Reposted by Benjamin Liberatore, Ph.D.
This is a good analysis of Henrich's sub-report on anthropology for the Vanderbilt report on the humanities. I particularly appreciated the point that "For all his complaining about autoethnography, his report is utterly dependent on it."
![For all his complaining about autoethnography, his report is utterly dependent on it. He begins the report with a story about his arrival at UCLA in 1993, along with an autoethnographic accounting of his intellectual journey from cultural to biological anthropology. His analysis is, to quote a critic of autoethnography, one in which he “take[s] a central role…in a narrative of struggle and suffering as [he] confronts the challenges of life” (Henrich pg. 37-38). It’s just that rather than emphasizing “the experience of racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation and othering” (pg. 37-38), he instead emphasizes the experiences of ideological pressure, professional intimidation, and the marginalization of dissenters in the discipline (of which he is apparently one). He bases his understanding of the biological/cultural split in some departments almost entirely on his own experiences in two different departments at elite private schools. There really is no attempt to be systematic and rigorous in his analysis of those events in a broader, more general way than what he and his friends experienced.
Throughout the report, he explicitly states his own positionality as exactly the kind of credence-lending thing he rebukes when others do it. “My immersion in these other disciplines, which includes earning tenure and promotion to full professor, gives me a unique perspective on Anthropology” (pg. 3) may as well have been phrased, “as an anthropologist myself…” This is precisely the kind of work autoethnography and reflexive positioning does, but I guess it’s only verboten when it is Others positioning themselves in relation to structures of oppression. In his case, it’s just adding context and is totally apolitical!
At the top of pg. 39, Henrich quotes Susan Pickard’s critique of autoethnography:
What distinguishes self-expression from scholarship? What are the limits of subjectivity as data? What about distortion, selective seeing, the dangers of solipsism? The speakers were a…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mm4ujzh5bqccjs7g2oerjemp/bafkreihucz7n2gdl5g2x256n4m4s3oviru3ts5qm4pg5blz3txk6r5jw7u)
![BENJAMIN: Sam, you're 11, yeah? But you're part of this thing that's been going on for hundreds of years. What does that feel like? Do you ever think about that?
SAM: No, I never think about that. I mostly focus on the singing. It doesn't really matter how old it was. I don't really care if it was made a thousand years ago or two days before I joined: it'— it's all basically the same when I'm singing.
BENJAMIN: Do you feel like you tend to live in the moment?
SAM:Well, I— like, the moment and the future. And occasionally the past when I do history lessons. But otherwise I don't— I don't see the point of praising something just because it happens to be old. Mm... yeah: don't let the past get in the way of advancements.
BENJAMIN: So- so, the past might have been very good, but the future could also be very good?
SAM: Or better! [He waggles his eyebrows.] Shiny and faster cars, and more powerful iPhones, and— [picking up speed] and eventually— now this— now this is something I've been thinking about for a long time: eventually, what if there's an Alexa that is so powerful that you can say "Alexa, go mow my lawn!" and it uses telekinesis to mow your lawn? Wouldn't that be cool? [A pause.] As long as we don't make it self-aware, we'll be fine. Like, I've seen videos of, like: "Once we make self-aware AI, we'll be doomed!" And I'm just thinking: "How about you DON’T make self-aware Al and doom humankind? Why don't you just NOT make that?"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yrtfvpkjpz73illuirror7c/bafkreif6o4d3q4kgpckljbpsx3ghvyqgnhcdeonhnvwha3cicv6oviiy5q)
![BENJAMIN: What do you think Al *can't* do? What do you think are things that only humans can do?
SAM: Well, currently— well, currently, only human beings can feel real emotion and improvise. [A pause.] Computers might be able to improvise. That's scary: like, just... [He hesitates, then rallies.] Hmm. No: I'm pretty sure they can't: they have to stick to the code. We don't: we can do whatever we like. So, there's certain things, like: be self-aware; have emotion; be, uh... it's like Adam and Eve: computers won't think "Oh no! We're naked!" but humans could think that. It's like a human— like, a computer won't go out in public trying to disguise its computer stands.
BENJAMIN: The way humans go out in public trying to disguise their nakedness, for instance?
SAM: Yes.
BENJAMIN: Do you know the lesson that sometimes gets read at Christmas about Adam and Eve realising that they were naked and then having to leave the garden?
SAM:Mmhm. Because they ate an apple. The thing is: if this God fellow is so smart, why didn't he put it on top of a mountain or something? If he didn't want them to eat it, then— then maybe it was a test. Like, um, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, Ford Prefect made a very good point: he said he always thought the Garden of Eden was a strange story, because the kind of person who'd just put something in plain sight and say, "now, don't get that!" and then kind of wait behind a bush for when they do and yell "Gotcha!" is the kind of person that will find another way to destroy you anyway, if that doesn't work.
BENJAMIN: Huh. And that makes you think again about the story?
SAM: Mmhm.
— Chapel chorister "Sam" (age 11)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yrtfvpkjpz73illuirror7c/bafkreiedheqnbqqdbmiatpufylp5otachp5mfwvpxeepmyze77hypsbina)
![Text from pages 10 and 11 of Lee Edelman’s 2004 book NO FUTURE:
Man." Historically constructed, as social critics and intellectual historians including Phillipe Ariès, James Kincaid, and Lawrence Stone have made clear, to serve as the repository of variously sentimentalized cultural identifications, the Child has come to embody for us the telos of the social order and come to be seen as the one for whom that order is held in perpetual trust."
In its coercive universalization, however, the image of the Child, not to be confused with the lived experiences of any historical children, serves to regulate political discourse-to prescribe what will count as political discourse -by compelling such discourse to accede in advance to the reality of a collective future whose figurative status we are never permitted to acknowledge or address… [W]e are no more able to conceive of a politics without a fantasy of the future than we are able to conceive of a future without the figure of the Child. That figural Child alone embodies the citizen as an ideal, entitled to claim full rights to its future share in the nation's good, though always at the cost of limiting the rights "real" citizens are allowed. For the social order exists to preserve for this universalized subject, this fantasmatic Child, a notional freedom more highly valued than the actuality of freedom itself, which might, after all, put at risk the Child to whom such a freedom falls due.
Hence, whatever refuses this mandate by which our political institutions compel the collective reproduction of the Child must appear as a threat not only to the organization of a given social order but also, and far more ominously, to social order as such, insofar as it threatens the logic of futurism on which meaning always depends.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yrtfvpkjpz73illuirror7c/bafkreie2w4r7vkv63byqihcjuwaa24cg6yp5cpwml4oecmuot6b6dmqy4m)
![GEORGE: [May Morning] is— it's massive. I mean, 2,000 people every year come from New Zealand, from America... actually, virtual May Morning was even more massive: it was over 20,000 people. Or 50,000. Or something like that. People from all over the world who wouldn't normally get to see it, could see it, so there were those people from China, America-some from New York, actually-and a few even from South America, which I found quite amazing. And they were all messaging live on the Facebook, or the WhatsApp, or whatever it was. I actually watched it live, which was really exciting. And both my grandmas watched it live, of course...
BENJAMIN: What do you think it is, George, that makes all of those people—whether online or, on the day of, at the tower—that makes them, uh... because it — you've said it's packed, right? People come from all over to be there really early in the morning. And — and they listen. What is it, do you think, that makes them want to see that and to hear that? What draws them, do you think?
GEORGE: I think it's because... mmm. [A pause.] Well, some people, like you, want to see the actual thing... but most people do it because it's in their blood. I mean, so many— so many of their family members have gone to Oxford and watched Magdalen every year sing on top at May Morning, so why shouldn't they? You know? And I think it's just, really, they want to see the — like, um: "Oh, it's traditional." It's in their blood. I mean, a lot of people who were from Oxford — who are from Oxford, they want- they want to — they want to see the sight: they want— they want to hear the amazing sounds, and they want to smell the amazing smells. And I think it's just, really, their treat of the year...](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yrtfvpkjpz73illuirror7c/bafkreidlmejvmgucp4ujapqvi2p7tnarn3enfdmdbm6owzaarxjyyvg274)
![BENJAMIN: Do you feel like the choir is in your blood?
GEORGE: Oh... [A pause.] I... I think not yet. I don't think it's, like, running through. But maybe... if I have children or grandchildren, I think if they go in the choir, then it'll be properly, like... ingrained.
BENJAMIN: Mmm.
GEORGE: I mean, it all really comes from your parents' experiences. And my parents didn't go [here], and, I mean... yeah: it's not in my blood yet. I don't think that it... [A pause.] It's — it's all to do with time, really... it's so embedded in our history. I mean, from the 1500s, where they sang in the re-formation of England, it's just... if [English history] was a long tapestry, it would be one thread. Or maybe many, because it's so embedded... Really, I think of history as a long timeline, with loads of pictures and loads of different threads symbolizing different things. And, yeah: really, I think choral choirs and chapels, churches and religion and arts are definitely, definitely embedded in our society... So, I'd say we [the current choristers] have joined onto the long line, just like many people— well, like all people do. I mean, every single person who's ever lived is— is history. I mean, what I've said just then—? It's history. And just— just everything that happens in the world: say if a wasp gets killed or a fly get squashed, it's— it's— it's all history. I mean, everything joins into the tapestry.
"George," a chorister, age 12](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yrtfvpkjpz73illuirror7c/bafkreialbqbpuxlb32w2ykjzca6ezaeurtmhuwn3as3jluh4u3fz6ubcmm)
