abductions from indexes which are neither ‘semiotic conventions’ or ‘laws of nature’
but something in between.
(1998: 15)It is this something in-between which I try to lay out in this paper.
6 I am well aware that this description of the world can be seen as resting on an assumption
of restless change that is built into many current Euro-American practices (Strathern
1996). However, as I hope will become clear, this assumption is not a correct one.
7 This said, I would not want to go along with all Deleuze’s thoughts on the event, which
seem to me to move perilously close to a kind of vitalist mysticism.
8 In particular,Because embodiment has both a material and a sentient aspect to it, we do more
than know a ready-made physical reality through our separate bodies; we transform
it through the actions we make together. In the case of something like flirtation,
what is conveyed is not simply an emotion but an invitation, a call to the other to
participate. The material aspect of the body then takes on a greater significance,
because the physical world is now detained in relation to social projects, shared and
contested meanings. What we are capable of showing through our embodied
actions, therefore, are matters concerning our social condition. While this includes
face-to-face relationships between individuals, such as those involving flirtation or
play, it also extends to all kinds of groupings and crowds in which matters of
collective feeling are nurtured and conveyed by virtue of the physical presence of
those concerned.
(Radley 1996: 560–561)9 In other words, personal agency is not just human agency.
10 Peirce was, of course, a major influence on both Deleuze and Derrida. There are some
fascinating connections to be drawn between Deleuze and Derrida and North American
pragmatism. See, for example, Eldridge (1998).
11 In particular, in Simmel’s later work, which views ‘human freedom as lying precisely
not in humankind’s capacity for purposive action but rather in our capacity to break
with purpose’ (Joas 1996: 156).
12 Or as Gordon puts it:
A different way of knowing and working about the social world, an entirely different
mode of production still awaits our invention. Such a mode of production would
not reject the value of empirical observation per se, but might, to use Taussig’s
words be more ‘surprised’ by social construction, the making and making up of
social worlds, thereby giving it the respect it deserves.
(199 7 : 21)13 In turn, academic practice would have to change to something rather like Albright’s
description of ‘witnessing’, an observant participation in which
to witness something implies a responsiveness, the response/ability of the viewer
towards the performer. It is radically different from what we might call the
‘consuming’ gaze that says ‘here, you entertain me, I bought a ticket, and I’m going
to sit back and watch’. This consuming gaze doesn’t want to get involved, doesn’t
want to give anything back. In contrast, what I call witnessing is much more
interactive, a kind of perceiving (with one’s whole body) that is committed to a
process of mutual dialogue. These are precedents for this responsive watching in
Quaker Meetings, African–American notions of being witness, the responsive
dynamic of many evangelistic religions, as well as the aesthetic theory of rasa inNotes 265