Critical Review #3 Agawu 2003 Ch. 9

I'm not so sure Agawu's take-away point of the "ethical attitude" helps sort out any of the problems and power disparity of representation. He describes it as "a disposition toward frameworks and styles of reasoning that finally seek--actively, rather than passively--to promote the common good." This reflexive stance is helpful in as much as it admits that we as researchers, insiders or outsiders, are going to do it wrong--at some point in time, our historical or ethnographic product is going to be flawed. I can't say that I am especially critical with Agawu because,insofar as I understand what he's getting at, I think I agree with his reflective tact and, were I writing ethnography would be constantly conscious of my place and my ethnographic constructions and how my own formulation as a person influences those constructions and what sort of perceptions my "subjects" would make of me etc. These types of pieces make me nervous, like stepping into a philosophical house of mirrors. At what point can we draw a line at making research and ethnographic a constant and active "process" for the sake of commodification? At which point does "the line"--or the reflexivity--become the commodification? It seems like Kisliuk's book is a bit more biography than it is a study of the BaAka.