Dennis L Stromback

Narrative

My current interests within anthropology is motivated in part by recent debates between modernity and post-modernity. For anthropology is now in a theoretical deadlock, where on one side, the focus has been more on developing an ontological map of sociocultural reality, while on the other, the emphasis is to 'deconstruct' any monolithic account for how culture, society, and the subject is constituted. The latter has a point: Essentialism, teleology, and reductionism represent stories of domination. But then again, as Slavoj Zizek argues: Post-modernity has also done more to avoid social, economic, and political issues such as poverty, social disorganization, and inequality. Therefore, the impression post-modernity marks is more of a link in the chain of intellectual development. A swing in the dialectic as Zizek would posit. And so because of this current mess, my aim, then, is to create a third vista of inquiry--not as a rejection of its precedessor but as an avenue that satisfies the concerns of both camps. This theoretical orientation I am now devising will be the basis of my empirical investigation. The topic I have chosen for my thesis is on how 'mental illness,' or more specifically 'borderline personality disorder,' is cultivated within a social environment. One aim within my thesis is to move beyond representationalism and its counter part--literary analysis--and to approach the agent through a phenomenological aperture with 'direct perception' being the central configuration of my analysis. Perception, according to Tim Ingold, is an active fine-tuning on the part of the agent. Thus, the constraint is anchored within 'the nature of perception' itself and not in an external reality as it has been formerly presupposed. In conjunction with this view, I will also explore how 'dualities of perception,' which are the education of attention in contemporary American society, habitualize agents to disengage the 'Other.' This style of being-in-the-world, I argue, compartmentalizes the 'self' and 'other,' which in turn, isolates the subject and object epistemologically. A duality of this kind runs deep. It is symptomatic of an existential conflict existing within post-modern subjects, and especially, those who are diagnosed with BPD who are then caught in the sociopolitical void of this phenomenological fragmentation.