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エヴァンズ・プリチャードについて その2

David Graeber, in his brilliant essay " Beyond Power/Knowledge an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity," talks about absurdity of using Foucault's idea of panopticonic gaze, citing the famous episode of Evans-Pritchard observing a Nuer camp from his tent:

Renato Rosaldo (1986) made a famous argument that when Evans-Pritchard, annoyed that no one would speak to him, ended up gazing at a Nuer camp of Muot Dit “from the door of his tent”, he rendered it equivalent to a Foucauldian panopticon. The logic seems to be that any knowledge gathered under unequal conditions serves a disciplinary function. To me, this is absurd. The panopticon was a prison. Prisoners endured the gaze, and internalized its dictates, because if they tried to escape, or resist, they could be killed. Absent the apparatus of coercion, such an observer is reduced to the equivalent of a neighborhood gossip, deprived even of the sanction of public opinion.
# by fumiwakamatsu | 2011-01-25 07:27 | 文化人類学