Anyway, hmm: Desire to erase the distinction between self and other, which is impossible, a Lack. But you know for Lacan, the Other was not a thing, or love or recognition, but the center of the system, symbolic order or language itself. And this is where we desire to be. At which point we are all quite right to go Huh? How does this relate to Anthropology again? And how is endlessly working over Anthro’s biblio-history a manifestation of that? If it is then doesn’t ‘desire-as-lack’ only constitute this blog (which more and more is a blog about Anthropology, rather than an Anthropology blog) but not the Discipline? Look, they want you to believe this stuff, but it is bad for you. Just go out and do some research. I have.

Oneman makes a good point that this posted document can be regarded as a cultural artifact. If so, then what is the social and intellectual context of this artifact? These are legitimate questions — ones that Ckelty seems reluctant to address.

I would suspect that Ckelty actually values his/her document in some way, and that for some reason he/she is reluctant to express this (I would argue that all cultural artifacts are valued either by their creator or their owner). Since Ckelty claims to want us to only take his document at face value (i.e. apply no intrinsic value to it), I can only surmise that discussing it would somehow threaten his/her postmodern sense of irony and intellectual detachment. I think that even Lacan would agree, that distancing ourselves from the cultural objects that we create, is an act of self-exclusion — in this case from a cultural matrix that Ckelty obviously doesn’t approve of (be it only a belief system that iconizes Intro Anthro texts).

As for Found Magazine, well, contemporary culture can be regarded as a vast potlatch of images and memes — all spewed out at rate that overloads our ability to absorb, categorize or analyze them. I spend my time trying to filter out this spew, so I can focus on what is important for me to function successfully in this society. I made the mistake of attaching some significance (value) to Ckelty’s document. My apologies. It won’t happen again.

But if you don’t want to be bothered with questions that you don’t want to answer, don’t post.

Or maybe I just need a cookie and a nap 😉

–Beo

As for the list, it’s kind of fascinating: Bateson is American by Marriage to Mead, or because we paid mor attention to him (or becaue dolphins are the wrong sort of flaky for a pom?) I never knew Mary Douglas was in America. Mead is the only “major figure” w/o a work next to her name. But even more interesting thatn the possible quibbles is my basic response which is “Yeah, that works.”

Oh, and ckelty: I think what some of us were wondering about was not so much the meaning of “desire as lack,” but the claim that this constituted anthropology as a discipline. Myself, I’m kinda inclined to think of anthropology not as constituted by some sort of essence, but as a historical individual, constituted over time by people who understood themselves to be anthropologists, and maybe some other people they read–in a way that is nicely captured byt the cultural artifact above. But maybe I see it that way because I’m “basically Boasian but in a Weberian kind of way.”

…if your notes are just the intellectual equivalent of a tissue left over from a masturbatory session, then let us discard it and say nothing more.

I don’t find this to be a very appropriate tone, but what really got me was the assumption that a site about anthropology would be an imappropriate place to display and discuss a cultural artifact.

Also: that was _really_ growss. EWWWW.

cheers,
–Beo

(PS My version’s better — suck on that, Yeats!)

Also, I’m having trouble decoding some of your 2nd and 3rd tier names. Any chance you could transcribe this into ASCII?

–beo

Huh? am I the only one who found this line pretty bafflingly opaque?

By the way, you’ve managed to anticipate my upcoming series of SM posts entitled “great diagrams in qualitative social science.” Strathernograms, anyone?