Kinky Empiricism

Abstract

It is time for anthropology to reclaim the empirical. But this reclaiming must be accompanied by a rethinking of what empiricism means. What I'd like to affirm in this article-and have attempted to practice in my recent research-is a kind of empiricism that builds on the singular power of anthropological ways of knowing the world. A kinky empiricism: kinky, like a slinky, twisting back on itself, but also kinky, like S and M and other queer elaborations of established scenarios, relationships, and things. An empiricism that admits that one never gets to the bottom of things, yet also accepts and even celebrates the disavowals required of us given a world that forces us to act. An empiricism that is ethical because its methods create obligations, obligations that compel those who seek knowledge to put themselves on the line by making truth claims that they know will intervene within the settings and among the people they describe.There are several reasons why now is a good time for anthropologists to insist on the empirical nature of what they do. The new kinds of interchanges in which anthropologists are now engaged create obligations of a particularly pressing sort. There is a price of admission to the politically fraught arenas that anthropologists are increasingly entering. As I have learned in my work in the troubled Indonesian territory of West Papua, paying this price can require us to write and speak authoritatively on issues that matter to the people we have studied. But all too often, anthropology has appeared to outsiders as having a tangential relationship to the empirical, producing knowledge that is too partial, too particular, too relativistic or

Tobacco Capitalism, an Afterword: Open Letters and Open Wounds in Anthropology

“…I am still stuck with and haunted by these misgivings. I agree with João Biehl that it is incumbent upon anthropologists to revisit our writings and field sites “to say more honestly what we saw or to rectify misrenderings and face the pain our interpretations and texts have caused” (, 354; see also Rutherford , 476). I want to return to your farm and talk to you about my respect and love for you, your family, and your work, and also about my life and work and the perspectives of my book.…”

Standard forms of power: Biopower and sovereign power in the technology of the US birth certificate, 1903–1935

“…Our call for empiricism, rather, follows Foucault's own practice of immersing his theoretical researches in the bath of archival material. This was for Foucault, and is for us, a kind of “critical empiricism,” (Koopman, , ) or what we might also call “kinky empiricism” (Rutherford, ). In taking Foucauldian genealogy as empiricist in this sense, we thus locate our effort in a methodological space shared by an increasing number of political theorists developing Foucauldian critique by way of empirico‐genealogical investigations of contemporary political realities (see Dilts, ; Erlenbusch‐Anderson, ; McWhorter, ; Olson, ).…”

“…Our call for empiricism, rather, follows Foucault's own practice of immersing his theoretical researches in the bath of archival material. This was for Foucault, and is for us, a kind of "critical empiricism," (Koopman, 2014(Koopman, , 2015 or what we might also call "kinky empiricism" (Rutherford, 2012).…”

On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination: The Year 2012 in Sociocultural Anthropology

“…We encountered these practices through our specifically anthropological ethic as well. As Danilyn Rutherford () writes, our empiricism distinguishes itself from others by the fact that it is ethical (Lambek ). Our methods, after all, create “obligations that compel those who seek knowledge to put themselves on the line by making truth claims that they know will intervene within the settings and among the people they describe” (Rutherford :465).…”

“…As Danilyn Rutherford () writes, our empiricism distinguishes itself from others by the fact that it is ethical (Lambek ). Our methods, after all, create “obligations that compel those who seek knowledge to put themselves on the line by making truth claims that they know will intervene within the settings and among the people they describe” (Rutherford :465). The articles published last year both in American Ethnologist and on the Cultural Anthropology website on Occupy, the Arab Spring, and beyond are in this sense ethnographies of, in, and for revolution.…”