On the dialogic of field work

Abstract

Dante, in The Inferno, encoutered Muham? mad, the Prophet of Islam, in the Eighth Circle, among the Sowers of Discord. Muhammad's body was split open from the chin to tho anus, and "Between his legs all of his red guts hung/ with the heart, the lungs, the liver, the gall bladder/ and the shriveled sac that passes shit to the bung" [ 1 ]. This was cultural mediation of a sort, a communication about "self" through use of the "other", and was spoken in an historical context which witnessed a direct challenge to Christian dominance in Europe from Muslim Spain. Dante's polemic against Islam was the other face of his defense of Christianity. It was not uncommon, however, throughout the Renais? sance and the Enlightenment, for the other to serve as a weapon in the critique of self. The exemplary use of an Islamic other to this end is probably Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721), in which fictional Turkish visitors to Western Europe, and to Paris in particular, correspond with their countrymen at home and abroad, exposing what are seen as irra? tional and extravagant aspects of European life. This discourse, whether prompted by a defensive impulse similar to Dante's or by a critical one like Montesquieu's, whether the other was purportedly historical or explicitly imaginary, objectified the other as part of a strategy to objectify the self. Anthropology is today a major vehicle for this discourse. It too creates otherness and objectifies it. Although such objectification is probably a necessary moment in any con? scious attempt to transcend the self, it is not, of course, a sufficient one. As we acknow? ledge this moment, we must now begin to move beyond it, to ask further questions con? cerning the kind of objectification of others, and of ourselves, that we as anthropologists create. These questions are particularly vital when we phrase them with reference to con? texts where our social action is most imme? diate and most suspect, in our interaction with people. This is not the place to embark upon an extended critique of anthropological practice, especially since excellent ones already exist. Let me simply outline what I take to be central to such a critique, in order to situate these remarks within the latter, and as an effort to extend it. The emergence of anthropology as a dis? cipline was intimately connected to "a histor? ical process which has made the larger part of mankind subservient to the other" [2]. Corre? ctively, anthropologists conceptually and practically apportioned their human contem? poraries into two corresponding classes: "informants" and "public". Furthermore, since anthropology evolved in a social system, whenever relationships between people tended to be viewed as relationships between things, the connections between anthropolo? gists and informants, and between anthro? pologists and public, were transmuted in a similar way. Kevin Dwyer was most recently Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.