[Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

[JKirkpatrick]

Hi Richard, 

As I understand these terms, etic refers to "insider" views,
perceptions, ideologies.
Etic refers to "outsider" same. So one has to figure out which is
which. 

The confusion seems to happen when many post-modernist writers or
neo-colonial critics refuse to recognise that many of what they
consider to be "insiders" share the same views as the
"outsiders," as I indicated in my reference to Gendun Chophel and
the reception of his views by his insiders. Yet, from the binary
east-west viewpoint, he is also an insider despite the modernity
of his views. 
The dichotomy breaks down when "modern" (in this case I take
modern to mean "critical" or "revisionist") tendencies are
allocated only to people and things "western". 
This is why I usually resist using terms like "modernity, modern,
modernistic" etc.

I like to claim that along with "racism", "modern" has forever
been around. If you look at, say, traditions of Chinese
philosophical texts, or Japanese Zen texts from various masters,
or classical Indian texts, they start getting disputed and
critiqued early on, not waiting until the 17th c. onward to
become subject to modernising propensities. For me the term
"modern" can be useful if defined as critical or revisionist when
one encounters evidence of maintaining something deemed to be
traditional, against something deemed to be scandalously counter
to it. But that does reflect a bias in favor of re-thinking,
re-visioning, being critical, which Quli seems to be on about
(bias, I mean). But then, what isn't biased?
 
As a conclusion to this rant about emic and etic, modernity etc,
this is what I say in an article from my publication (the CDR,
also on my website), responding to the inevitable critique that
anthropologists were and are orientalists (started by no less
than E.W. Said: Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's
Interlocutors. Critical Inquiry, 15:2, Winter, 1989.

Doing the Work: Research and "The Other"
http://www.artsricksha.com/readings/reading.asp?ID=14

       Excerpts:
	Anthropological fieldwork, predominantly intended as
"participant observation," has occasionally been labeled an
Orientalist enterprise by some scholars. (See Edward W. Said's
"Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors," 1989.
For the first trumpet blast of the Orientalism critique, see
Said, 1978; and a review of Said's thesis in the context of
Indian Orientalism by the historian David Kopf, 1978.) (1) On one
hand, in response to the charge by post-colonialist historians
that early Orientalism in India only represented social elites,
subaltern historical studies were initiated in India which sought
evidence and texts of the views and consciousness of the working
poor (see, e.g., the series edited by Guha, 1998). On the other
hand, with respect to anthropological field reports from India,
it cannot be said that these represented mainly elite cultures
when more often than not poor and middle-class villagers were the
main respondents.
...The critical circle  has closed. Today the forces of a global
economy and rapidly increasing migration have produced critiques
of culture which cut all ways more obviously than in the past.
Some critiques achieve temporary ascendancy because of political
and other conditions, only to fail as some other perspective
becomes fashionable or finds the limelight. (2) My view is that
this critical process has been going on since the beginnings of
culture, and of "us" and "them." While I hesitate to say "all,"
most all peoples, no matter where located, produce their own
critiques of culture. These critiques were probably always
available, if only social scientists had sought them out. In the
present climate of expansive information dispersal, critiques
from different social levels, sections, and cultures proliferate
in the various media and in the consciousness of anyone willing
to pay heed. 
  I would postulate at least two basic kinds of critique:
differential external critiques made by outsiders, and
differential internal critiques spun by insiders responding to
the predicaments of their lives. The subjects of such critiques
are usually versions of selves and versions of non-selves. This
concept is for me the critical context of the work I've reported
and commented on in this study...













On Dec 29, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Joanna Kirkpatrick wrote:

> Here goes. Since this article is a 29 pager, I'm going to
respond to 
> it sort of piecemeal, as I go along, instead of having to
muster 
> copious notes to tide me to the end and longer comments:

That, I think, is by far the best way to proceed. Otherwise, our
e-mails would transcend the attention spans of email readers.
Thanks for sending along your comments and raising the questions
your raised. Some of the same questions came up for me as I was
reading the article, but I think you stated your concerns more
clearly than I would have done.

Something I hope you, or perhaps some other anthropologist, can
clarify for me is the meaning of "etic" and "emic." People in
religious studies use those terms all the time, and I have looked
them up repeatedly and tried to get a handle on them. But the
more I read about how the terms are used, the more confusing I
find them. Can you give us a quick fix on how those words are
used in anthropology and perhaps shed a bit of light on how Quli
is using them? I found myself getting bewildering by what she was
describing as "etic" descriptions of Buddhism. (Be gentle with
me. I'm a philosopher. My job is to be bewildered for as long as
possible about as much as possible.) 

--
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu







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