Lex's Blog Post on Visweswaran

Conjunctural Description as Methodology

Though Visweswaran's discussion of "conjunctural description" comes early on (pg. 13), this concept, borrowed from James Clifford, remained a theme throughout the text. Visweswaran defines conjunctural description as distinct from "thick description," made famous by interpretive ethnographer Clifford Geertz. I found Visweswaran's use of this term useful in thinking about my own work, especially in thinking through how to do ethnographic work grounded (somewhat) in critical realism. 

Critical realism, which Visweswaran mentions but does not elucidate, is a metatheory that foregrounds ontology and claims that there are causal mechanisms that propel history forward. These causal mechanisms are contingent and conjunctural; in other words, a specific combination of things that depend upon each other.The uses of critical realism within ethnography have increased in recent years. Would Visweswaran name her work as critical realist? I think she would, with several caveats. 

Critical realism has been critiqued for not acknowledging experiential knowledge enough, and Visweswaran contributes to an implicit critique of CR by emphasizing positionality, situated knowledges, and location. What she takes from CR, however, is the conjunctural nature of all of these things. I kept thinking about Donna Haraway's distinction between views from "nowhere" and "somewhere." For Visweswaran, that "somewhere" is always multiply constructed, fragmented, contingent and conjunctural. 

Visweswaran goes on to suggest that knowledges can also be situational, that is, produced within and for specific contexts (1994:49), and describes Janaki as "no longer a puzzle to solve, but a woman with her reasons, not so unlike me" (1994:50). This statement comes out of Visweswaran's analysis of betrayal that emphasizes the specific and contingent nature of knowledge, but also acknowledges Janaki's ontological subjectivity as well. Visweswaran's foregrounding of the historical contexts surrounding Uma and Janaki's stories leads her to what she earlier names as a "hermeneutics of vulnerability," in which she questions both the epistemology, and I claim, the ontology, of anthropology. 

Conjunctural description as methodology is something that I will take with me from this book. To expand upon Visweswaran's definition, conjunctural description is attentive to the historically contingent situations and contexts in which people live their lives, but also pays attention to the politics of knowledge, disclosure and refusal (silence). The latter demands accountability to subjects as subjects. Visweswaran's "Betrayals" is an example of how to structure such a project: Narrative/Performance, reflection on one's own subject position (p. 48), and analysis in several layers/parts. Visweswaran also provides guidance in "Refusing the Subject," where she places a subject's refusal in a subjective context through an analysis of nationalist/generational politics in India.