Faciality and Minor Literatures

Karin Patzke November 13, 2013 Faciality and Minor Literatures

1. Benson, Peter, and Kevin Lewis O'neill, "Facing Risk: Levinas, Ethnography, and Ethics," Anthropology of Consciousness 18/2 (2007)

"First, the primacy of "the other" and powerful images of travel founding Levinas's work provoke critical reflection about the fundamental role of alterity and location in ethnographic fieldwork. Second, Levinas’s work encourages anthropologists to theorize the process rather than the product of ethnographic fieldwork….Third, and finally, Levinas pushes against the overwhelmingly liberal conversation regarding ethics that dominates much of contemporary thought and political debate." (Benson and O'Neill, 30). - Structure of the argument

"Against a model of ethics premised upon rights and equality, Levinas says that the self is infinitely responsible for the other and that this unequal and hierarchical encounter defines ethics." (Benson and O'Neill, 30) - Distinction of Levinas

"Ethnography thus becomes a deconstructive basis upon which encounters with others dynamically inform the patterns of life and values that define the researcher" - Perhaps a qualifier is necessary here. Not every ethnographer is able to understand how his or her position is unequal. Furthermore, not every ethnographer is able to be reflective in this mode. Perhaps positing this as a 'best case scenario' might be more appropriate.

"Some even make mention of a so-called "Levinas-effect," the ides that "the difficulty of Levinas's texts permits his commentators to find in them a reflection of their own interests and attitudes"" (Benson and O'Neill, 32) - In describing different forms of writing structure, Belcher identifies the synaptic article structure as one that 'proceeds by sparking readers' imaginations, lighting up synapses up like fireworks with a series of epiphanies…[they] are offend highly theoretical" (Belcher, 182) (footnote: Belcher is a professor of African literature at Princeton University for the Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for African American Studies, but she also writes about writing and this quote comes from: Belcher, Wendy Laura. Writing your journal article in twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success. Sage, 2009.) - In reading work without a rigorous structure, intention and interpretation, for me at least, begin to blend together. How does one distinguish from 'what makes sense to me' from 'what the author is trying to communicate?” Thoughtful reading is difficult. - However, reading seems to be an intimate form of acknowledging and confronting the other. Hostility or affinity to a particular text or author may not actually have anything to say about the author of the text, but only about the reader. Karin Patzke November 13, 2013 - I'm a little confused by the last sentence of this paragraph: "This article, for one, tables a textual pursuit of the “real Levinas” and instead gears its reading of Levinas toward specific questions formulated in light of anthropological research design, the practice of fieldwork, and ethnographic writing." (Benson and O'Neill, 32). Are the author's guilty of the Levinas effect? Does it matter?

"“The other” simply refers to another person; the person who stands before the self." (Benson and O'Neill, 32) - I can't be the only one reminded on Nietzsche here.

“The time of the face is that which is without power, destitute and vulnerable, capable of dying, naked no matter how the other might be clothed, powerless no matter how robust the other might be” (Benson and O'Neill, 34)

“The spontaneous movements of daily practice had now delimited the intended expanse of ethnographic materials.” (Benson and O'Neill, 35) - Here the authors are attempting to characterize the divisions and accessibility issues they experience in moments of obvious exclusion. But how does an ethnographer begin to be aware of the not-so-obvious ways in which they are divided from ‘what’s really going on?’

“Here we can clearly see how the subject of research and the researcher’s sta- tus as a subject of scrutiny are partly influenced by spontaneous encounter in which roles are undermined or, even if not fully challenged, rendered ambiguous. “ (Benson and O'Neill, 36) - I might characterize this in a less ambiguous way. The presence of the ethnography changed and restructured the order of the group. When confronted with the other, one makes adjustments. But how do we understand these changes? How do we make sense of them both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the ethnographic moment? The authors posit that ‘the ethical importance of such encounters, has to do with the centrality of privilege and power to the very idea of a separation between research and life” (ibid). And then, linking back to Levinas, they write: “Here, the phenomenological account of fieldwork resembles Levinas’s account of the unstable quality of any totality” (ibid). - This is a total cop out. - But I’m not exactly sure what I want here. “Fieldwork often yields encounters that are “structured, shaped, and conceived within the specific disciplinary, theoretical, and institutional logics of anthropology, sociology, and related cultural studies” (ibid) seems to get at it…

“As Levinas writes, “individuals are reduced to being bearers of forces that command them unbeknown to themselves. The meaning of individuals (invisible outside of this totality) is derived from the totality . . . [and] each present is incessantly sacrificed to a future appealed to bring forth its objective being” (1969:22)…… Such an orientation thus rubs against, without simply or completely overturning, the totalizing sense of control Karin Patzke November 13, 2013 that disallows a marking of the self by the others and reduces the meaning of alterity to the researcher’s own political, moral, and epistemological concerns.” (Benson and O'Neill, 37-38) - I love it! (aka, the Levinas effect in action…)

“…....ethical despair……” (Benson and O'Neill, 43)

“To be afflicted with another’s suffering,” Lingis has written elsewhere, “requires that we care about the things the sufferer cares for” (2000:50). - Perhaps this is the hardest thing to do.

2. Peter Benson, "EL CAMPO: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor Camps," Cultural Anthropology 23/4 (2008):589-629

“…it is as if campo were not just this or that thing, but the social condition of farm labor itself, characterized by interlocking forms of subordination and marginalization.” (Benson, 590). - Would there ever be ethnographic work that revealed something good in the world?

4. Todd Ramon Ochoa, "Versions of the Dead: Kalunga, Cuban-Kongo Materiality, and Ethnography," Cultural Anthropoogy 22/4 (2007):473-500.