> >but the problem doesn't really stem from the heterogeneous nature
> >of evidence in different places and times; rather, it stems from
> >the gesture, inspired by normative methodologies, of diagnosing
> >evidence as inadequate.
> But a question or two: what say you about adjudication. How do we
> adjudicate (so to speak) b/w pieces, if not types of evidence. Not adequate
> or inadequate, but rather...what? What is a non-normative methodology, or
> a non-normative approach to evidence? I am thinking of the anti-moralist
> Marx (radical historicism), and Foucault, or maybe some
> anthropologist. I am thinking of one of MF's lines about writing
so am i thinking of them.
i can't say i know the answer, beyond very vaguely pointing in the direction of 'going native.' which is a bit like say- ing 'going elsewhere': in the absence of specifics, there's no there there. just, it seems silly to the point of comedy to presume that one's own intellectual tradition is necessar- ily coextensive with the standpoint that 'critical distance' requires, or that 'critical' approaches should consist most- ly of translation from the foreign to the familiar. this, for example, is what i quite like about MF's turn toward ethics: a willingness to blur the boundaries between his object, his method, and his resulting discussions.
but, maybe to answer your question in ultraprimitive terms, a nonnormative method is one that doesn't privilege the con- cept over the phenomena. in this case, say, one that doesn't happily ascribe an abundance of 'violence,' on the one hand, and a scarcity of 'evidence,' on the other, to cambodian culture. it's not so hard to begin from the premise that both are adequate (qualitatively, not quantitatively) and then to examine the problem on something closer to its own terms: if there is no Official Record against which to assess the truth of the oral traditions, then perhaps those oral traditions are indeed 'what happened' in a sense. but what that sense is, that's the key: less important than the origins are where the consequences are headed.
the allegations of satanic ritual abuse that were so popular in the eighties are a fine example of this problem, because the 'reconstruction' of the alleged events took place in sev- eral spheres: the near collapse of juridical institutions, the explosion of 'therapeutic' social structures, and the constructions of selves on the foundation of the allegations. the complex interplay of legitimations and delegitimations was much more constitutive than whatever 'really happened.'
> fictions: "One 'fictions' history starting from a political reality that
> renders it true, one 'fictions' a politics that doesn't as yet exist
> starting from an historical truth." You will notice I don't find you a
> relativist. The point is to politicize it, no?
i'm glad; the charge of 'relativism' is, as often as not, a smear (and it's also *sooo* twentieth-century).
as is this insistence on 'politicizing' things--as though they weren't already political (and a great many other things).
cheers, t