencing of second-order observations, it seems we must develop a tactics of frank-speech. Blurting out one's heart-felt belief can lead to a silencing of access by the informant, or equally a blocking of one's own mind to an understanding of the other's world and way of thinking. Parresia is not appropriate to every situation. The moment in which to speak frankly must be carefully prepared and earned.  However, the feeling of insincerity persists, which indicates to me that I don't have things quite right.  I'd be very interested to hear comments from others regarding if or how they employed this kind of tactics during fieldwork interactions.