Week 1—Two minds

Week 1—Two minds

Main reading:

In this introduction, we discuss some of the themes of this class in light of the origins and history of anthropology.

Many of the topics and ideas we will discuss in class have to do with anthropology’s central question, “What does it mean to be a human being?”

Part of this question is what it means to be a subject. Each of us has subjectivity. We see the world from an irreducibly first-person, I-centered point of view. We are the star and the cinematographer of our own private biopic. I will never see your movie; you will never see mine or anyone else’s.

Each of us is aware (conscious) of the world. We are also self-conscious: We aware that it is each of us who is aware of our own subjective worlds. What makes that possible? What kind of awareness and self-awareness do we have? This is a deep philosophical question. Anthropology does not really answer it directly, but all anthropologists have to operate with a premise or an assumption about the nature of subjectivity and the definition of a subject.

The social sciences, including anthropology, begin with one premise about subjectivity. An individual is two minds in one brain. This is Emile Durkheim’s concept of the subject as homo duplex (double person). It leads him to assert that the social scientist must always “consider social facts as things” (Durkheim [1895] 1982, 60).

Yet this premise also raises new questions, the biggest being that it also seems to assume that there is always a fundamental opposition or split between individuals and the social whole. This in turn leads to many of the ideas we will discuss this semester.

Also, by the way, there are no tutorials in Week 1. I will have office hours this week, though, so feel free to drop in without an appointment to say hello.

References

Durkheim, Emile. (1895) 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. Edited by Steven Lukes. London: The Macmillan Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16939-9.