Paper short abstract:

Based on empirical analyses of the central role played by bêtise in contemporary global health, I will discuss what are the formal and theoretical difficulties to enunciate and criticize stupidity (understood as the arrogance and absurdity inherent to the exercise of reason itself) in anthropological terms and in anthropological studies.

Paper long abstract:

From Flaubert to Barthes, the most successful literary attempts at telling the truth of modernity have included a systematic critique of human stupidity (understood as the arrogance and absurdity inherent to rationality itself), which notably exposed the infinite manifestations of 19th and 20th century scientific and political bêtise. By contrast anthropologists have largely ignored stupidity as an object of inquiry and critique; they have preferred to reveal other truths about the institutions of modern governance (the oppressive potential of their rationalities, for example).

In this paper I will discuss what are the formal and theoretical difficulties to enunciate and criticize stupidity in anthropological terms and in anthropological studies. I will present my own (largely failed) attempts at analysing the central role played by arrogantly absurd reasoning (a definition of bêtise) in contemporary global health and at finding a language to expose it (which avoids the meta-language of irony). I will finally suggest possibilities, inspired by popular comedies, art and everyday language, for an anthropology of stupidity, one which would include the stupidity of anthropological truth-tellings themselves.