Jen's Response to Daniela

Thanks Daniela for kicking off this thought-provoking discussion.

In response to your question: "What is ethnographic work nowadays? How can you escape the “misconceptions” that Derridas critiques about Levi Strauss work?" As I mentioned yesterday, I find it hard to respond to this question from Derrida's perspective. I appreciate his deconstructive analysis of Levi Strauss' research, and in many ways agree with his critique of "ethnocentrism in the consciousness of a liberating progressivism" (pg. 120). Nonetheless, I don't think Derrida successfully proposes an alternative model for a more responsible, or less ethnocentric, ethnography. In retrospect, I wonder if Derrida would find the activity of modeling alternative ethnographic methods a useful exercise at all -- probably not.

Derrida's main goal seems to be communicating an overall suspicion of any framework that attempts to implement an overarching hierarchy or rule set to what's "real." Toward that end, Derrida's critique is always formulated as a reaction to a reaction (to a reaction and so on). One topic that we didn't discuss in depth yesterday was what this means to our (linear) notions of "progress" -- one of the most controversial ideas in the discipline of anthropology, I'm sure. I'm very interested in how other scholars we read will address this topic throughout the rest of the course.

In response to your other question: "If Levi Strauss had a different conception of writing, maybe his conclusions about the Nambikwara would had been different?" Yes, I think Derrida persuasively argues that Levi Strauss' conclusions would be vastly different had he had a less narrow, "phonocentric" conception of writing. If Levi Strauss had approached writing from this broader perspective, he would have conceived the activities of A Writing Lesson not as a singularly violent "infiltration" of the Nambiwaka's "radical goodness" (pg. 119), but as a more complex (still violent) process of identification.