Vital Signs: Paper Session 6a
Thursday 11 September, 11.30-1pm, Room G32
6a. Life, death and the virtual
‘Why so-called indigenous people never bothered to invent biology. An anthropological perspective on ‘life’’ – Dr Istvan Praet (Oxford University)
Something which has intrigued many anthropologists who work with Amazonian peoples is that the latter do not clearly separate altered states such as hallucination or illness from what the former would consider ‘ true ’ decease. Those who go into trance, become seriously ill, or simply lose consciousness are indiscriminately declared ‘ dead ’ . In that sense, one can say that what it means ‘ to be alive ’ is culturally specific. However, it could be argued that such specificities are secondary to a more fundamental universality, namely that Amerindians, just like any other people in the world, do make a distinction between life and death. Drawing on two years of fieldwork among the Chachi, an Amerindian group in Ecuador, and on a wide range of comparative material, this paper examines this contention by looking at notions of metamorphosis. In particular, I will show that Chachi people envisage death as shape-shifting. To be sure, they make a distinction between ‘ being alive ’ and ‘ being dead ’ , but these respective states by no means overlap with what contemporary scientists refer to as the ‘ animate ’ and the ‘ inert ’ . For people like the Chachi, life and death are different but equivalent. Such a conception is at odds with the idea that there exists a qualitative difference between what is alive and what is not, a central assumption of modern biology. This paper suggests that for Chachi people and, more generally, for all those commonly designated as ‘ indigenous ’ such an idea is or, at least, used to be inconceivable.
‘A dead social science can give no reasons: The value of the virtual in social research’ – Mariam Fraser (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
This paper is situated in the context of debates that seek to problematise the status of analytic terms in social research and, in particular, the 'mistaking [of] the analytical tool for the reality' (Haraway 1991: 184) 'Post-constructivism' responds to this problem by focusing on the performativity of method, that is, on how social scientific concepts and methods are productive of very realities they seek to investigate. Although the aim of many of these arguments is to draw attention to the limits of social science by recognising the specificity of its objects, they also, simultaneously, often serve to extend its ambitions: 'which realities', Law and Urry ask for example, 'might we try to enact?' (2003: 5).
This paper argues that a concept of the real that includes a virtual dimension offers one way to negotiate the tension between ambitions that are at once too limited and too over-extended. Attending to the virtual does not, I suggest, necessarily represent a radical departure from core social science concerns and, moreover, as a 'methodological orientation device', might even contribute to the continued life of empirical social research insofar as it obliges the social researcher to focus on questions of value and ethics. To this end, I ask: what would be the implications, if the basic commitments of a social research project were not to historical social structures and the subject, but to the virtual and the actual? What would 'the sociological problem' look like, if it were refracted through the virtual problem?
‘Lives lived with the dead: Rethinking the meaning of vital signs in real lives’ – Therese Richardson (University of Sheffield)
"Vital signs pl n med indications that a person is still alive. Vital signs include a heartbeat, a pulse that can be felt, breathing and body temperature" ( Collins English Dictionary 2005 : 1795)
For the person who is bereaved of a partner, the lack of vital signs such as the absence of a heartbeat, a breath and a warm body next to them confirms their loss. This biological loss of the body may be felt physically and emotionally by the survivor at certain times of the day and in particular spaces and places.
Accounts of losing a partner may also, however, tell of the dead remaining present in the survivor's everyday life. How real, how vital and active is this type of experience and how does it show itself? Can social relations continue to materialise without the physical presence of one side of the partnership?
Drawing on theoretical work on intersubjectivity, the container body, the divisible self and distibuted personhood, this paper argues that the pulse of life can be thought of as extending beyond the body into the material and social world of the survivor. Memories of a lost partner may be contained in familiar everyday objects, and may act as an index of that person. It is through enactments of everyday practices by the survivor that things become enlivened, acting as vital signs which reveal the agency of the dead in real lives.
