Interpretive Methods (Modules 4, 8)

Monday, June 16; Tuesday, June 17

Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago) and William Mazzarella (University of Chicago)

This two-module sequence (Module 4 and 8) provides students with an introduction to various modes of discourse analysis and ideology critique. Students will learn to “read” texts while becoming familiar with contemporary thinking about interpretation, narrative, genre, and

criticism. In the first four sessions we shall explore the following methods: Wittgenstein’s understanding of language as activity and its practical relevance to ordinary language-use analysis; Foucault’s “interpretive analytics” with hands-on exercises applying his genealogical method; and various versions (two sessions) of cultural Marxism—with specific attention to “ideology critique.” The last two classes will consider how anthropological discussions of participant observation can unsettle current versions of fieldwork in political science and, relatedly, how we might theorize practically forms of thought that appear to be paradoxical, nonsensical, or irrational.

Book to Purchase: Lisa Wedeen, Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Preface, Introduction, Chapters 1, 3, and 5.

Participants may enter the module sequence after it has begun, but their doing so is discouraged.

Interpretive Methods I (M4, June 16)

8:45am - 10:15am – Ordinary Language Use Analysis

Lisa Wedeen

This session introduces participants to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thought and its relationship to ordinary language-use methods. We shall focus on several key ways in which Wittgensteinian- inspired methods can be used in ethnographic and analytical research. Among the questions we shall ask are: What is the “value added” of concentrating on language? Why is understanding language as an activity important? How can social scientists grapple with vexed issues of intention? What does “performative” mean, and how do political theories about language as performative differ from discussions of performance? How can social scientists uninterested in taking on new jargon use this kind of political theory to further their theoretical and empirical work?

Required readings:

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought, (University of California Press, 1972), chapter 8 “Justice, Socrates and Thrasymachus,” pp. 169-192. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520343023
Wittgenstein, The Philosophical Investigations (Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe), (Blackwell Publishers, 2001), Paragraphs 1-33; paragraph 154; pages 194-195.

1:30pm - 3:00pm – Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Lisa Wedeen

This session introduces participants to the techniques of Foucauldian discourse analysis or “interpretive analytics.” Participants will learn how to conduct a discourse analysis, what the underlying assumptions of such an analysis are, and how these techniques can be used to advance political inquiry. The session will consider both the power and limitations of the method, the ways in which it differs from other modes of interpretation, and its advantages over content analysis.

Required readings:

Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited, with an introduction by Donald F. Bouchard ; translated from the French by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Cornell University Press, 1977),” Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” pp. 139-164.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Vol. 1, pp. 1-35 and pp. 92-114.
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O. and Verba, Sidney. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 – please revisit this text and have it ready for a class exercise. If you are unfamiliar with this book, we shall discuss that too—from a Foucauldian discourse analysis perspective. (Please note that the 2021 “new edition” is identical to the 1994 text, except for the addition of a new foreword and some different page numbering.) If you do not want to identify with the discipline of political science, there will be an alternative exercise. (That brief reading will be available in class.)

3:30pm - 5:00pm – Ideology, an Introduction

William Mazzarella

What is ideology and how does it structure public culture and everyday life? What is the relation between ideology and media, and between ideology and political economy? How does ideology enable or interrupt desire, imagination, and attachment? Is there anything ‘beyond’ or ‘behind’ ideology and, if there isn’t, then what grounds critical analysis (since it might simply be yet another example of ideology)?

Required readings: NONE

Interpretive Methods II (M8, June 17)

8:45am - 10:15am – Ideology Critique

Lisa Wedeen

This session continues our exploration of ideology by attending to the political commitments and intellectual genealogies that have made the concept both important and vexed. We conclude by considering how we might apply a repurposed understanding of ideology “as form” to both authoritarian and liberal political orders. This session will involve hands on exercises.

Required readings:

Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (short version, PDF)
Lisa Wedeen, Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Preface, Introduction, Chapters 1, 3, and 5. (book to obtain).
NOTE: We shall also screen excerpts from “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” featuring Slavoj Žižek

1:30pm - 3:00pm – Participant Observation

William Mazzarella

The term ‘participant observation’ seems paradoxical: how can one both be participating and observing, immersed and analytical, at the same time? Does participation give greater authority to analysis, or does it imply sacrificing objectivity? What is the relation between being in a situation and interpreting a situation? How can we ever claim to have access to other worlds,

even as participants, across lines of difference? Is the researcher’s job to uncover some kind of underlying order – of ‘society,’ ‘culture,’ ‘history,’ or ‘ideology,’ – or is the point of participation to call such abstractions into question?

Required readings:

Tim Ingold, ‘Anthropology Contra Ethnography’ in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(1): 21-26 (2017)
Sasha Newell, ‘Ethnography in a Shell Game: Turtles All the Way Down in Abidjan’
in Cultural Anthropology 34(3): 299-327 (2019)
Alpa Shah, ‘Ethnography? Participant Observation, a Potentially Revolutionary Praxis’ in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(1): 45-59 (2017

3:30pm - 5:00pm – Ethnographic Ethics

William Mazzarella

Does it make sense to have standardized ethical guidelines for ethnographic fieldwork? Generally, such guidelines are, for good reasons, designed to protect research subjects. But what about the safety of the researcher? Are there situations - for instance, working with violent groups - where the researcher should not necessarily be fully transparent about their identity or the purpose of the research? Are there situations where the researcher may end up uncomfortably or unethically complicit with the practices or beliefs of their research subjects?

Required readings:

Nitzan Shoshan, ‘Under a Different Name: Secrecy, Complicity, Ethnography’ in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology 146 (2021): 109-128
Jessica Marie Falcone, ‘“I Spy…”: The (Im)possibilities of Ethical Participant Observation with Antagonists, Religious Extremists, and Other Tough Nuts,’ Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 18 (2010): 243-282