A Psychoanalytic Critique of Joao Biehl's 'Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment'

 

1. Introduction

In her review of João Biehl’s Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, Claudia Fonseca compares his work with a “mystery thriller”, an appropriate description, as both the setting as well as the intention of the author may be aiming for an exposure of something dark and gloomy. It also bases its exposure of this on clues surrounding the “scribbles, in near-obsessive determination” of a woman named Catarina, the occupant of a “run-down, philanthropic asylum in southern Brazil that, during the years under observation (1995-2003), harboured a motley crew of elderly, physically handicapped, and mentally ill patients as well as domesticated street-dwellers and rehabilitated drug-users” (Fonseca 2006: 686). Throughout the search for causes of Catarina’s misery the ethnographer follows a path of her subjectivity, claiming to “stay as close as possible to [her] words, to her own thinking-through of her condition” (Biehl 2005, 19). However, as Inela Selmiovic writes in her review, further efforts could have been taken to highlight the significance of her subjective experience (Selmiovic 2006, 300-1). A neglect of representations of subjectivity is not a rare occurrence in ethnography and Biehl’s mishandling of Catarina’s subjectivity might just be an example of an underlying difficulty to approach the paradox of subjectivity itself.

To summarize the thesis of this essay I will pose three basic assumptions: 1) an academic is a person and therefore subjective in nature, 2) existing is taking part in power relations, 3) the field of anthropology is limited by the attempt to reconcile subjective individualism with social and cultural, idealistic obligation. Although these three assumptions may seem unrelated, I will attempt to merge them to expose a possible way to look at subjectivity as an irreconcilable paradox which is exemplified by ethnographic practices. Here using Biehl’s VITA: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment as an example, I will be focusing on two parts which do not prescribe to any idealism. On the one hand asserting that Biehl engages in circular logic by categorizing, representing, and thereby dominating the subject while criticizing that exact behavior in the social institutions which have put Catarina in a zone of social abandonment and on the other hand, showing that this behavior is not rare and can be tied to a psychological denial over the paradox of subjectivity and power relations which frequently appear as academic anxiety.

As a groundwork to the difficult topic of the existential paradox, I will first outline Freud’s concept of the pleasure-principle and Foucault’s concepts of fundamental power relations involved in subjectivity, particularly those which allude to the importance of individual awareness in the academic method. In my opinion, these describe the root cause of academic anxiety and its circular logic which Biehl and many others engage in. To show that this anxiety does, in fact, exist and how it relates to a history of anthropology, I will work with Sherry Ortner’s summary regarding the topic of academic anxiety as well as briefly summarizing Clifford’s apprehensions to ethnographic authority, before relating the gathered background information directly to Biehl’s approach. In conclusion, I hope to give some ideas on how to calm the influence of the paradox with an awareness of the importance of existential choice in the ethnographic method.

2. The Paradoxical Question of Subjectivity & Academic Anxiety

In the following chapter I will briefly summarize the relevant theories to build a framework for further investigation. This chapter serves to illuminate the posed assumptions.

2.1. The Subject and its Discontents

Some light can be shed on the first assumption when exploring the depths of the individual as a foundation for all social structures surrounding it. This presupposes a perspective of the individual as a kind of centralized figure to which I will simply say that, perhaps, at this point it serves best to accept a paradox than to argue within its structures of contradiction, because it is likely going to be further illuminated throughout this essay that the question of essentialism vs. existentialism may not have an answer. At this point, I would like to put the academic in the position of the individual which is being observed: the subject.

Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical approach to social phenomena are often seen as the foundation of the Culture and Personality shift in anthropological study (Spiro 1996: 760). In his 1962 essay Civilization and its Discontents, Freud explores the depths of what he calls the “pleasure principle” (Freud 1962: 29) and the “programme of becoming happy, which [it] imposes on us” (30). Referring to “the true source of religious sentiments”, a need for connection (11) or the “oceanic feeling” (12), which is later tied to culture in that it is said to have become a modern “prosthetic God” (38)1, a system of subconscious processes is imposed on the individual, likely influenced by childhood developmental phases. During these phases, the individual forms a counterforce to the ego, the sense of self. This counterforce is a source of internal authority which defies the pleasure-principle by imposing the reality-principle. Therefore, the pursuit of pleasure necessitates the counteraction or the futile task of the ‘holding in balance’ of those pursuits. Freud

1 for a more recent definition: Clifford also mentions the shift from a fascination with transcendental figures to an elevation of Culture as a higher deity on page 26 of his text On Ethnographic Authority outlines several different ways in which the existence of super-ego affects the individual and vice versa, based on external influence and how ethical concepts enhance the influence of super-ego:

“The field of ethics, which is so full of problems, presents us with another fact: namely that ill-luck – that is, external frustration – so greatly enhances the power of the conscience in the super-ego.” (73)

The mind perceives the defiance of super-ego as a threat to the pursuit of pleasure. The threat involves an “external unhappiness – loss of love and punishment on the part of the external authority” which is then “exchanged for a permanent internal unhappiness, for the tension of the sense of guilt.” (74). The sense of guilt within the individual, here, the academic, over defying patterns of popular belief and ethical obligation is likely to lead to “a topographical variety of anxiety”, or “fear of the super-ego” (75). What ensues is an existentially neurotic attempt to counteract the impossibility of this dichotomical structure of mind, counteracted by means of coping mechanisms (82). My use of the word ‘neurotic’ is to be understood here as fundamental instead of pathological. Freud describes the neurotic as a person who “turns away from reality because he finds either the whole or parts of it unbearable.” and that essentially, the neurotic engages in the same behavior as the psychotic who turns “away from reality” as part of a kind of hallucinatory state (Freud 2005: 3). Conclusively, it can be argued that lack of acceptance of the ambiguity inherent in the existential paradox is a sign of neurosis, meaning every action done to counteract the effects of existential ambiguity can be seen as neurotic. Freud identifies several following coping mechanisms, including that of “sublimation of the instincts [through] sufficiently heighten[ing] the yield of pleasure from the sources of psychical and intellectual work” (26) and “making oneself independent of the external world” by means of “imagination” such as the “enjoyment of art” (27).

The question raised now, after outlining the foundational paradox of the pleasure/reality principle is as follows: Since the academic is a person, subject to psychological patterns and coping mechanisms, how should he or she approach the ethnographic method? Perhaps the next chapter will help illuminate this question further.

2.2. Power Relations

After outlining that human beings are caught in a paradoxical loop, forcing them to defy the subjective pursuit of pleasure and thereby defy their individual happiness, the coping mechanism of rationalization becomes evident. On a cultural and political level, Michel Foucault suggests taking common perceptions of reactions and resistance to dominant structures as a point of reference because they defy forms of subjection (779-80). This also leads to a possible explanation for why people decide to stay trapped in their objectification. Foucault describes anti-authority struggles as a “refusal of abstractions” surrounding the following question: “Who are we?”, outlining, perhaps, an existentially neurotic struggle against what is perceived as a “form of power” (781) but essentially fundamental to existence. The question becomes: how does the interplay between individual and collective work? Foucault outlines a kind of paradoxical dualism imposed by dominant structures between individualization and totalization procedures, alluding to the idea that culture is essentially ran by paradoxical mechanisms of power (782):

“The conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state’s institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.” (785)

As a way to go about this, Foucault leads back to the framework of awareness and an investigation of the “remote processes” involved in socialization. As a starting point the question needs to be: What is the nature of power? Foucault describes that

“[t]he exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others” (788).

This non-idealized concept of power is assumed to be exercised by means of agency in the process of engaging in power structures; ‘(self-)enforcing’ domination or submission. However, as Foucault explains further, power is not a matter of consent (788) and to be understood as inherent to existence:

“In itself, the exercise of power is not violence: nor is it a consent which, implicitly, is renewable. It is a total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible actions.” (789)

So, what does it mean to dominate a subject or interfere with a subject’s agency? Since “[p]ower is exercised only over free subjects […] [t]he relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to submit cannot, therefore, be separated” (790). Thinking back to Freud, it can be said that the domination of the free individual is part of a kind of binary fluctuation between the “general structure of power” (795) in the external world and the erecting of super-ego as a ‘conscience machine’ which guides the ethical behavior of subjects. Popular models of thinking and their imagined ethical implications have a large impact on the way the thinking subject not only acts upon itself but towards the other.

For an academic employing any ethnographic method it is, therefore, not far-fetched to assert that the postmodern emphasis on “interests […] of the story teller” (Spiro 1996: 771), therefore engaging in exactly the kind of power struggle which is at the basis of dominant power structures claimed to necessitate resistance by many postmodern thinkers. The cyclic paradox should, once again, be evident: Fighting domination with more domination cannot be a solution to the power imbalance between the academic researcher and his or her subject of study. In fact, I would like to highlight, once again, the futility in finding any solution which will line up with our very own established ethical demands. Perhaps it is most logical, if certainly not completely so, to begin with being aware of one’s own position in the power struggle and choose to accept it or not by a simple means of action or non-action.

Freud, quite plainly, states: “The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us […] cannot be fulfilled”, adding that we are caught in a loop of exploring paths to fulfill the pleasure principle nonetheless (30). Certainly, this futile process is absurd at its very foundation. However, it is the only choice the individual has in order to keep living. Therefore, engaging in the cyclic phenomenon of power, for a person in a position of authority, is always a choice involving agency.

2.3. Academic Anxiety

To illuminate the validity in the assertion made earlier I will now refer to Sherry Ortner who details that postmodern thought seeks to address the core human “anxieties about the fragility of order and meaning” (Ortner 2006: 119) in her 2006 text Anthropology and Social Theory. Culture, Power and the Acting Subject. She further outlines the history over the “debate of the subject” (106): Beginning with early philosophy, the question over the position of the subject entered a 20th century conflict with the emergence of social sciences. Existentialist philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre argued for the “primacy of human ‘freedom’ […]” which was countered by the structuralist thought of Levi-Strauss who proposed seeing the individual as a vessel for cultural and social ideals (108). Later leading into the current debate, the post-structuralist emphasis was put on analyzing fundamental ideas and dissolving its “ideological specificity” (109). Post-colonial theory, Spivak in particular, then added the perception that poststructuralist theorists were inserting themselves in a position of domination which left certain groups to be silenced based on aspects of class, race and gender, adding an idealized aspect, once again.

As outlined by Ortner, a displacement of the real complexity of human subjectivity may be taking place (110). Much as with Spiro who is speaking against the metaphysical idealism of postmodernist thought, Spivak’s generalizing of Western poststructuralist anthropology as being guided by the desire to uphold the white male’s position of domination and neglecting the voices of the subaltern (Spivak 1988) elicits the image of a pendulum of power ranging from one idealistic domination to another. Ortner describes subjectivity as the “basis of ‘agency’ […]” (110) and holds that ignoring or shifting the importance of the individual and its subjectivity in the study of culture would defy the study of its political and social implications. She therefore elicits an image of a subject crushed under the weight of its homogenizing, metaphysical interpretation (116).

A further summary of the subjectivity debate is James Clifford’s On Ethnographic Authority (1988), which questions the ethnographic mode of fieldwork which sees itself as capable of ‘giving a voice’, presupposing the ethnographer’s authoritative position in the subject’s existence (22). Clifford describes a shift in ethnographic methodology which is largely due to the question of how to reconcile the field of anthropology with the ethical obligations of the de-colonization effort it largely prescribes to (24). Clifford elaborates on some of the ways in which ethnographers should question their own methods: First of all, considering ethnographic experience as “experiential authority” (35), further stating that authority must be investigated in terms of methods such as translation of research (35), interpretation (39) as well as models of discourse (41): All of them have the potential to affect, distort and overpower the subjectivity of the individual. Regardless of the ethnographer’s efforts, his or her work will remain a representation. Regardless of the attempts made, such as the utilization of direct quotations, indirect style, multiple authors and the inclusion of the reader perspective (46-52), within the framework of “[e]xperiential, interpretive, dialogical, and polyphonic processes” ethnographic research is struggling to counteract the question of authority (54).

3. João Biehl’s Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment

Inela Selimoviç’s review includes a passage of skepticism about the author’s approach to handling Catarina’s subjectivity. Aside from it being a “well-researched study with a fine balance between theoretical discussions and thorough fieldwork” she states that,

“[t]he insertion of Catarina’s dictionary in her native language would have further authenticated her self-representation […]. Biehl’s criterion for including only certain portions of her dictionary […] remains unclear. It would be interesting to know if Catarina herself took any part in the selections of these portions.” (Selimoviç 2006: 301)

A further review by Claudia Fonseca alludes to, both, the author’s “stated ambition […] to link personal experience and ‘meaning-making’ to large-scale power processes” (Fonseca 2006, 686) as well as the “intermingling of agencies (the author’s and Catarina’s) [which] renders a redefinition of personhood” where “ethnography stands as the ‘missing nexus’ through which reality is not only understood, but transformed” (687). Both critical assessments outline the three basic assumptions this essay works with: First of all, Biehl is a subject in his own process, and second, using his agency for purposes of meaning-making, it not only drives the exploration of power structures, but it intertwines with that of Catarina. Lastly, flaws in Biehl’s method are based on a mishandling of Catarina’s subjectivity, which this essay attempts to show is due to a more complex struggle to reconcile paradoxical external and internal forces tied to the process of ‘meaning-making’. The following chapter is an attempt to investigate Biehl’s ethnographic method of basing his study around the subjectivity of a woman with very little agency, to expose perceived limitations in ethnographic analysis as discussed in the background chapter.

3.1. The (Mis-)handling of Catarina’s Subjectivity

Perhaps it is useful to ask the question of what Biehl sees himself doing before investigating his methods. In terms of his concept of the significance of anthropology in general, Biehl states that to “make ethnography politically relevant” (1223), it is the anthropologist’s task to entice political changes “by repopulating public imagination with people and their precarious yet creative world-making” (1224) “rather than illustrating a world irrevocably splintered by globalization and ever more resistant to theoretical engagement” (1223). In other words, Biehl places the ethnographer within a framework of political relevance, as a force of connection of that which has been fragmented by political transformations, acknowledging its participation in a power dynamic of “power/knowledge” (1212). The question over the power relations of agency and the position of the subject can be located in an environment of what is perceived as necessary political inquiry and force, in order to serve that which is ideologically most relevant: counteracting the dividing force of society. However, I would like to assert that Biehl engages in exactly this dividing force by lacking an understanding of his own subjective position and rationalizing the engagement in a power dynamic which proposes viewing domination as a force of necessity.

In his 2005 ethnography Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, Biehl leads the reader through a detailed description of the social causes and effects of neglect and social abandonment in Porto Alegre, Brazil, focusing on Catarina, who has found solace in ambiguity. Catarina lives at a place called Vita, which Biehl refers to as „an end-station on the road of poverty […] where living beings are no longer considered people" (Biehl 2005: 2). By following the traces of her medical records, their dialogue as well as her journal, which she refers to as her dictionary, Biehl explores the many flaws of the Brazilian social system, which leaves certain people to fall into what he calls zones of social abandonment. Biehl employs several different ethnographic methods, such as conversations with Catarina as well as her family, reading and interpreting her writing, and contextualization regarding Catarina’s social environment. Biehl describes his task as follows:

“By tracing Catarina’s words back to the people, households, and medical institutions that she had once been part of, I illuminate the complex network in which her abandonment and pathology took form as well as the edges of human imagination that she keeps expanding.” (Biehl 2004: 475)

I believe, at this point it is valid to assume that he views himself as an intermediary between Catarina’s subjectivity and politically-relevant frameworks, perhaps, ignoring his place in what Clifford might refer to as “experiential authority” (Clifford 1986: 35).

Now it might serve as a good linking method to try to decipher Biehl’s concept of subjectivity to show a possible logical fallacy in his views. Biehl states that “the study of individual subjectivity […] helps to recast totalizing assumptions of the workings of collectivities and institutions” (Biehl 2009: 270) outlining his ascription of Catarina’s subjectivity as a tool of resistance rather than a personal coping mechanism of an individual with very little agency. By placing Catarina’s words in this framework, thereby using her thoughts as a portal to something more significant than her individual experience, he is robbing Catarina of her subjectivity and agency, thereby imposing power on her in a paradoxical fight against forces of power. And in an attempt to outline the reasoning for his doing so, he rationalizes by referring back to her, saying that her writing “conveys [that] subjectivity does not merely speak as resistance, nor is it simply spoken (or silenced) by power” but that it “continually forms and returns in the complex play of bodily, linguistic, political, and psychological dimensions of human experience” (270), claiming that in Catarina’s space of ambiguity, subjectivity is its own force, separate from power structures. I agree with this statement; however, I would like to assert that it is this space which Biehl strips her from by ascribing meaning to it. While saying that Catarina remarked on the difficulty in the interpretation of ambiguous language to build a greater framework by saying that she “refused to be an object of understanding for others” (Biehl 2005: 318) he builds the groundwork of his politically-resistant ethnography around the assumption that there is a material manifestation to an immaterial mental process, ascribing significance to levels of thinking much in the way Freud calls “unimaginable and even absurd” in his analogy to the “history of the Eternal City” (Freud 1962: 17).

Biehl’s idea of subjectivity now leads to the questions of intention and authority. Where does he see himself in the process of writing? I would assert that, first of all, he sees himself as an agent to her visibility, when saying,

“Had I only stayed with Catarina’s utterances in Vita, the whole field of tensions and associations that existed between her family and medical and state institutions and that had shaped her life would have remained invisible.” (Biehl 2004: 481)

He further describes her subjectivity as “express[ing] and channel[ing] the tension she sensed of the personal, the domestic, the medical, and the public, fused in her body” (Biehl 2005: 314). While her level of visibility is certainly heightened, I have to point out that what he ascribes to her subjectivity from a position of power, is merely an interpretation. At many points in the book he begins to rationalize his use of of subjectivity, summarized here in the following quote from his article regarding the topic of subjectivity and his work on his ethnography:

“How can an observer produce a theory of the abandoned subject and her subjectivity that is ethnographically grounded? To begin with, in her verse, Catarina places the individual and the collective in the same space of analysis, just as the country and the city collide in Vita. […]” (Biehl 2004: 482)

Furthermore, Biehl’s groundwork of utilizing the subjective experience of one person to expose its greater social and political implications is built on juxtapositions of mental imagery, leading to supposed “clues to the people, sites, and interactions that constituted her life” (Biehl 2005: 315), while also calling her journaling process “cryptic” and “scattered” (Biehl 2005: 315). Secondly, it is based on the interpretation or the conceptualization of Catarina as a portal to meaning, thereby losing her validity as an individual who is suffering and becoming a representation. Biehl, quite literally, states this when he interprets her moving around the room at Vita as “want[ing] to communicate” (Biehl 2004: 478), claiming to understand her intentions without even speaking to her.

Structurally, apart from the issue of translation and only publishing segments of her work, Biehl sparsely utilizes direct speech as part of his work. Much of what follows those are long interpretive sections of contextualization. This contextualization is mostly based on personal feelings and a personal understanding of a specific topic, such as is the case on page 78 of his book. Whereas Catarina explains that what she means by “separation of bodies” is the stripping of her position as a mother, Biehl interprets her allusion to the physical as that which underlines her understanding of her illness as well as her social condition. Biehl describes following Catarina’s “long recollections” (Biehl 2004: 480), yet he rarely includes direct quotations, certainly none which would justify his statement. While deciding not to let the weight of Catarina’s recollections crush his research, Biehl’s ascriptions and interpretations seem to be crushing the individual, Catarina, and transforming her into a vessel for idealistic political action.

3.2. Relation to Issues of Subjectivity & Power and Locating Academic Anxiety

In an attempt to find a conclusion and conceptualize some possible alternatives for ethnographic investigations I will reconnect the analysis of Biehl’s work on his ethnography with the three points outlined as the leading arguments of this essay.

The first sees Biehl as a subject engaged in a countertransferential, process, or a subject-to-subject transfer of effects (Spiro 1996: 763). While asserting that the ethnographic method should expose structures of domination through the investigation of subjective experience, with Catarina as both subject and portal, but essentially lacking awareness of his own position as part of a two-way process which not only outlines a power imbalance between two people, but also within the minds of each of the people involved, his method becomes more of a barrier than a path to truth and a vessel for political change. The fundamentally dualistic and irreconcilable fluctuation between individual freedom of the subject and the ethnographer’s position of authority becomes a source of distress caused by guilt, a mental process which strengthens super-ego, at which point counteractions begin to take place, such as the mechanism of sublimation. A process which involves rationalizations and intellectualizations such as could be the case with the following quote, amongst several others:

“Continually adjusting itself reality of contemporary lives and worlds, anthropological venture has the potential of art: to invoke neglected human possibilities and to expand the limits of understanding and imagination.” (Biehl 2009: 282)

Aside from the neglect of the difference in the impact of the ambiguity of art versus the impact of written interpretations of a person’s words, I would like to assert that Biehl engages in sublimations of the instincts in order to justify his mishandling of individual subjectivity. In this way, Biehl’s work shows not only a lack of his awareness of the “specific position in the web of intersubjective relations” but also a tendency to rationalize his methods rather than accepting that there is “no neutral standpoint in the power-laden field of discursive positionings” (Clifford 1986, 42). It can be asserted that the pleasure-unpleasure paradox is sustained with a coping mechanism.

This relates closely to the matter of power-relations. While Biehl does investigate forms of resistance (Foucault 1994: 791), by focusing on a socially abandoned woman’s journaling process, as well as attempting to view Catarina’s mental illness as opposite to that which defines society’s concept of mental health Biehl ties her subjective experience to larger structures of power. While I do not disagree with his findings and his interpretations, it is important to remember both his position as an authority figure in an intersubjective process of meaning-making, including his intention and internal state as well as Catarina’s position as an individual whose ability to represent herself is diminished by her circumstances. Biehl’s work leaves Catarina in a vulnerable spot, as an intermediary for abstractions of social misconduct and as an individual crushed under the weight of Biehl’s own intentions (Biehl 2009: 268). I would like to refer to Hay’s essay regarding agency and suffering, who alludes to the fact that a person suffering exhibits an undermined “sense of self” (260) which may not be rightly forced or used for interpretation. Since socially, agency is “often manifested in productivity” and “fundamental to our human experience” (260) in that we are able to decide for ourselves and to our best abilities how we are seen, Hay suggests that instead of “forcing voices to exhibit agency […] anthropologists can stay closer to the ontological experience of people” by allowing “for a space beyond agency that recognizes that life’s predicaments sometimes have no available solutions other than existing” (271). Because Catarina lacks a cultural model which would better signify her individual suffering and lack of agency it is absurd to use a position of power to force her to express herself adequately enough to be tied to whichever social phenomenon Biehl seeks to counteract.

In terms of academic anxiety, I would like to assert that Catarina’s subjective experience and diminished agency are being exploited to engage in political anthropology. Much as suggested by Ortner, the complexity of Catarina’s experience and understanding of self and other is being neglected to serve ideological functions. Viewing Catarina’s position in the realm of subjectivity as one of very little privilege, the handling of her subjectivity and agency could be interpreted as a defiance not only of her individual freedom and self-determination but also as a metaphysical idealization of a person’s reality, disregarding the metaphysical realism of Catarina’s suffering. Using Spiro’s line of thinking, but not subscribing to his very own ideologies I would like to summarize his concluding thoughts: If anthropology shall be viewed as political in nature and capable of creating actual social changes “metaphysical realism is a necessary condition” because even if “subjectivity raises formidable problems for the conduct of social inquiry”, quoting Hannah Arendt, he states that “unwelcome factual truths […] must not serve as justifications for blurring the dividing lines between fact, opinion, and interpretation, or as an excuse for the [scholar] to manipulate the facts as he pleases” (Spiro 1996: 776). Metaphysical realism refers here to Catarina’s condition of being an individual who is existentially free but also suffering from a diminished sense of self and other, a barrier in her agency. To impose a metaphysical idealism on her as a way to interpret her thoughts is robbing her not only of her complexity as an individual and thereby those who suffer as she does, but also imposing on her a framework preset by an authority figure in the business of ‘making meaning’ who is, himself, subject to internal and external psychical processes.

4. Conclusion

The introductory assertion was that the issue of subjectivity as part of the ethnographic method is grounded in an irreconcilable psychical paradox which exists within a framework of binary fluctuating power relations, which create another paradox when fieldwork and ethnographic research is used for ascribing metaphysical idealism to subjective experience of the individual. Biehl’s ethnography is an example of how the issue of subjectivity has the potential to lead to rationalizations, denial of authoritative position and intention and the disregard of a subject’s individual entitlement for self-ascription.

Certainly, there are no perfect solutions for this problem, as stated by Clifford and many others. However, I believe that, while counteracting a paradox is part of existence, it can only be logically approached with acceptance and awareness. Hay’s concept of a “space beyond agency” (Hay 2010: 271) seems relevant. I can conceptualize this place as one which embraces the ambiguity of the paradox instead of attempting to make sense of it. This is where awareness, as in making conscious choices between action and non-action, and the self-reflection necessary to get to that point are the keys to approaching ways in which the free will of the individual remains untouched. Once academics fail to acknowledge their position as individuals aware of their psychological processes as well as their position in the realm of power relations, their ideological ascriptions become nothing more than a façade for their (subconscious) feelings, intentions or their lack of self-awareness. In the end, the question which plagued me as I read the ethnography was; under all that weight of political intention and ascribed ideology, who is Catarina?

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