Snowdon - 3/29/22 - I Am Not a Fan of Keith Basso's Argument (People Speaking Silently to Themselves)

 3/29/22

Sartre’s namesake assertion addressed by “People Speaking Silently to Themselves” and propagated by Keith Basso, reveals some disheartening realities about prevalent mindsets in modern scholarship. It seems that either of these two would be unable to fathom the quote which we used to frame our experiences in this class early on in the semester, in that we try not to impose our views on the things we wish to learn about, but rather, hope to gain knowledge of a world before that which knowledge speaks of (I paraphrase clumsily, for though the wisdom of it sits solidly in my head, the words escape me). Increasingly absent is the Socratic maxim which links true wisdom to understanding one’s lack of understanding. Alas! Many, Sartre chief among them with assertions such as this, are quite confident they do understand, actually. They are so confident, in fact, that they are more than up to the task of explaining the opposing view, explaining why it is incorrect, explaining why one (of lesser intelligence) may have held this incorrect view at a time (in the past), and ultimately explaining it away all together. How fortunate, so that we too might understand!


Perhaps I am being overly cruel to Keith Basso here. I should join Martin Ball in commending the research he has done, but clarify that this gripe is only with his, and Sartre’s attempt at explanation of the “why”. Furthermore, it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that I am longing for intellectuals of some other age, who would have been more open-minded to indigenous cultural practices. Of course, before the materialist philosophers of a more modern generation, anthropologists might have discounted such religious traditions based on any number of other bigoted reasons. All the same, a sound condemnation of Basso’s attempt to debunk Apache spirituality after going to such lengths to study it, and, unfortunately it avers the fact that his research was undoubtedly conducted with the wrong mindset, one of paternalistic, cold detachment, secured by a pre-existing bias away, instead of one ready to be receptive to what one is immersed in.

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