Sympathy and communication

228. Sympathy and communication

How satisfying it is to finally read sympathetic anthropologists, who turn the project of anthropology on its head—the anti-anthropologists. Indeed, how thrilling it is to read Nietzsche’s analysis of the philosophers themselves, their motivations—some have called Nietzsche the anti-philosopher. Indeed, how thrilling to read Sass’s destruction of the psychological concept of schizophrenia! How satisfying to read Wittgenstein’s criticism of On Golden Bough!!!

Yet how can these philosophers be doing anything other than what they are doing—even in their confusion and doubt? How can Wittgenstein put them in the right direction? Isn’t that like putting the schizophrenic in the right direction? Or the Eskimo in the right direction? What was the philosopher’s project? Why was the pursuit of that project meaningful to him? 

229. There is a common observation that certain philosophical problems had their beginnings as the product of a scientific attitude, what in Western language could be described as a process of observation or data gathering and statistical interpretation. The argument is that, with the growth in popularity of this vantage point or technique, certain philosophical problems arose, among them ‘mind-body’ problems, problems of defining human consciousness (or articulating what, with respect to consciousness, actually exists with respect to ‘consciousness’), and problems of ‘other minds’ (the challenge of articulating, using a ‘scientific’ manner of thinking and expression, the phenomenon of another human consciousness). It could further be argued that the course to certain ‘philosophical problems’ is somehow inherent in the nature of ‘philosophy’ itself—philosophy’s being a Western phenomena in the history of humanity, a project rooted deeply in language: deeply imbedded in a history of legibility, standardization, and systemization of human experience and expression.

At first it could be tempting to consider the prospect of an anthropological approach to certain of these philosophical problems. Why not get on the ground, get back to real observations, trace back the path to where human beings began to circumscribe and delimit human experience into a powerful matrix—a system, tool, or prison—that is commonly referred to as ‘language.’ The problem is that the anthropologist will never be able to wash himself of his original sin, for his approach to his project is shaped, guided, and described by language, and his account of his project will similarly operate under its conduit. He will realize that the very project of anthropology—observation, description, prediction, etiology—all emanate from the very material of the language that he uses. His only escape from this matrix of language would be to abandon the very project of expression using language. Abandon communication. Eschewing contact with language, which would mean avoiding all contact with any living being who either speaks or writes a written language, he could then attempt to carry on some form of activity. What would he get back to? What insight might be the result of his new course? Outside of language, outside of his communication—his speaking, his writing, the books and articles and journals of his past—what would be expressible to those who remain in a matrix of language, a matrix that our anthropologist has presumably escaped?

It is an important, practical question, because, as I write, there is a man, who has gone off in the wilderness, who has realized his project of anthropology was problem-filled. In his recently discovered notes, I have found the following:

1.      First, the problem with my project is that it is a project. I don’t even know or care anymore about the definition of a project or what a project could possibly be. It’s some scary fucking ritual. Not a ritual I’m dancing anymore. Fuck it. Fuck the funding. Fuck every motherfucker who ever wrote a fucking book. Fuck every class I took. Fuck that dissertation. What waste of time. I could have lived in those years. What a bad charade my life has been.

2.      The second problem is that all this shit is pre-literate experience. How the fuck can I go about writing about pre-literate experience? Does anyone put a big fucking warning label on this shit—“Waste of time. Not gonna go anywhere. Can only make you miserable and confused.” What sick curiosity do we have that makes us want to go look at all the last living relics of all the shit we wiped out? What do we get from it? Entertainment? Wisdom? Are we just apologists? It’s like we’ve sent radiation that killed everyone. We make visits to the hospital bedsides to wipe the brows of people we have ourselves murdered. Some Western asshole is going o find my work ‘interesting,’ tantalizing,’ fascinating,’ or ‘enjoyable?’ Is that what this is all about? Some asshole thinks the whole fucking thing is interesting??

3.      I get lost and hope no one ever finds me.

Is someone going to get him? Can he really go up and escape like that? What sort of interesting or fascinating work would he have written had he chosen to continue with his project?