Abstract:“Tempted,” as he put it, by the “demon of terminological invention,” Malinowski first coined the term “phatic” as one half of a two‐word compound, “phatic communion.” Since Malinowski, “phatic” has often been used to imply a semiotic equation where mere communicative contact automatically produces positive social relations among those communicating. This article explores a genre of “trash talk” on the pétanque gambling courts of Luang Prabang, Laos to challenge this assumption and clarify multiple senses of “p… Show more
“…Erin's descriptions of her digital practice suggest that the purpose of the app is not just to animate Patricia but also to open a channel between them, taking moments of unwelcome distraction and reframing them as opportunities to intensify a desired connection. Her digital practice constitutes a form of “leaning in,” signaling to Patricia her willingness to be addressed (Zuckerman , 297).…”
Recent theorizations of animation offer intriguing possibilities for recognizing and attending to the sociality of a range of entities, including the dead. Today, diverse digital media are being used to maintain and even deepen intimate relationships with deceased loved ones. These media bring the dead to presence through forms of animation, understood not only in the narrow technical sense as a media genre but more broadly as a mode of mediation that vivifies in particular ways. This mode of mediation is iterative, bringing forth the multiplicity of the dead. Their materializations are partial and fragmentary, cohering around a database of elements rather than a cohesive, narrative identity. They are sparsely outlined, evoked rather than depicted. When the dead are animated by digital media, they invite their loved ones to fill them, expanding into many versions to which shifting attachments can form. Those who answer their call extend their ambivalent hospitality, maintaining mutually constitutive relationships through which both the living and the dead are carried forth.
“…Erin's descriptions of her digital practice suggest that the purpose of the app is not just to animate Patricia but also to open a channel between them, taking moments of unwelcome distraction and reframing them as opportunities to intensify a desired connection. Her digital practice constitutes a form of “leaning in,” signaling to Patricia her willingness to be addressed (Zuckerman , 297).…”
Recent theorizations of animation offer intriguing possibilities for recognizing and attending to the sociality of a range of entities, including the dead. Today, diverse digital media are being used to maintain and even deepen intimate relationships with deceased loved ones. These media bring the dead to presence through forms of animation, understood not only in the narrow technical sense as a media genre but more broadly as a mode of mediation that vivifies in particular ways. This mode of mediation is iterative, bringing forth the multiplicity of the dead. Their materializations are partial and fragmentary, cohering around a database of elements rather than a cohesive, narrative identity. They are sparsely outlined, evoked rather than depicted. When the dead are animated by digital media, they invite their loved ones to fill them, expanding into many versions to which shifting attachments can form. Those who answer their call extend their ambivalent hospitality, maintaining mutually constitutive relationships through which both the living and the dead are carried forth.
“…The séance reflexively foregrounded phaticity (Nozawa , 378–379) , in two senses: both in the narrow sense of drawing attention to the existence of a channel to communicate with the spirits of the dead in the “Summerlands,” and also in the more sociological Malinowskian sense of affording the possibility of “phatic communion” (Malinowski ), phaticity as sociability, establishing contact with a lost loved one. Here Zuckerman draws a useful distinction between two senses of phaticity, between technomorphic “phatic contact” (an infrastructural or “engineering problem” of channels or contact) and a more sociological “phatic communion” (for a historical and critical discussion of this ambiguity see Zuckerman [, 295–299] and references there, see also Lemon [, ]):Phaticity has two prominent and distinct senses. On the one hand, phaticity is used in a communion sense, where it refers to semantically “empty” talk that builds positive social relations, such as casual talk about the weather.…”
Section: The Latent Ontology Of the Séance: Phatic And Meta‐phatic Spmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…When phaticity's two distinct senses are conflated, when the term is used in both its senses at the same time, it carries forward the assumption that contact creates communion. (Zuckerman , 296)…”
Section: The Latent Ontology Of the Séance: Phatic And Meta‐phatic Spmentioning
Recent media studies research on 19th‐century Spiritualism has foregrounded the technological metaphors that suffuse Spiritualist models of the séance. However, this article shows that the actual phatic channels proposed by Spiritualism consisted almost entirely of mediating chains of human spirits who stood between the bereaved séance guests and the spirits of the dear departed called “strangers.” While the “strangers” were, like the séance guests, departed white people, the authoritative “control spirits” were frequently exotic others such as “Indians” from the American imaginary of the Frontier. Beginning in 1875, the apparent transparency of the Spiritualist séance became the object of critique of an emerging occultist movement of Theosophy, which sought to undermine the authoritative human spirits of Spiritualism by turning the human spirits of the Spiritualist séance wholesale into disruptive non‐human mediators called “Diakkas,” “Bhuts,” and “Elementals,” and replacing Spiritualism's authoritative “Indian” control spirits drawn from the imaginary of the American frontier with Tibetan “Mahatmas” drawn from the orientalist imaginary of the Empire. These elementals initially represented noisy non‐human “parasites” of Spiritualist channels, but later these parasites take over the channel and become the channel themselves in the form of what came to be called the “elemental essence.”
“…While the works discussed above ask us to consider the ideologies/metaphysics that mediate and are mediated by interpretations of indexical grounds, other recent publications inquire about the channels through which contact (which may or may not entail copresence) may be achieved (Ansell ; Babel ; Black ; Harkness ; Handman ; Lemon ; Scott ; Zuckerman ). Zuckerman (, 295), for instance, points out that scholars may inappropriately conflate the contact and communion senses of phaticity and argues that we can only “understand the variety of ways actors make contact meaningful” when we analytically separate these phenomena. He illustrates this claim through a lucid discussion of “dosing,” a practice through which Laotian players of petanque, “a French game played like bocce and lawn bowling” (294), seek to distract their competitors so they will fail to score points.…”
Section: Presence(s) Contact(s) and Their Alternativesmentioning
In this review, I discuss recent works that embody Monica Heller's (2017, 12) assertion that anthropology is about "imagining alternative worlds." In the first section, "Presence(s), Contact(s), and their Alternatives," I focus on work that refines our analytical grasp of the semiotic processes underlying past, current, and projected realities, possibilities, and engagements. The second section, "Shifting Political Economies," deals with publications that specifically explore how political economic conditions are otherwise than was the case when linguistic anthropologists began formulating approaches to the political economies of language in the immediate post-Cold War period. In a third section, "Evidence and/of Imagination," I examine how linguistic anthropological works published in the period under review have used the terms "imagine/imagined/imaginary" in polyvalent senses when exploring how alternative worlds are conceived and produced, and consider how this nontechnical term can allow scholars to evade or to open up questions of scale and evidence. The final section, "Linguistic Anthropology Could be Otherwise," takes up work in 2017 that asks how the practice of linguistic anthropology itself could be-and should be-otherwise in terms of our engagements outside the field and the scope of our theoretical and political imaginations. [linguistic anthropology, semiotics, alternatives, imagination, political economies]RESUMEN En esta revisión, discuto los trabajos recientes que corporeizan la aserción de Monica Heller (2017, 12) que la antropología es acerca de "imaginarnos mundos alternativos." En la primera sección, "Presencia(s), contacto(s), y sus alternativas", me enfoco en el trabajo que refina nuestra comprensión analítica de los procesos semióticos subyacentes de las realidades, posibilidades y compromisos pasados, actuales y proyectados. La segunda sección, "Economías políticas cambiantes", se ocupa de las publicaciones que exploran específicamente cómo las condiciones económicas políticas son de otra manera de lo que era el caso cuando antropólogos lingüísticos empezaron formulando aproximaciones a las economías políticas del lenguaje en el período inmediato de post-Guerra Fría. En una tercera sección, "Evidencia y/de imaginación," examino cómo los trabajos antropológicos lingüísticos publicados en el período bajo revisión han usado los términos "imaginar/imaginado/imaginario" en sentidos polivalentes cuando exploran cómo mundos alternativos son concebidos y producidos, y consideran cómo este término no técnico puede permitir a los investigadores evadir o abrirse a cuestiones de escala y evidencia. La sección final, "Antropología lingüística podría ser de otra manera", se ocupa de trabajo en el 2017 que interroga cómo la práctica de antropología lingüística en sí misma podría ser -y debería ser-de otra manera en términos de nuestros compromisos por fuera del campo y elámbito de nuestras imaginaciones teóricas y políticas. [antropología lingüística, semiótica, alternativas, imaginación, economías pol...
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