Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the personal and collective transformation of patriotic activists in Jordan. I focus on the role played by salient stereotyped figurations in mediating ethical transformations and forms of moral reasoning and self-narration, and hence, the framing of actions as (un)intentional.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the personal and collective transformation that patriotic activists in a poor, tribal neighbourhood of Amman, Jordan, during the Arab Spring, from loyalism to oppositional activism, as they came to understand their political existence through the concept of 'dignity.' I focus on the role played by salient stereotyped figurations in mediating this transformation, not only in social interactions but more importantly, in forms of moral reasoning and self-narration. I argue that the activists understood what they did, and what ought to be done within constantly shifting axes of differentiation between co-constitutive stereotyped figurations, rather than a fixed set of concepts and referents. Part of the story of ethical self-transformation I give is a story of how the meaning of patriotism has shifted during the protests. Within shifting axes of differentiation of what is patriotic and what is not, being a patriot is always a process of becoming a patriot—a transformation, but also a continuity. In this interplay of continuity and change in living out a practical identity, reasons for action gain a particular significance in the articulation of intentions and hence in the ability to narrate a personal biography. Beyond the ethnographic case, the larger aim of my paper is to draw some broader conclusions regarding the anthropological study of intentions. I urge that intentions should not be understood as a general dimension of all individual and collective human behaviour, but rather as a dimension of 'meaningful' action as grounded in what Wittgenstein called ‘language games.’