Over the ruins of subjects: A critique of subjectivism in anthropological discourse

Abstract

The present article develops a theoretical and philosophical critique of the subjectivist paradigm that grounds a good part of present-day anthropological discourse. The main thesis is that by placing the individual and its subjective experiences at the beginning and end of the anthropological discourse, one never thoroughly acknowledges and accepts our non-subjective and finite modes of being, thereby replicating a distorted and shallow picture of what we are as humans. The article explores, first, how that subjectivist paradigm came about, as well as some of its problems; secondly, it considers ethics and morality as the domain where one can better grasp the limits of subjectivist orientations; and concludes by turning to Heidegger's perspective on the ontological finitude of Dasein in order to emphasize the need for contemporary anthropology to build its reflections from within human finitude, that is, the frailties and the practical, analytic and moral limits of human existence.

The Unarticulated Existential Body: Embracing Embodiment and Representation in the Ethnographic Model of Objectivity

“…Consequently, given that the issue of ethnographic representation is currently a topic of intense epistemological debate stimulated by the ontological turn (hereafter, referred as OT) (see Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro 2014; Holbraad and Pedersen 2017 or Pickering 2017), the body, previously articulated from an existential perspective, will be employed to assess, in the sixth section, the appropriateness of using some kind of suspension of the natural attitude—a philosophical exercise known in phenomenology as epoché — 5 at an empirical level, as postulated by OT proponents like Pedersen (2020). Taking embodiment seriously as primary standpoint will also enable addressing some of the criticisms against the OT such as its subjectivist excesses (Santos Alexandre 2023), its relativism (Sivado 2020), and its representationalist nature (Paleček and Risjord 2013; Risjord 2020).…”