Details – Anthropology and Philosophy
Paris, May 24-25, 2019
Workshop co-organized by the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale at the Collège de France, and the Center for Contemporary Philosophy, ISJPS, at Université Panthéon Sorbonne
The workshop is also sponsored by:
Institut Universitaire de France
IRN - CNRS Forms of Life
Plateforme « Violence et sortie de la violence », FMSH
Registration : https://forms.gle/2FvyUKTjufNWrwYV9
In his acclaimed Blue Book, Wittgenstein suggests paying greater attention to ordinary details, and as an antidote avoiding the “craving for generality.” In a related gesture, Stanley Cavell describes Veena Das’ recognition that “in the gender-determined division of the work of mourning the results of violence, the role of women is to attend, in a torn world, to the details of everyday life that allow a household to function” (2006). Attention to detail, and to details, is thus central to the so called « anthropological turn » in philosophy and to any anthropological method founded in thorough ethnographical descriptions. When they scrutinize everyday life interactions, when they try to identify the connection between individual existence and forms of life, or when they tackle the multimodality of ritual organizations, anthropologists cannot but take into account the many kinds of details in the diverse order of facts (material culture, linguistic phenomena, narratives, political institutions, expressivity of the body, and so on). How may the consideration of details in perception, and in the exchange of words, make interactions or social organizations more intelligible? On what types of perceptions and intellectual operations is this process of clarification and elucidation by detail grounded – be it conducted by actors and/or observers seeking to understand a human reality?
In order to answer these questions, this workshop will bring together philosophers and anthropologists interested in exploring how taking account of details opens up possibilities for a more felicitous understanding of human societies, and of the human mind. Approaches focused on ordinary language philosophy, moral anthropology, ritual pragmatics, and the analysis and description of ordinary life will obviously be well represented, but several others will also be presented. Through the examination of philosophical examples and ethnographical cases, this collective reflection aims at elaborating a first typology of the kindred perceptual and conceptual operations engaged in the analysis of details. Special attention will be paid to the issue raised by the contextualisation of details (indexicality, translation, plurimodality, etc.) to the diversity of techniques (memotechnic, ritual, visual, sound) used to make perceptible and significant details that may remain unperceived, neglected, unseen especially during investigations or in everyday situations. In doing so, we wish to highlight the diversity of analytical and hermeneutical functions in the treatment of details in both philosophy and anthropology.
Friday, May 24th, 9h30-13h00
Collège de France, Amphithéâtre Budé
11 place Marcelin Berthelot, Paris 5e
Welcome by the organizers Sandra Laugier and Perig Pitrou
I. 9h45-11h30 Detail as Method
Perig Pitrou, CNRS - Collège de France - Université PSL, WhenDetails Reveal the Presence of Non-Human Agents
Frédérique Ildefonse, CNRS - ENS, The Patience of the Detail
Marco Motta, Johns Hopkins University, Details in a Minor Key
11h30 Short break
II. 11h45-13h00 The Politics of Details
Estelle Ferrarese, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, CURAPP, Adorno’s Micrological Gaze
Emily Apter, Micropolitics of Safety/salut public: Thinking and Living with Philosophical Untranslatables
Friday, May 24th, 14h00-18h00
III. 14h00-15h45 Ordinary Details
Sandra Laugier, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Details of Language and Details of the Mind
Bhrigupati Singh, Brown University, Detail as a Bridge between Everyday and Metaphysical Shores
Albert Ogien, CNRS - EHESS,Awareness of Details
15h45 Short break
16h00-17h30 Chair : Claude Imbert, ENS
Carlo Severi, CNRS - EHESS, Wittgenstein, Political Discourse and the Anthropology of Communication
Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University, On Absence: The Mutual Vulnerability of Concepts and Experience
17h30-18h00 Discussion Baptiste Cornardeau, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Yves Erard, Université de Lausanne, Paola Marrati, John Hopkins University
18h00 Cocktail, Lunch Seminar Room (Compulsory registration)
Saturday, May 25th, 9h30-13h30
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
12 place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris, salle 216, 2eétage
V. 9h30-11h15 Details of Dying – and of Living
Fabien Provost, Université Paris Nanterre, (Anatomic) Details-In-Use:
Obscure Autopsies and the Classification of Deaths in India
Anne M. Lovell, INSERM - CERMES, Endings
Lotte Buch Segal, University of Edinburgh, Details of an Ordinary Grief
11h15 Short break
VI. 11h30-12h45 Experiencing Details
Andrew Brandel, Harvard University, Detail in our Dreams:
Some Thoughts on Animism from Borges, Le Guin and Cavell
Claire Brunet, ENS Saclay, The Visual Experience of the Details
12h45 General Discussion