"The extremely high level of individuation in humans is a major anthropological fact ... Other living species do not possess it to such a high degree, to the level that defines consciousness of the self, awareness of existing as singular, regardless of any psychological, social or cultural slant that could be placed on that individuality. It is oxymoronic of anthropology as the science of human beings to homogenise these units socioculturally, since the characteristic feature of existence is that it is implacably private and singular." (Albert Piette, The Volume of Being).
This new forum discussion draws attention to a new OAC paper by Albert Piette. Albert's paper, the Volume of Being (click here), makes quite challenging, but also important, reading for anyone interested in contemporary debates in the field of anthropology. It consists of a short manifesto for an anthropology of individual human beings. This may not seem particularly controversial at first sight until we consider the lack of attention to the individual human being in contemporary anthropology where relations, actor-networks, assemblages and ontologies are taken to be the primary object of study: in all this the thinking acting 'voluminous' human individual is hardly to be seen anywhere. We might envisage these trends as indicating a profound attack on the one thing we have in common--our humanity--but in the current climate that kind of claim reeks of an outdated humanism; didn't Foucault tell us half a century ago that we must give up making claims on behalf of 'Man'?
Albert Piette calls our attention to an anthropology of residues and leftovers--those parts of what makes up a human being that disappear when human intentionality and activity are turned into socio-cultural discourse.
This seminar is currently in progress.
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I would like to move on to an optimistic note: the future of anthropology, which would have hardly begun, now that anthropology is slowly getting out of social anthropology and social sciences, is almost entirely to create, conceptually and methodologically.
Dear John,
Albert, I will be closing the seminar now, but I would very much like to thank you for your exceptionally careful and thought-provoking responses throughout the last two weeks. Thanks are also due to Abraham, Annika, John, Keith, Lee and Ron -- these seminars only works if their is a fruitful dialogue between diverse participants and that was particularly true of this one it seemed to me.
In the paper and in the foregoing discussion Albert has defended an anthropology that explores human individuality for what is is--the fact of and capacity for human individuation--over a view variously omnipresent in social science of the human individual as representative of the social, a place bearer, a signifier of some other kind of socio-cultural potential. If we read back through his responses here we will find numerous fascinating insights, epistemological, methodological toward that end. I hope visitors do that; whether they agree or disagree it will be worth their while. Many thanks again, Albert.
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