Humanity Lost: Alterity and the Politics of a Melancholic Anthropology

Abstract

Anthropology's approach to the study of difference has been marked by dramatic shifts defined in political terms. Nonetheless, the accompanying historical trajectory of the discipline's theorization of politics hasn't substantially changed, and has focused less on what constitutes politics, its terms and concepts, and more on how to do politics, often with the assumption that this politics should be in solidarity with the victims of unequal relations of power. In so doing, anthropology has often reinforced humanist assumptions about the human, based on the liberal subject of European modernity. An analysis of Jewish-Israeli political identifications puts into question such humanist assumptions. I show how an analysis of two examples from my fieldwork in Israel calls into question concepts of community and identity, including that of the human, as the foundational ground on which anthropology's analyses of politics often rest. Drawing on Freud's concept of melancholia, and on a Levinasian concept of alterity, I suggest the notion of a melancholic anthropology as the study of difference which acknowledges the inhuman within the human, and the impossibility of a common humanity. This article thus builds on recent discussions about how anthropological investments in doing politics have consequences for understandings of responsibility, ethics, and the human itself. [Israel, Jew, alterity, politics, anthropology, human]. The place: Tel Aviv The time: November 2008 The event: A friend gets on a public bus in the city center.It is an accordion bus, it is morning, and the bus is crowded with passengers. As she pays her fare, the driver says to her, "Quickly, call 101 [like 911], there is a 'cousin' behind me with . . ." She glances back and sees a young man with a large package. The driver is clearly agitated and scared. In that moment, between the suspected bomber, the driver, the other passengers, and herself, she must make a decision. The question is not only if the passenger sitting behind the driver is a bomber or not, but whether or not he is (and it is impossible to know for sure then) should she call? It does not matter who she is in this moment or what her political views might be-neither work as an alibi. She is forced to make a decision between those with whom she shares the bus. Specifically and explicitly, it is the demand of the driver for her to call to which she must respond, and she and everyone else on the bus are implicated.