Q1: In his discussion of the uses of time in anthropological discourse, Fabian discusses the notion of "coevalness" with reference to the different conceptions of time at work in fieldwork and in the production of anthropological knowledge. How does Fabian define and use coevalness? What does it mean to share time? Is coevalness just a matter of communicating with the subjects/objects of ethnographic research? How does Derrida's notion of arche-writing as violence complicate Fabian's claim that the "reflexive ability" of the ethnographer allows him/her to be "in the presence of others" (91-92)?
Q2: Fabian claims that "it is by diagnosing anthropology's temporal discourse that one rediscovers the obvious, namely that there is no knowledge of the Other which is not also a temporal, historical, a political act" (1). If this is true, in what ways does the "Other" exist? Fabian argues that the "referent" of anthropology is produced in discourse (and also fixed in time). What are the goals of Anthropological Studies if studying the "Other" is ultimately about ourselves and the spreading of our societal ideologies?
-AA, TV, CM
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To question 1:
ReplyDeleteFabian defines coevalness as the common occupation of the same time by different peoples. In his use of the concept of “sharing time”, Fabian stresses the ability of subjects to communicate with one another—to achieve some degree of intersubjectivity. He uses this definition to argue that the ethnographic method suffers from the paradox of collecting information based on an assumption of coevalness between the subject and the object of the ethnographic study (a coevalness validated through participant/observation methods, and ‘thinking like the other’), while then analyzing and writing about that information within a system of “typological time” that positions the objectified other temporally behind the writer and the assumed readers of the ethnography.
Fabian’s “reflexive ability” of the ethnographer refers to making subjective past experiences (fieldwork) resonate in the present (analysis and writing). When writing ethnography from past experiences with the Other, an ethnographer can be “in the presence of others” only inasmuch as those others have become “content of [his/her] experience” (91-92). The “reflexive ability” can only revive the “presence” of past subjective experience with others, and thus that presence is only as complete as past subjective experience allows. While Fabian does not claim that the ethnographer can be completely “in the presence of others”, his use of presence should certainly make us think of Derrida’s notion of arche-writing (the violent entrance of the subject into a symbolic system that denies it the dream of full presence). If we are unable to be fully present as individual subjects in a world of symbols (as Derrida asserts) what hope do we possibly have of being fully “in the presence of others”? While Fabian does not imply the possibility of fully present intersubjectivity through ethnographic reflexivity, a revisiting of Derrida’s arche-writing should at least cause us to ask: how could full intersubjective presence be attained without full subjective presence?
EF
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ReplyDeleteQ2: The Other, according to Fabian, exists in anthropological discourse as relational to temporal constructs that situate both West and the Other, (which is the binary that Fabian sets up) in oppositional terms that come to define and produce knowledge of one another. And this production, according to Fabian, is “validated and invalidated by the use of temporal catergorizations,” questioning the purposes of certain uses of times in anthropological study (25).
ReplyDeleteFabian’s questioning is similar to a question posed in this week’s blog post.
(“What are the goals of Anthropological Studies if studying the "Other" is ultimately about ourselves and the spreading of our societal ideologies?”)
The question is provocative although I wonder if it is asking two different questions. One, what are the goals of Anthropoligcal studies if, in the context of Fabian’s argument, the Other becomes a classificatory model or object of study rather than an analysis based on a shared spatialized Time? Or, in why has anthropological study used certain modes of temporality in its study and in the process, what has it produced or what bodies of knowledge has it invalidated?
The second part of the question posed, for me, requires greater explication. In what ways is the studying of the “Other” about ourselves? Is it in the ways that the use of the Other functions in oppositional terms, providing civilization in respect to the Other as uncivilized? Is it through an approach similar to Levi-Strauss, who hopes to find ‘primitive hope’ and the source of Western societal function through ethnographic study? Both might share similar and fundamental epistemological assumptions of the Other, but can their respective methodological approaches be seen as different and as employing different modes of temporality, something that I think is important to Fabian’s argument?
In regards to the “referent” of anthropological discourse, perhaps we can say, that the “Other” does not exist. Rather because the discourse of the Other is not in our own temporal space and denies and coevalness. Fabian writes, “What makes the savage significant to the evolutionist’s Time is that he lives in another Time” (27).
This brings up the seeming potential that Fabian seems to find in field research through coevalness of time. It is not only the embrace of such a coevalness that is fundamental to Fabian’s argument, but also the creation of coevalness, something Fabian finds as constitutive of communication itself. What hopes and limitation lie in the area of field research and in a shared Time and coevalness?