Paper short abstract:

Following Wittgenstein's late philosophy, Bourdieu and de Certeau develop two stories about ethical reflexivity about their anthropological practice, which show that it can be both critical and creative. This ethical reflexivity is crucial to stabilise and deepen the method and the object of study.

Paper long abstract:

This paper tries to explore what the late writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein can tell anthropologists about the ethical reflexivity of their discourse. Several approaches of Wittgenstein's late writings, starting with Kripke's influential analysis (1982), have tended to read in them a theory of language, or even of regulated praxis, in which action would "work" within an interactive context (see also, for instance, Das (1998) and Chauviré (2004)). Yet, I would like to explore what seems to be a more radical insight in Wittgenstein's writings. In the Philosophical Investigations (1953), Wittgenstein develops an analysis of the talk of rules, which applies to his own writing and corresponds to major features of any anthropological discourse which would seek regularities in action and describe them in terms of rules. Wittgenstein remarks that the talk of rules should not be understood as a representative moment, as a replication of phenomenal reality in the realm of words. To say that someone is following a rule, is not to represent, in the spelling of the rule, a rule that would be in that person's head. It is to say something about the way in which we could learn to perform such action. The rule works thus as a "signpost" (Wegweiser). To talk the language of rules when describing someone else's action is thus not to neutrally represent it, but it is to engage in a relation with the reader of the description. This relation, which can be that of teaching how to act like others, or at least how a human being could possibly come to act in such a way, has an ethical import.

The ethical reflexivity that I would like to explore in Wittgenstein's late writings does not concern the classical ethical question about the respect of the observed persons by the observer. It concerns the more general question of the ethical import of describing someone's action in terms of rules. This question, as it is opened by Wittgenstein's talk of rules, has been developed by several authors. I would like to explore the difference between two of them, Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu follows a Kantian critical approach to scientific discourse, and seeks in the talk of rules a way to bring to the conscience of the author the regular, repeated and reproduced relations of power that constitute action as a play in a particular field. The language of rules allows for the reader to liberate herself from such relations (1994). Michel de Certeau seeks in the language of rules a way to open the reader to a multiplicity of possibilities of action, which escape and go besides and beyond hegemonic discourses and practices (1994). In both cases, the language of rules is assumed to have an ethical import, which is understood in the terms of Kant's pragmatic anthropology: the language of rules about another person's action is not just a representative language, but a talk about what the subject can become. The alternative set by Bourdieu and de Certeau allow us to address both the critical and the creative ethical potential of anthropological discourse. This allows us to think about its inscription in today's contemporary ethical and political major questions. My research as a PhD candidate is on "financial value" in contemporary finance, at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (my advisor is Marc Abélès). I did three internships in different financial companies in France and the US, and around 70 recorded interviews with professionals. The ethical import of my anthropological endeavor was raised by many of the people I was observing, as well as by the debates concerning the political importance of corporate finance today. The ethical reflexivity of anthropological discourse seemed thus necessary to stabilize my object of study, as well as to understand the interaction in which I was engaged as a participating observer. Drawing from two short examples form my research in which this question arose, I will try to show that a pragmatist reading of Wittgenstein's late writings concerning the talk of rules can help deeply to stabilize an ethical reflexivity about our anthropological discourse.

Bourdieu, P., Raisons Pratiques, Sur la théorie de l'action, Editions du Seuil, Paris.

Chauviré, C. (2004), Le Moment Anthropologique de Wittgenstein, Editions Kimé, Paris.

Das, V. (I998), "Wittgenstein and Anthropology", Annual Review of Anthropology, 27: 171-95.

De Certeau, M. (1994 (1986)), L'invention du quotidien, 1. arts de faire, Gallimard, Paris.

Kripke, S. (1982), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe, The MacMillan Company, New York.