Tree Leaf Talk: A Heideggerian Anthropology

207 Pages·2001·0.96 MB·English

by  James F. Weiner

Tree Leaf Talk
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Tree Leaf Talk
A Heideggerian Anthropology
James F. Weiner
Oxford•New York
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First published in 2001 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA
© James F. Weiner 2001
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1859735010(Cloth)
Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
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To the Memory of My Father
David Weiner
1918–1996
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
1 Introduction: Heidegger and Anthropology’s Nihilism 1
PartI: Place, Death and Voice in Foi
2 Space and Naming: The Inscriptive Effects of Foi Life
Activity 15
3 Being and Striving: Death, Gender and Temporality among
the Foi 31
4 To Be At Home with Others in an Empty Place 51
PartII: The Limits of Human Relationship
5 The Limit of Relationship 69
6 Technology and Techne in Trobriand and Yolngu Art 85
PartIII: The Aestheticization of Social Relations
7 The Community as a Work of Art 105
8 Prelude: Light and Language 115
9 On Televisualist Anthropology: Representation, Aesthetics,
Politics 123
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Contents
10 The Scale of Human Life 161
References 175
Index 187
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern, Jadran Mimica, Chris
Pinney, Don Gardner, Richard Handler, and Michael Jackson, who all
taught me something important about both Heidegger and anthropology.
I would also like to thank Kathryn Earle of Berg Press, and to the reviewer
of this manuscript, who was later revealed to me to be Eric Hirsch, for
his astute and helpful comments. The Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Manchester, the Department of Anthropology, University
of Adelaide, and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University, all deserve my gratitude for the support I
received, both collegial and otherwise, while at work on this manuscript.
Portions of this book appeared, either in whole or in part, in the
following:
1991 The Empty Place. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, Indiana.
1992 ‘Anthropology Contra Heidegger: Part I: Anthropology’s Nihil-
ism’. Critique of Anthropology 12(1): 75–90.
1993 ‘Anthropology Contra Heidegger: Part II: The Limit of Relation-
ship’. Critique of Anthropology 13(3): 285–301.
1993 ‘To Be At Home with Others in an Empty Place: A Reply to
Mimica.’ The Australian Journal of Anthropology 4(3): 233–244.
1995 ‘Technology and Techne in Trobriand and Yolngu Art’. In Too
Many Meanings: A Critique of the Anthropology of Aesthetics,
ed. J. Weiner. Social Analysis 38: 32–46.
1996 ‘Sherlock Holmes and Martin Heidegger: Comment on Julian
Thomas’ Time, Culture and Identity’. Archaeological Dialogues
3(1): 35–9.
1997 ‘On Televisualist Anthropology: Representation, Aesthetics,
Politics’. Current Anthropology 38(2): 197–235 (with *CA
comment).
1998 ‘Afterword: Revealing the Grounds of Life in Papua New Guinea’.
In S. Bamford (ed.), Identity, Nature and Culture: Environment
and Sociality in Melanesia. Social Analysis 42(3): 135–42.
I am grateful to all these publications for permission to reprint or
paraphrase portions of these works here.
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