Paper short abstract:

Those disagreements about the truth and nature of Covid that I examine here serve as a test to evaluate the rationality of local arguments, their contested status as either conspiratorial or alienated consciousness, and the position of the anthropological author in the auto-reflexive dialectic.

Paper long abstract:

I had been trying, for years, to reconcile two seemingly opposing goals: (a) the analytical authority of disagreeing (sometimes) with one’s fieldwork interlocutors and (b) my concern about overstepping my analytic authority—which may result in opinionated or de-rationalising interpretations. I have found some solutions, which I will share with you in this paper. They are developed within a framework of a self-interrogative critique--a Marxism with a small ‘m’—which turns the lens of the critical analysis towards an author’s own consent with hegemony, as much as that of her ‘research subjects’. I will rely here on two concepts with a Marxist—or for others, Hegelian—resonance: ‘consciousness’ and ‘alienation’. In their dynamic articulation they provide solutions to the problem I outlined above; that is, they pave a way for disagreeing (analytically) with Others, but in a non de-rationalising manner. I evaluate and test the contemporary relevance of these conceptual synergies, by focusing on the anti-vaccination views of my family. The resulting experiment outlines a dialectical method for reconfiguring the idea of ‘falsity’, but with ethical respect for the contextual parameters that premise the falsity of Others. My examination of arguments about vaccination does not aim to contribute to any particular regional literature. The Covid-problematic, which I treat here as a global concern, serves as a test to evaluate a set of related problems addressed by this essay: the rationality of local arguments, their contested status as either conspiratorial or ‘false/alienated consciousness’, and the position of the anthropological author in the auto-reflexive dialectic.