From: Unleesh-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 20:55:56 EST
Subject: Re:  Re:  RE: relations (external/internal)


"Being persons, peyote plants naturally talk and sing on occasion .... in the
fields in which it grows, it sings beautifully, that the Tarahumare may find
it. It says, "I want to go to your country, that you may sing your songs to
me.""

---Weston La Barre, The Peyote Cult

 Anthropological epistemology has classically been phobic of the spook called
"going native", in which an ethnographer actually allows the epistemology of
the culture-under-investigation to alter the epistemology of the culture into
which the ethnographer was originally socialized. This taboo goes against the
heart of anthropology, which can be paternalistic and permissive so long as
its epistemological assumptions are authoritative and in a hierarchical
position. Other culture's beliefs are to be evaluated from within the Western
epistemological framework. This assumes a loyalty to the law of the father of
one's particular culture that perhaps begs the question. Ethnography gives an
opportunity to throw epistemology into radical questioning and ambivalence
whereby one might become altered in interesting ways. It assumes that we
already know what is real and valid, and will fit other people's practices and
beliefs into that preexisting framework. Presumably this is as a protective
safeguard against the black hole of theologies, yet how anthropology hopes to
vindicate itself of theological status in this move is swept under the rug. 
  Obviously one must be dialectical about such things, but the serious
question of how sincerely one takes people on their word is at issue. We might
do better to pause when we are told that a peyote plant sings. We "of course"
"know" that peyote plants do not sing. How do we know that? And more
importantly, what do we mean when we say that? and how does that meaning enter
into styles of being in the world?
   Ethnography allows the possibility of setting socializations into
variation, even potentially continuous variation, so that the various
socializations play off of each other and allow for transversal flights and
collagings. Since we are never fully socialized into any tradition, those
parts of ourselves that haven't accepted socialization are open to further
development and can come out of dormancy. These can be strengthened and enter
into dialogue with the other parts of ourselves that have been socialized into
a particular context.
    Chaos Magick recommends a nomadism of beliefs (Crowley, Robert Anton
Wilson also recommend this) whereby one accepts the premises of various cults
(mainstream cults such as science, media, etc included) and observes the
effects on oneself. This has also been called "psychic vagabondism". I think a
call to belief might be too foreign to our agnostic aesthetic, but a
theatrical call for the Momentary Suspension of Disbelief is never too much to
ask ... ethnography becomes a psychoanalytic operation that messes with our
object relations, our protoepistemologies, our notions of love, etc.
   While it may seem insulting to suggest to someone in our culture that they
"accept" or "believe" that a plant can sing, it is not too much to ask that
one suspends one's disbelief. It is here that a true epistemological crisis
can occur, a bifurcation, a moment of questioning how one knows what one
knows. Robert Anton Wilson calls this space "Chapel Perilous".  Hans Peter
Duerr also treats this space well in "Dreamtime". We might question how much
this "Chapel Perilous" enters into the experiences of various people who are
presently classified as having mental disorders.
   One of the problems with using reason to adjucate disputes is that reason
presupposes certain premises or axioms which are self-evident and unprovable.
It is these very axioms which form the foundation of beliefs, and it is at the
axiomatic level that Don Juans' statements that belief shapes reality and
cultural narrative selects for (restricting, opening) experience becomes
effective.

(un)leash