Karin Patzke
November 13, 2013
Faciality and Minor Literatures
1. Benson, Peter, and Kevin Lewis O'neill, "Facing Risk: Levinas, Ethnography,
and Ethics," Anthropology of Consciousness 18/2 (2007)
"First, the primacy of "the other" and powerful images of travel founding Levinas's work
provoke critical reflection about the fundamental role of alterity and location in
ethnographic fieldwork. Second, Levinas’s work encourages anthropologists to theorize
the process rather than the product of ethnographic fieldwork….Third, and finally,
Levinas pushes against the overwhelmingly liberal conversation regarding ethics that
dominates much of contemporary thought and political debate." (Benson and O'Neill,
30).
- Structure of the argument
"Against a model of ethics premised upon rights and equality, Levinas says that the self is
infinitely responsible for the other and that this unequal and hierarchical encounter
defines ethics." (Benson and O'Neill, 30)
- Distinction of Levinas
"Ethnography thus becomes a deconstructive basis upon which encounters with others
dynamically inform the patterns of life and values that define the researcher"
- Perhaps a qualifier is necessary here. Not every ethnographer is able to
understand how his or her position is unequal. Furthermore, not every
ethnographer is able to be reflective in this mode. Perhaps positing this as a 'best
case scenario' might be more appropriate.
"Some even make mention of a so-called "Levinas-effect," the ides that "the difficulty of
Levinas's texts permits his commentators to find in them a reflection of their own
interests and attitudes"" (Benson and O'Neill, 32)
- In describing different forms of writing structure, Belcher identifies the synaptic
article structure as one that 'proceeds by sparking readers' imaginations, lighting
up synapses up like fireworks with a series of epiphanies…[they] are offend
highly theoretical" (Belcher, 182) (footnote: Belcher is a professor of African
literature at Princeton University for the Department of Comparative Literature
and the Center for African American Studies, but she also writes about writing
and this quote comes from: Belcher, Wendy Laura. Writing your journal article in
twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success. Sage, 2009.)
- In reading work without a rigorous structure, intention and interpretation, for me
at least, begin to blend together. How does one distinguish from 'what makes
sense to me' from 'what the author is trying to communicate?” Thoughtful reading
is difficult.
- However, reading seems to be an intimate form of acknowledging and
confronting the other. Hostility or affinity to a particular text or author may not
actually have anything to say about the author of the text, but only about the
reader.
- I'm a little confused by the last sentence of this paragraph: "This article, for one,
Karin Patzke
November 13, 2013
tables a textual pursuit of the “real Levinas” and instead gears its reading of
Levinas toward specific questions formulated in light of anthropological research
design, the practice of fieldwork, and ethnographic writing." (Benson and O'Neill,
32). Are the author's guilty of the Levinas effect? Does it matter?
"“The other” simply refers to another person; the person who stands before the self."
(Benson and O'Neill, 32)
- I can't be the only one reminded on Nietzsche here.
“The time of the face is that which is without power, destitute and vulnerable, capable of
dying, naked no matter how the other might be clothed, powerless no matter how robust
the other might be” (Benson and O'Neill, 34)
“The spontaneous movements of daily practice had now delimited the intended expanse
of ethnographic materials.” (Benson and O'Neill, 35)
- Here the authors are attempting to characterize the divisions and accessibility
issues they experience in moments of obvious exclusion. But how does an
ethnographer begin to be aware of the not-so-obvious ways in which they are
divided from ‘what’s really going on?’
“Here we can clearly see how the subject of research and the researcher’s sta- tus as a
subject of scrutiny are partly influenced by spontaneous encounter in which roles are
undermined or, even if not fully challenged, rendered ambiguous. “ (Benson and O'Neill,
36)
- I might characterize this in a less ambiguous way. The presence of the
ethnography changed and restructured the order of the group. When
confronted with the other, one makes adjustments. But how do we understand
these changes? How do we make sense of them both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the
ethnographic moment? The authors posit that ‘the ethical importance of such
encounters, has to do with the centrality of privilege and power to the very
idea of a separation between research and life” (ibid). And then, linking back
to Levinas, they write: “Here, the phenomenological account of fieldwork
resembles Levinas’s account of the unstable quality of any totality” (ibid).
- This is a total cop out.
- But I’m not exactly sure what I want here. “Fieldwork often yields encounters
that are “structured, shaped, and conceived within the specific disciplinary,
theoretical, and institutional logics of anthropology, sociology, and related
cultural studies” (ibid) seems to get at it…
“As Levinas writes, “individuals are reduced to being bearers of forces that command
them unbeknown to themselves. The meaning of individuals (invisible outside of this
totality) is derived from the totality . . . [and] each present is incessantly sacrificed to a
future appealed to bring forth its objective being” (1969:22)…… Such an orientation thus
rubs against, without simply or completely overturning, the totalizing sense of control
that disallows a marking of the self by the others and reduces the meaning of alterity to
the researcher’s own political, moral, and epistemological concerns.” (Benson and
Karin Patzke
November 13, 2013
O'Neill, 37-38)
- I love it! (aka, the Levinas effect in action…)
“…....ethical despair……” (Benson and O'Neill, 43)
“To be afflicted with another’s suffering,” Lingis has written elsewhere, “requires that we
care about the things the sufferer cares for” (2000:50).
- Perhaps this is the hardest thing to do.
2. Peter Benson, "EL CAMPO: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor
Camps," Cultural Anthropology 23/4 (2008):589-629
“…it is as if campo were not just this or that thing, but the social condition of farm labor
itself, characterized by interlocking forms of subordination and marginalization.”
(Benson, 590).
- Would there ever be ethnographic work that revealed something good in the
world?
4. Todd Ramon Ochoa, "Versions of the Dead: Kalunga, Cuban-Kongo Materiality,
and Ethnography," Cultural Anthropoogy 22/4 (2007):473-500.