Abstract
Contradictions constitute one fundamental aspect of human life. Humans are steeped in contradictory thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. In this debate, five anthropologists adopt an individual-centered and phenomenological perspective on contradictions. How can one live with them? How to describe them from an anthropological point of view? Should we rethink our dear notion of the “social agent” through that of contradiction?
Highlights
Anthropology as the science of contradictions David Berliner Once during my anthropology of gender class, one student explained to us her embarrassment when, being a convinced feminist, she realized that she was enthusiastically singing the sexist lyrics of a popular track
I ask: what if one adopts an individual-centered and phenomenological perspective on contradictions? How might we describe them from an anthropological point of view? Should we rethink our dear notion of the “social agent” through that of contradiction?
Anthropologists were interested in exploring the universality of the “law of non-contradiction,” starting with Lévy-Bruhl (1910) and his law of participation according to which, in primitive societies, contradictory statements about reality can coexist
Summary
Humans are steeped in contradictory thoughts, feelings, and attitudes In this debate, five anthropologists adopt an individual-centered and phenomenological perspective on contradictions. While anthropologists are invited to behave ethically in the field (Scheper-Hughes 1995), the chameleon-like experience of participant observation tends to produce such moral swinging, for better or worse (Berliner 2013) This constitutes a good reminder that contradictions do not escape historical and cultural determinations. It is essential to outline a typology of different contradictions as well as to explore the cognitive, emotional, and social processes through which they are rendered possible in human lives. We must do so with care, always keeping in mind that, to borrow Nietzsche’s formula in Beyond good and evil ([1896] 1966: 154), contradictions are “signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.”
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