Five wolves on a tree of blight;
Why have you come here,
If not to suffer your sight?
If loved and hated objects inhabit the habitus of familiarity, then the loss of that habitus, the symbolization of that pain through the formation of not only object relations, but psychological defenses, the constitution of the depressive position, is the cost of interiority (Britzman 2017). What makes someone crave that loss over and over again? This question is pertinent for anthropologists because we live by losing frequently. Indeed one of the earliest truisms a student of anthropology would hear is that the task of anthropology is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. As if by some magic, an entire world of relations is to be suspended in a state of non-being but becoming, and then re-constituted all over again. And an entire discipline to claim themselves as the magicians, keeping the trick to themselves in a "pedagogy of mystification" (Spencer 2011, p. 26)? Is the task to expose the tricks of the trade? Or does knowledge come from keeping tricks hidden? Or more strangely, how are hidden tricks being reproduced across generations of anthropology graduate students? Do we suddenly become anthropologists, as if waking from a dream?
Psychoanalytically-oriented anthropologists would argue that fieldwork provides an opportunity to re-constitute the depressive position especially if that process is interrupted in the formation of the self. Peter Buckley(1994) drives a graduate student to a type of fulfillment with his analysis of her pre-and post-fieldwork, remarking about the shift the student went through in her fieldwork:
“In the analysis, it became apparent that in this process of moving from total alienation and loathing of her fieldwork site to a frank love for it and sense of being “at home” there was a counterpart to the shift in her view of the analyst and to some extent of the mother” (15)
As Dimitrina Spencer worries (2011), why is a discussion of the shifts in interiority in fieldwork and in seminar classrooms not a part of the explicit pedagogy of anthropology? Explicit, because, by now, every graduate student knows there is a bag of magic tricks that can only be learned via intimate association with an advisor. And if they don't know, or don't want to pursue that path, they leave. Worse, being in possession of the magic bag of tricks in no way guarantees anything, because the reward for interiority in the regimes of academic life is precarious, emotionally and monetarily. Cynicism reigns as the hegemonic affect in the anthropological seminar. Or in some cases, splitting--keeping the activist and passionate life totally separate. And god forbid if you aren't cynical enough--then you're just naive and have not read enough. God forbid if you're actually passionate. Then you're not professional enough. And even professionalism cannot be a substitute for the lack of investigation of interiority as part of anthropological pedagogy.
An investigation of interiority across the board is even more pertinent because the classroom is not just white men anymore sighing over the loss of their tropics and their mothers. Now, it's people from the tropics doing those same things. And more importantly, they/we know that anthropology has done harm to their communities, yet they desire an anthropological inclination. More importantly, they/we are full of rage, not only guilt and indebtedness. More importantly, rage is now an epistemological project (as it should have been, but of course it occurred in Black, indigenous, ethnic, and gender/sexuality studies departments before it was recognized as an emotion of value in anthropology). Each seminar discussion, therefore, provides an opportunity to not only digress but regress, staging infantile and ancestral conflicts that continue to harm. No wonder I've heard graduate students equating anthropological departments to kindergarten fights.
So, how should grown-ups behave? If we listen to Pandolofo's Imam colleague, the absence of justice can cause madness. There is no justice to be found in an anthropological classroom. At worst, cynicism will make your soul choke at some point, and before you know it, you are writing grants without enjoying the warm sunlight pouring out of your windows. Maybe after a few decades, you wouldn't know how to do that anymore as well. At best, there is only partial fulfillment. But partial fulfillment is a difficult task for interrupted individuals desiring wholeness and wholesomeness. It is a difficult task for anthropological pedagogy because anthropological apprenticeship is still constituted by an intimate emotional regime. And anyone who has ever been vulnerable knows that making interior life public is infused with risk. There is a danger of being removed from legitimate meaning. There is a danger of being poor. The task of anthropological pedagogy, especially if it has to be de-mystified, would benefit from investigation of interiority and intersubjective life (especially advising and collegial relations) through psychoanalytic or other means--getting enough sleep, getting paid a lot more, and just maybe, doing tarot. But this is for another day.
