How to Value the Other

"I'm curious why James uses 'narcissism' when talking about 'how much of ourselves we see in the Other.' Isn't the very point of doing that act ('seeing yourself in the Other') to be reflexive and see both similarities and differences in someone as elements in interactions? In essence, I see narcissism as an elitist ideal where one values themself more than others, and I think this conflicts with how I imagine Spivak, for instance, to define 'seeing yourself in the Other.' Rather than conflating self/other i see this as a way to expand our conceptions of both of these terms and their relations to each other, whatever that may be." --Jess Pausek
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I'm still not happy with my answer here. But perhaps I can use this as a productive discomfort for thinking about how Lillis and Curry are different in their presentation of findings from Canagarajah. Perhaps. 


Both the texts are ethnographies. And their ethnographies seem to fit with James Holstein's idea that ethnography is a form of critique. The critique is not about what is right or wrong in the world, but it is a process of de-familiarization. Both texts we read seem to take what is familiar about knowledge production and make it strange. And Canagarajah also seems to push ethnography to suggest reforms as well. We see him struggle with his role as double agent, trying to frame himself as an "insurgent architect" (an image I pull from David Harvey's Spaces of Hope). By insurgent architect, he doesn't mean an architect, but he means everyone involved in the production of space and spatial relations. We see Canagarajah trying to be both a cog in the machine, and able to move that machine, to change it. That to me is a useful conceptualization of these ethnographies. 


Another thing that is interesting... and perhaps full of tension... is how these ethnographies are not really focused on locations and the people in them. They are focused on circulations and processes, on how knowledge is produced, circulated, and valued in different areas of the world. For both, the topic seems to be the globalization of publishing and knowledge production as a set of ideas and practices revolving around language usages. Bound up in this is the dynamic circulation of different types of capital - social capital, monetary capital, cultural capital. So, we see the scholars wrestling with academic prestige, cultural authenticity, and material constraints. But... at the same time... the ethnographies themselves are participating in an active process that makes hitherto invisible subjects (both in terms of the people they represent and the topic they explore) visible and knowable to the knowledge making processes. So, we see scholars of the Global South who historically have been (are?) excluded from publication being made know-able and creating space for their integration into publishing. The ethnographies participate in making the global know-able. 


This bring to wonder how we can move from an ethnography of locations (where we focus on a people in a place) to an ethnography of circulations. Particularly, how universals are constructed and circulated. How something like "English as lingua franca" is constructed and then circulates. How something like "global publishing is for new findings" gets constructed and circulated. So, not just how the market is created, but how its rationals are constructed and circulated. I worry about this type of ethnography because it seems in the shift from location to circulation we run the risk of losing touch with the Subaltern. Losing touch with the Subaltern is an anxiety that haunts Canagarajah, felt in his colleagues dissent and his pushy justification for the "necessary evil" of publishing speak to this shift. This shift (in the ethnographer's role as insurgent architect and in focus of study) seems to make the audience for both Canagarajah and Lillis and Curry the embodied expert, the editor who sets up the process of knowledge production. People who are a part of the apparatus of power, but who are at times able to articulate a critique or engage in acts of subversion. For example, even within the anonymity of review processes, "editors certainly have access to scholars' identities, and editors play a powerful role in mediating reviewers' practices and decisions generally" (Lillis and Curry 149). This is fine, as long as the acts of subversion encouraged or the critiques made are viewed as legitimate and proper by the Subaltern themselves. In this way, I agree with Canagarajah that it is a necessary evil. But at the same time, I wonder how much the form of presentation - how the two texts were written - dramatically affects the legitimacy and proper-ness of their critiques and encouragements.


Canagarajah lays out all the data he was hoping to gather on page 14 and how it changes to more of an auto-ethnography or mangled practice by page 20. Lillis and Curry seem to have a more traditional ethnography going for them - with multiple interviews that they can analyze. Twelve subjects interviewed that are cited, if I remember right. However, the two texts read dramatically different in how they present their ethnographies. Canagarajah tells stories about other in third person. He tells personal accounts. He reflects on the situation. But he doesn't quote his periphery colleagues very often at all ("his indian colleague from immunology" perhaps shows up the most). Nearly everything is narrated and framed through Canagarajah's interpretive lens.  He crafts a portrait for us of life in Jaffna. He crafts a portrait of the cultural complexities. The dominance of Canagarajah's voice throughout might explain C's student and A.J.'s response. His writing from his perspective ends up speaking for his colleagues. But Lillis and Curry seem to go out of their way to quote and integrate the words of their interview subjects, providing profiles and integrating their subject's words into analysis.  


I guess what all this rambling has led me to is what form should representing another take? Pastiche? Dense quoting? Speaking for? What is gained through these choices? And what are the ethical binds that happen because of these choices?