Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice

Michael M. J. Fischer is Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution and coauthor of Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition and Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences.

• Acknowledgments ixPrologue: The Third Spaces of Anthropology 1Emergent Forms of Life 1 Deep Play and Social Responsibility in Vienna 292 Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologies of Late or Post Modernities 37Critique within Technoscientific Worlds 3 Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: Iranian Cinema in a Teletechnological World 614 Cultural Critique with a Hammer, Gouge, and Woodblock: Art and Medicine in the Age of Social Retraumatization 905 Ethnographic Critique and Technoscientific Narratives: The Old Mole, Ethical Plateaus, and the Governance of Emergent Biosocial Polities 145Subjectivities in an Age of Global Connectivity 6 Autobiograhpical Voices (1,2,3) and Mosaic Memory: Ethnicity, Religion, Science (An Inquiry into the Nature of Autobiographical Genres and Their Uses in Extending Social Theory) 1797 Post-Avant-Garde Tasks of Polish Film: Ethnographic Odklamane 225New Pedagogies and Ethics 8 Worlding Cyperspace: Toward a Critical Ethnography in Space, Time, and Theory 2619 Calling the Future(s): Delay Call Forwarding 305I. Las Meninas and Robotic-Virtual Surgical systems: the Visual Thread/Fiber-Optic Carrier 309II. Modules for a Science, Technology, and Society Curriculum: STS@theTurn_[ ]ooo.mit.edu 33310 In the Science Zone: The Yanomami and the Fight for Representation 370Epilogue: On Distinguishing Good and Evil in Emergent Forms of Life (Woodblock Print to Newspaper Illustration) 393Notes 397Bibliography 427Index 463

“Michael M. J. Fischer’s ‘anthropology outside the frame’ takes on an astounding range of contemporary subjects: Austrian politics, Polish and Iranian films, cyberspace, virtual surgery, xenotransplantation, the autobiographical construction of memory, the technoscientific representation of the social world, and the ethical complexities of fieldwork among tribal peoples. His extension of ethnography beyond its traditional concerns to the investigation of the emerging forms of human consciousness usually vaguely grouped as ‘late-’ or ‘postmodern’ sets out a broad new agenda for cultural description and political critique. An unstandard, adventurous, eye-opening work.”-Clifford Geertz “True to its title, Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice is about worlds coming into being in technoculture. Attentive especially to the new biologies and biotechnologies, information technologies, and ecological and environmental matters, Michael M. J. Fischer explores what he calls ‘ethical plateaus’ or domains of ethical challenge. This wonderful book neither condemns nor glorifies emergent worlds; instead it gives us deep and intelligent analysis and reflection from a distinctive ethnographic point of view. ‘Culture’ comes alive here. As Fischer reminds us vividly, culture is not a variable. Culture is about relationships, about relating as a verb. Culture is a passage and a topos, and Fischer is a masterful guide.”-Donna Haraway