The Body Multiple reminded me a lot of The Funeral Casino. First because both books involved somewhat graphic imagery of human bodies and human flesh. Second, because Mol repeatedly wrote that atherosclerosis is a single multiply entity because all of the different realities or instances of the disease are different, but also all «hang together». When Klima came to our class, he remarked that his ethnography of images, although they were all different and seemingly unrelated, all «hung together» to form a coherent book. He said if the ethnographic images were presented in a different order in the book, the book may not have hung together as well. The third reason that this book reminded me of Klima's was because it felt, much like Klima's, that it was doing theory in a new way. Klima's «ethnography as theory» or ethnographic images forming the theoretical walls resonated as new to me, as did Mol's ethnography of practices or objects as practices.
Also, although Mol's book is a philosophical book dealing with advancing ontology, we are reading this book in this course because it relates to anthropology. The book relates not only because the author uses ethnographic material, but for me, the book resonated as not only useful for philosophy and ontology but for anthropology as well. One of the difficulties and pleasant challenges I've had with anthropology is that the more I learn about it, the more varied the discipline seems and the more disparate the parts of the discipline seem from each other. However, this notion that things can be different but still «hang together» seemed a useful way for me to think about the discipline of anthropology. This is also a useful way to think about presenting and writing ethnography.
1 Comments:
At 12:15 PM,
Kadija Ferryman said…
The Body Multiple reminded me a lot of The Funeral Casino. First because both books involved somewhat graphic imagery of human bodies and human flesh. Second, because Mol repeatedly wrote that atherosclerosis is a single multiply entity because all of the different realities or instances of the disease are different, but also all «hang together». When Klima came to our class, he remarked that his ethnography of images, although they were all different and seemingly unrelated, all «hung together» to form a coherent book. He said if the ethnographic images were presented in a different order in the book, the book may not have hung together as well. The third reason that this book reminded me of Klima's was because it felt, much like Klima's, that it was doing theory in a new way. Klima's «ethnography as theory» or ethnographic images forming the theoretical walls resonated as new to me, as did Mol's ethnography of practices or objects as practices.
Also, although Mol's book is a philosophical book dealing with advancing ontology, we are reading this book in this course because it relates to anthropology. The book relates not only because the author uses ethnographic material, but for me, the book resonated as not only useful for philosophy and ontology but for anthropology as well. One of the difficulties and pleasant challenges I've had with anthropology is that the more I learn about it, the more varied the discipline seems and the more disparate the parts of the discipline seem from each other. However, this notion that things can be different but still «hang together» seemed a useful way for me to think about the discipline of anthropology. This is also a useful way to think about presenting and writing ethnography.
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