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Recursive Epistemologies and an Ethics of Attention
Wirrpa on the banks of the Victoria River a few years ago? The short,
pithy answer is “I don’t know”; in Aussie vernacular, “I wouldn’t have
a bloody clue, mate.” That is factual, but I can also say that I was not
indulging in clueless behavior.
A significant point that Fabian did not discuss, and that I believe
follows directly from a recursive epistemology, is faith. I would say
that when I called to Jessie, I acted in faith, and I mean the term in
several senses. The first is that of faithfulness or holding fast, such as
is implied in the idea that I acted in good faith. My action was faith-
ful to Jessie’s teaching, and in good faith it continued the mutuality
we shared in life. I claimed an enduring bond of connection, implic-
itly asserting that just because one of us was dead it did not follow
that the relationship was finished. And indeed it is not. As this paper
shows, Jessie’s gifts continue to shape my life, and clearly I intend my
work to analyze and make publicly explicit some of the perils she and
her country now face.
Another meaning goes to the question of the non-secular. A number
of scholars today pursue a distinction between faith and belief. Turn-
bull, for example, describes belief as a domain of mere reason and
rational forms of religious experience ( 1990 , 70 ). Similarly, Debjani
Ganguly ( 2002 ), one of the new wave of postcolonial Indian subal-
tern scholars, insists that although belief can be reduced to political-
cultural calculation, the force of non-secular language and experience
challenges, and may fracture, the apparent hegemony of modernity.
With these and other scholars, I suggest that faith is not defined solely
by cognition; it can be located throughout the body, and it may often
erupt mysteriously, being called into existence by that which is outside
us or precedes us. Faith, in my view, is action toward intersubjectiv-
ity. It is called forth by that which is beyond the self and thus equally
is action arising from intersubjectivity.
Jessie taught me about a communicative world by taking my hand
and walking me in it. Through her own listening, she taught me to lis-
ten. Having held her hand and followed in her footsteps, I know that
my life takes a twist into life-affirming action when I ground my life’s
work in her intersubjectivity of place. I call out as a gesture of faith:
that country matters; that life has its own vibrancy, intensity, and modes
of attention; and that my voice has a place in this world.
