Critique is an assertion of values pitted against a state of affairs. To say that things should not be the way they are—to respond to questions such as ‘Why do I think this political or economic arrangement is wrong (and why should I care?)' implies an ethical stance. Critique thus draws together fact and value, domains that a long tradition of moral thought has argued exist on distinct planes. For there are dimensions of political life that are incomprehensible without this conjunction between ethical motivations and social realities. But if they are to have political consequences, such questions cannot be confined to private introspection. Scale matters.
This talk looks at the articulation between everyday interactions and social movements to show the interplay among the first, second and third person stances that characterise ethical life. Drawing ethnographic examples from American feminism and Vietnamese Marxism, it considers some of the ways in which ethical intuitions emerge, consolidate, and change, and argues that objectifications and the reflexivity they facilitate help give ethical life a social history.
About the Speaker:
Webb Keane grew up in New York City and studied studio art and philosophy at Yale College. After working as a ranch hand, waiter, file clerk, and cafe manager, he ended up in Peru as an archaeological draftsman. Having discovered cultural and linguistic anthropology along the way, he went on to receive his PhD from the University of Chicago, after which he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, before moving to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Professor Keane’s most extensive fieldwork has been on the island of Sumba, in eastern Indonesia. His wide-ranging interests have also taken him to debates about language politics in Jakarta, discussions of evidence for Neolithic religion in Turkey, and visits to the Dutch colonial archives.
Professor Keane has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He has been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, Cambridge University, the University of Oslo, and National Taitung University (Taiwan), and has taught at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. Professor Keane has been a Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and a recipient of the Henry Russel Award for scholarship and teaching from the University of Michigan. He has also delivered the Edward Westermarck Memorial Lecture in Helsinki, Finland; the D. R. Sharpe Keynote Lecture on Social Ethics at the University of Chicago; the Annette B. Weiner Memorial Lecture at New York University; the biannual Roy A. Rappaport Distinguished Lecture of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion; the William T. Mulloy Lecture at the University of Wyoming; and the Munro Lecture at the University of Edinburgh.