Ethnography, Silence, Torture and Knowledge

Abstract

This paper considers the interrelationships, historically and culturally, between ethnography, silence, torture and knowledge. As a key methodology for anthropology, and increasingly other academic disciplines, ethnography has also become a broader cultural value. In the context of the emergence of anthropology as a professional discipline the epistemology implicit in ethnography is discussed with reference to he cultural meanings of silence and of torture. The influences of Classical and Enlightenment ideas of the foundation of truth in agonistic performance on modernist science and social research provide a context for discerning the pragmatic convergence between ethnography and torture, especially in recent attempt to weaponize culture and recruit social scientists to military counter-insurgency campaigns.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• Science
• Silence
• Torture
• Anthropology

Notes

Brasilino quoted by K. Wisniewski—personal communication.

The archive is available at http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm.

Cited by Afghanistan Research Reach Back Center, White Paper TRADOC G2—Human Terrain System. United States Army Fort Leavenworth, KS, September 2009.

The case of the war reporter Kevin Carter is a sad illustration of this. Carter took a Pulitzer prize winning photo of a dying Sudanese infant menaced by a vulture, but his suicide a few years later referenced the futility of such reportage, while its lack of ethical understanding is reflected in the fact that he did nothing to help her. Certainly an individual could have done very little to help, but then what is the point of being there?

http://www.physiciansforhumanrights.org/torture/.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39456324/ns/health-sexual_health/.

“Opening Remarks by Senator Ted Kennedy”, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources. 3 August 1977. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1950/mkultra/Hearing01.htm.

My discussion here is inspired by George Mentore's brilliant 2004 essay—The Glorious Tyranny of Silence and the Resonance of Shamanic Breath, in Whitehead & Wright (2004).