Judgment and critique, anthropology and religion

Abstract

This article attempts to chart the various cross-cutting forms of critique that might surface in an ethnographic investigation of modes of religiosity. It stresses that if ethnography is to be an actual encounter, then it is important to at once understand that critique itself is not limited to merely one form of expression; nor should there be preconceptions as to what subjects are capable of voicing critique. At the same time though, it is equally important to distinguish critique from judgment; the latter can be distinguished from critique in that judgment is a ratification of an already extant metric, category, sensitivity, or esthetic, rather than an open-ended, empirical, and potentially transformative rendezvous with difference.