Resumen de Anthropology through Levinas
An anthropological commonplace since Evans-Pritchard has been that ethnographic subjects will have their rationality circumscribed by the discursive opportunities made available by a �culture.� Hence, social science comes to terms with the �internal� nature of judgements (Winch). Ultimately, the relativist nature of both Winch�s and Evans-Pritchard�s conclusion has its source in Wittgenstein�s philosophy. For Wittgenstein, �the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.� Moreover, �language� in this connection extends to the �textual� nature of behavior per se. There exists a determining habituation of embodiment and dwelling as well as of reasoning, believing, and talking. This article explores the nature of a pretextual or nontextual sphere that exists beyond conventional��cultural��languages. Wittgensteinian assumptions are set against those of Max Stirner and Emmanuel Levinas. While in many ways disparate, the writings of Stirner on the ego and of Levinas on the �other� both insist that knowledge can be derived�knowledge, indeed, of a fundamental, even absolute, nature�by way of a transcending of a taken-for-granted symbolic, conceptual, textual, and doctrinal language-world. What is key is the attention one pays to corporeality: to the �flesh and mind� of the self (Stirner), to the �body and face� of the other (Levinas). The article is theoretical and epistemological in register. An ethnographic afterword points in the direction of how the argument might be grounded in representations of fieldwork encounters.
