#4638
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26/27, 2012 - Editor: Jerry Katz
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This is an interesting article in the
genre of "nondual perspectives," featuring
nonduality and ethnography. It's an academic
paper written somewhat densely but with a
subtle humor. I've highlighted salient
points in bold.
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2012 | HAU: Journal of
Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 413–419
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This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons | © Theodoros
Kyriakides and
Soumhya Venkatesan.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online)
|Forum|
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Nondualism is
philosophy, not ethnography
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A review of the
2011 GDAT debate
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Theodoros
KYRIAKIDES, University of Manchester
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The motion for the 2011
Group Debate in Anthropological Theory (GDAT)
which took place at the University of
Manchester (on November 12, 2011) was
?Nondualism is philosophy, not ethnography. Nondualism
as a philosophical term entails continuity
between body and mind, rather than a
separation thereof. Such an ontological
claim is increasingly gaining momentum in
ethnographic thought and practice. This
blooming relation between ethnography and
nondualist philosophical paradigms was
problematized by the two sides of the
debate. Although largely contextualizing
their arguments in contiguous planes of
reference, the four debaters proved
illuminating and often complementary of each
other. I present a summary of the main
arguments made in the debate, and add a few
points of my own.
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Keywords: Ethnography,
philosophy, nondualism, GDAT, debate
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The Group for
Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT):
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A brief
introduction
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Soumhya
VENKATESAN, University of Manchester
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The Group for Debates in
Anthropological Theory aims to generate
stimulating discussions on anthropological
theory through a debate format. Tim Ingold
initiated the first debate in 1988 in
Manchester, and the debates became an annual
fixture. Many readers will be familiar with
IngoldÂ’s edited volume Key debates in
anthropology (1996) in which the first six
debates—both presentations and
discussions—are available. The volume
includes such classics as ?Social anthropology
is a generalizing science or it is nothing?
(1988) and ?The concept of society is
theoretically obsolete (1989).
Following a break of eight years between 1999
and 2007, the annual debate was revived by
Soumhya Venkatesan and the
Anthropology journal. The new series of GDAT
has sought to use the debate as a forum to
interrogate theoretical trends in anthropology
and to put the spotlight on such developments
as the ?ontological turn. Thus, in 2008 the
motion debated was: ?Ontology is just another
word for culture. The annual debates since
2008 have been published in the Critique of
Anthropology journal each year and continue to
generate discussion long after the meetings.
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The format of the meetings
is very lively, and every year around a
hundred people from within the UK and beyond
gather in Manchester to attend the debates.
Two debaters propose the motion and two oppose
it. The discussions following the
presentations are brisk and incisive, yet
fuelled with laughter. At the end of the
discussions a vote is taken and most people
carry on the discussions over dinner and
drinks.
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We are always on the
lookout for motions to debate. So, if you have
one to propose, please get in touch with Soumhya.venkatesan@....
More information on GDAT, including all the
previous debate motions, links to debates,
etc. are available on the GDAT website:
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The annual meeting of the
Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory
(GDAT) took place in its location at the
University of Manchester in November 2011. The
motion was ?Nondualism is philosophy, not
ethnography. Proposing the motion were Michael
Scott (LSE) and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov
(Cambridge). Opposing were Chris Pinney (UCL)
and Joanna Cook (Goldsmiths). The
motion set forth aimed at problematizing the
burgeoning ethnographic use of philosophical
paradigms of nondualism. The
consistent relationship between ethnography
and philosophy is historically evident. The
motion deems itself presently relevant,
however, since it specifically situates this
relationship with regard to posthuman and
poststructuralist philosophical systems, such
as the ones of Bruno Latour and Gilles
Deleuze, which are increasingly used by
ethnographers nowadays. These systems are
considered nondualist, since they oppose the
Cartesian dualism of body and mind, and
instead favour continuity between the two.
Such systems have the potential of
complementing or hindering ethnography: while
overreliance on a philosophical system
endangers reducing ethnography to this,
adherence to dualism risks representing
cultural arrangements as fixed and uniform.
Moreover, as the debaters made clear, at stake
are not only ethnographic claims of
objectivity, but also disciplinary relevance
regarding issues of indigenous and ecological
preservation. In what follows I present a
summary of the main arguments presented by the
four debaters, and also add some points of my
own.
Scott began by
addressing the proliferating practice of
fusing ethnography with philosophical
paradigms of nondualism. According
to Scott, in using philosophical systems of
nondualism to ponder the world, ?there is now
a need to remind ourselves that these are
indeed relations, not equivalencies. As Scott
goes on to say, philosophical systems are not
?isomorphic of the world: rather, they are
productive of ethnography. Scott thus echoes
Alfred KorzybskiÂ’s famous saying of the
territory not being the map, since the former
is always in excess of the latter. Mistake the
map for the territory—mistake a
philosophical system for the world—and the
map will overdetermine the inquiry. The
relationship between ethnography and
philosophical systems then becomes
?eschatological, as Scott puts it:
the philosophical system becomes a raison
d’être, rather than acting
instrumentally for ethnography.
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Granted, this equally
applies to both, dualistic and nondualistic
philosophical systems. In favour of the
motion, Scott mounts an attack tailored to the
latter: by dissolving essences and treating
all bodies as processual becomings, nondualist
ethnography disregards the significance and
signification carried by historically formed
categories of culture. Second, nondualistic
paradigms are suspect of relationalism,
the ontological error of asserting that the
reality of bodies is exhausted by their
relations. In this way, concrete entities are
pulled apart, with no leftover essence
remaining. Scott does not advocate that
ethnography is inherently dualistic. Rather,
for Scott ethnography should abide by
cultural categories, instead of dissolving
these through nondualist thinking.
For him, of importance is that the history and
essence of indigenous people persist, and that
ethnography is just to these. To my mind,
Scott proposes a practice akin to ?strategic
essentialism (Spivak 1987).
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SpivakÂ’s ethos entails
that populations perform so as to instil a
superficiality of essentiality upon themselves
and in the eyes of others, thus maintaining
their collective identity. Whereas Spivak
addresses the people-to-be-essentialized,
MichaelÂ’s argument foresees that
ethnography partakes in the given task.
Scott proceeds to argue that, in attempting to
appropriate a philosophical system,
ethnographers often do not pay analogous
attention to parallel readings and critiques
related to the given system, thus injecting
their ethnographic inquiry with ontological
speculation rather than certainty. As he
advises, ?remember that philosophers are
relations, so attend to the debates. If I take
issue with Michael on this point it is
because, while he admonishes nondualist
paradigms for succumbing to relationalism, he
himself similarly errs by stating that
?philosophers are relations. Instead of
reducing philosophical systems to their
relations with secondary readings,
commentaries and critiques, as Scott suggests,
I propose that we regard them ?in themselves
through the several, related, yet at the same
time distinct concepts by which they are
comprised (Deleuze and Guattari 1994). In
doing so, one does not treat a philosophical
system as monolithic, but as a multiparted
apparatus. I deem such a configuration to be
exemplary of the relationship between
ethnography and philosophy, since rarely do
ethnographers summon an entire philosophical
tradition (but even more rarely do
philosophers wholly agree on something).
Rather, it is a selective process of
conceptual ?cherry picking that takes place
whenever ethnography philosophizes: the
ethnographer chooses philosophical concepts
from a given system relevant to the task at
hand, thinks and grapples with them,
modifies them and makes them work for
ethnography. Indeed, has the
ethnographer ever been anything but a
bricoleur? The danger, as Scott is correct to
point out, is for a faulty concept to become
an underlying field out of which an
ethnographic endeavour arises from and returns
to. In such a case, one capitulates to a
conceptual tyrannism whereby only the concept
is of substance to the ethnographer (take
substance with a metaphysical twist).
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Countering the motion, Chris
Pinney, a self-admitted romantic
and neo-primitivist, began his presentation by
diffusing two traps concealed in the format
and motion of the debate. He first
invoked Heidegger to point to the
complementary rather than antithetical
nature of the two sides involved in the
debate. Secondly, Pinney argued that one
does not have to pick between ethnography or
philosophy, as the motion necessitates.
Rather, the relationship between ethnography
and philosophy unfolds through continuity.
For Pinney this second point is important:
the continuity between philosophy and
ethnography is a cathartic process of
cross-fertilization, by which the former
cleanses the latter of its looming Cartesian
spectre. Fail to recognize this
continuity and, as ethnographers, we are in
danger of falling back into representation.
Following this, and much like Scott,
PinneyÂ’s position has to do with
instilling an ethic. If Scott
advocated in favour of an ethnography aimed
at safekeeping the essences of indigenous
populations, Pinney advocates in favour of
an ecologically sensitive, ?quasi-monistic
ethnography which holds that ?all entities
are knots in the biospherical net (in
this regard, perhaps Pinney prefers the term
knottism over monism). Since all entities are
part of this net, we once again revert back to
essentialism but, this time, a literal one:
the biosphere is deemed essential to the
survival of the human species. But the
dualistic subject does not perceive this
essentialism, and does not respect its ties to
the world. Rather, as Pinney says, it views
the world as exploitable, ?an object separate
from the viewing subject and as something
represented and substitutable.?
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To emphasize his
point, Pinney invites us to enter a
dystopian future, fifty years ahead,
?ravaged by centuries of dualism.
The dualistic foundations upon which the human
subject and civilization were built have
collapsed amid ecological degradation and
warfare. The totalizing entities of ethnoi are
no longer to be found, now splintered into
duelling factions competing for natural
resources. With half its corpus gone,
ethnography is forced to reconsider its
ethnocentric agenda and, for the sake of human
survival, revert to a mode of haptic reverence
and documentation. It is hard to assert the
validity of a speculative scenario, but PinneyÂ’s
point is clear: a point of no return is
imminent. If we are to counter ecological
and thus human obliteration we must
collectively, ethnographers or not,
intellectually and praxeologically
reconfigure our relationship to the earth as
one of unity. With this unity in mind,
LatourÂ’s unveiling of purification is
not adequate. LatourÂ’s moderns remain
unable to conceive the urgency for an
?ecological resingularization (Guattari
2000). ANT instead chooses to
communicate society as the mobilization of
many distinct objects in the name of an
illusionary, yet capable, purifying subject.
Ultimately, the ?Parliament of Things (Latour
1993) has a human speaker—himself the most
competent of all things.
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Also proposing the motion,
Ssorin-ChaikovÂ’s initial concern is with
what he terms, invoking Carl Schmitt, ?the
ethnographic state of exception. According to
him, nondualistic frameworks such as
Actor-Network Theory encourage the
ethnographer to flatten a social formation,
to ?lay it out on the table and perceive it
as such. The problem, however, arises out of
the looming figure of the ethnographer,
which once again reinstates the Cartesian
subject. But, Sorrin-Chaikov objects, this
looming figure of the ethnographer falsely
remains ?exempt from suppositions of
nondualistic ethnography.
What is more, he continues, many mistake the
Cartesian perspective as that of a fixed
linear point. Not only is this not the case,
but it is exactly what the Cartesian
perspective opposes. Rather, the Cartesian
perspective involves the subject viewing the
world as situated in it. The Cartesian subject
thus perceives the world anamorphically
(anamorphosis being the shift of a single,
real frame of reference in order to be
subjectively viewed from many different
angles). In return, and according to several
Cartesian scholars, this anamorphic perception
of the world instils doubt in the Cartesian
subject, since it understands that the world
might not really be as it sees it. As
Ssorin-Chaikov says, not only does the
doubtful character of the Cartesian subject
acquit it of all charges of representation,
but it also directs it towards an ethic of
discovery and possibility, aimed at countering
such doubt. Ssorin-Chaikov thus provides us
with a somewhat phenomenological reading of
Descartes, in which the subject perceives the
world through constant shifts in its frame of
reference, these akin to Husserlian
adumbrations. In the concept of anamorphosis,
Ssorin-Chaikov also finds common ground
between LatourÂ’s Actor-Network Theory and
DescartesÂ’ subject. What is entailed in
both cases is a constant shift in perspective,
the equivalent of Cartesian anamorphosis being
Latourian translation (Latour 1993). As such,
Ssorin-Chaikov concludes, even though
ethnography might ontologically be
nondualist, in practice, courtesy of this
constant shift in perspective, it remains
Cartesian.
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Since Pinney decided to
tackle dualism by way of an imperative monism,
his co-proposer Cook would do so by way of a
factual nondualism. Cook sought to
show why ethnography is qualitatively
nondualist. Cook first makes the point that,
by opposing dualism through means of
nondualism, she does not succumb to dualism.
This is because the antithesis of dualism is
not nondualism, but monism. As she makes
clear, ethnography is
exactly nondualist because it does not
adhere to this antithesis between monism and
dualism. Rather, ethnography entails that
?the tension between dualism and monism
remains unresolved.
Moving on to her main argument, Cook points
out that ethnography is essentially
nondualistic because, enacted, it overcomes
all claims of division between mind/body and
subject/object. The ethnographer is thus
?actively implicated in the field: she engages
in an affirmative process of encounter and
interaction which in return gives way to a
multiplicity of meanings, understandings and
?partial connections (Strathern 1991) which
cannot be framed in dualistic or monistic
terms. Cook also points to the
dangers involved in following a dualist mode
of ethnography. At stake is the reduction of
culture as ?bounded, whole, unitary and
graspable. Cook is somewhat complementary of
Ssorin-Chaikov in that both pose the figure of
the ethnographer as only partially perceiving
the world. Cook takes us a step further
though, by not thinking of the
ethnographer as a subject which negatively
abstracts the world through vision, but as
an agent dynamically situated in it. If the
field is always in excess of the
ethnographerÂ’s perception of it, then
the ethnographer is equally in excess of the
field. The ethnographer intrudes into the
field, she disturbs and is productive of
it—she becomes the difference that makes
a difference (Bateson 1972). For an
ethnographer, there is nothing left to say,
no doubt to purge, because culture is not a
static configuration that has to be fully
explored, described or represented. Rather,
as Cook says, there is ?always something
more to say because every ethnographer will
actualize the field differently. In her
causal and reciprocal relation to the field,
the ethnographer testifies to the nonduality
of her craft.
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Debaters made their
closing comments and Marylin Strathern, the
jester of the debate, proceeded to orchestrate
her thoughts, and also ours. A jester indeed,
in whimsical and witty style, Strathern
masterfully juggled the arguments posed by the
two sides. If she seemed to lean first toward
one side of the debate and then the other, she
did so to provocatively even the field. But,
costumes and wit notwithstanding, her advice
was clear: ?itÂ’s not persons who get your
votes, itÂ’s the arguments. Following this,
the motion was put to the vote, and the result
found Pinney and Cook winning with 41
votes against Scott and Ssorin-ChaikovÂ’s
32, and with 18 abstentions.
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My feeling is that both
sides directed us to burning issues. As I am
writing this we are still experiencing
whiplash from the video showing tourist
exploitation of the Jarawa tribe in the
Andaman Islands while, only a few days before,
the doomsday clock was set to five to
midnight. Whether it involves perpetuating the
identity of indigenous people or arousing
ecological sensitivity, ethnography
can contribute by accordingly adopting a
dualist or nondualist stance: such are the
pragmatics of thought. WhatÂ’s more, the
two aforementioned demands might be, by and
large, conjoint (Descola 2008).
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References
Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an
ecology of the mind: Collected essays in
anthropology, psychiatry, evolution and
epistemology. London: Intertext.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1994.
What is philosophy? Translated by Graham
Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson. London: Verso
Press.
Descola, Philippe. 2008. ?Who owns nature??
Books and ideas, (Online) Available at http://www.booksandideas.net/Who-owns-nature.html?lang=fr.
Guattari, Felix. 2000. The three ecologies.
Translated by Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton.
London: Athlone Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been
modern. Translated by Catherine Porter.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 1987. In other worlds:
Essays in cultural politics. London and New
York: Methuen.
Strathern, Marilyn. 1991. Partial connections.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
La Non-dualitГѓВ© relГѓВЁve de la philosophie
pas de l’ethnographie. Un résumé du
dГѓВ©bat GDAT 2011.
« La Non-dualité relève de la
philosophie, pas de l’ethnographie »,
tel a ГѓВ©tГѓВ© le thГѓВЁme du Group Debate in
Anthropological Theory (GDAT) qui a eu lieu a
l’Université de Manchester (12
novembre, 2011). La non-dualitГѓВ©, en tant
que concept philosophique, implique, plutГѓВґt
qu’une rupture, une continuité entre le
corps et lÂ’esprit. Ce postulat ontologique
a acquis une importance croissante au sein de
la pensГѓВ©e et de la pratique ethnographique.
La relation entre lÂ’ethnographie et les
paradigmes philosophiques non-dualistes a
ГѓВ©tГѓВ© problГѓВ©matisГѓВ©e des deux
cotés du débat. Faisant l’effort de
sÂ’inscrire dans des champs de
rГѓВ©fГѓВ©rence contigus, les arguments
prГѓВ©sentГѓВ©s par les quatre intervenants se
sont pourtant ГѓВ©clairГѓВ©s
rГѓВ©ciproquement, et se sont souvent
rГѓВ©vГѓВ©lГѓВ©s complГѓВ©mentaires. Je
prГѓВ©sente ici un rГѓВ©sumГѓВ© des arguments
principaux du débat, auxquels j’ajoute
quelques remarques personnelles.В
Theodoros KYRIAKIDES is a
Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social
Anthropology, University of Manchester. His
research focuses on genetic testing technology
implemented in Cypriot healthcare against the
spread of thalassaemia, a recessive blood
disorder.
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Soumhya VENKATESAN is a
lecturer in Social Anthropology at the
University of Manchester. She is the author of
Craft matters: Artisans, development and the
Indian Nation (2009) and co-editor, with
Thomas Yarrow, of Differentiating development:
Beyond an anthropology of critique (2012).
Since 2008, she has been the organiser of
annual meetings of the Group for Debates in
Anthropological Theory (GDAT).
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