Tuesday, 12. September 2006
rousseau and the paradise lost
last night i only slept two hours because i was reading "a discourse on inequality" by jean-jacques rousseau. the beginning of the major anthropological problems... he is trying to discover how it came to be that people are different and the society - a stratified mass of unhappy individuals. there are NATURAL or ORIGINAL differences between men and there are the ARTIFICIAL or INSTITUTED ones. in the state of nature - the imagined beginning, where people lived free, peaceful and naked - there was no property and no inequality except as for race or strenght or other similar qualities. unlike hobbes, rousseau thinks that those savages as he calls them were friendly and not in the state of war of all against all. but then one man just said "this hut is mine" and nobody objected.
the creation of society led to the creation of the social contract and of the brutal civilization we now (then) have (had). "back to nature", "back to simple"... these are well-known to many marxist or anarchist or libertarian thinkers, although for rousseau it is only the imaginary... remember lacan? rousseau does not tell people to go back to pre-political living together in families... at least that's what he said explicitly... however, the pictures of kolbein and the story of the hottentot makes me doubt this... the paradise lost or the paradise never had? and then there are more fundamental problems which have been haunting anthropology, such as the quest to find the authentic - rousseau wants to find the original man, without all the attachments that progress has made him have... without the contamination. the same with maya in guatemala where the wearing of traditional traje is supposed to be the symbol of the indigenous. but what indigenous? what is authenticity... the beauty queen of guatemala is a ladina... not an indian... rousseau is an anthropologist at work in his armchair. he distances from geneva which he left... to the citizens of geneva a citizen of geneva even if he was not born here, although he was... complex of stepping inside and then outside, the emic and the ethic... to be objective. the imaginary can tell more than personal experiences.
the creation of society led to the creation of the social contract and of the brutal civilization we now (then) have (had). "back to nature", "back to simple"... these are well-known to many marxist or anarchist or libertarian thinkers, although for rousseau it is only the imaginary... remember lacan? rousseau does not tell people to go back to pre-political living together in families... at least that's what he said explicitly... however, the pictures of kolbein and the story of the hottentot makes me doubt this... the paradise lost or the paradise never had? and then there are more fundamental problems which have been haunting anthropology, such as the quest to find the authentic - rousseau wants to find the original man, without all the attachments that progress has made him have... without the contamination. the same with maya in guatemala where the wearing of traditional traje is supposed to be the symbol of the indigenous. but what indigenous? what is authenticity... the beauty queen of guatemala is a ladina... not an indian... rousseau is an anthropologist at work in his armchair. he distances from geneva which he left... to the citizens of geneva a citizen of geneva even if he was not born here, although he was... complex of stepping inside and then outside, the emic and the ethic... to be objective. the imaginary can tell more than personal experiences.
jusionyte, 21:28h
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seim,
Wednesday, 13. September 2006, 13:09
Jean Jacques
Hello Jean-Jacques?
How are you doing? Greetings from another boring theorist than students have to read...
Kenneth Waltz
P.S.: CU at Turkish diner :)
How are you doing? Greetings from another boring theorist than students have to read...
Kenneth Waltz
P.S.: CU at Turkish diner :)
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jusionyte,
Wednesday, 13. September 2006, 21:29
hey, kenneth!
you see, i am still an idealist... like the later marxists... but you, kenneth, i doubt your trust in people and in states as good-willing actors:)
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