Reflexivity: Definitions and discriminations

BARBARA A. BABCOCK

doi:10.1515/semi.1980.30.1-2.1

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Reflexivity: Definitions and discriminations

BARBARA A. BABCOCK
BARBARA A. BABCOCK

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Published/Copyright: September 29, 2009

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From the journal Volume 30 Issue 1-2

Reflexivity: Definitions and discriminations1BARBARA A. BABCOCKWhen we think ... we ourselves, as we are atthat moment appear as a sign.Charles Sanders PeirceSelf-regarding does not have a good press. It smacks of narcissism,solipsism, and subjectivism. Despite our concern with 'subjective mean-ings' and despite the centrality of reflexivity to the ethnographic enterprise,self-reference is something that, as anthropologists concerned with theobjective, the social, and the shared, we are likely to denounce or at leastnot talk about. 'It is evident that no one wants any part of a philosophywhich scandalizes the primitive fact of experience: that ours is a socialworld' (Natanson 1974b: 241). However, it is also evident that reflexivityis 'the inevitable accompaniment of any method which demands scrutinyof its own terms and procedures' (Natanson 1974b: 243). In this regard, anepistolary remark by Victor Turner concerning the 1976 symposium,Rituals and Myths of Self: Uses of and Occasions for Reflexivity, from whichthe present collection of essays emerged, is particularly interesting. Hesaid, and I quote: 'Narcissus is a profoundly social myth'. Let me try toelucidate this paradoxical statement.In Mind, Self, and Society, G. H. Mead argues that 'the self, as thatwhich can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and itarises in social experience ... it is impossible to conceive of a self arisingoutside of social experience' (1962: 140). The self so conceived is a semioticconstruct. An individual 'becomes a self in so far as he can take theattitude of others and act toward himself as others act' (1962: 171). Thiscapacity to differentiate and to establish a dialogue between a personal Tand a social 'me' is acquired through 'the conversation of gestures',primarily language. Language is the most important mirror in which theself is created and reflected. 'In order to know itself at all, to constituteitself as an object for itself, the self must be absent from itself, outsideitself (Ryan 1977: 697) — it must be a sign, as it is preeminently inSemiotica 30-1/2 (1980), 1-14. 0037-1998/80/0030-0001 $2.00© Mouton Publishers, The Hague

Published Online: 2009-09-29

Published in Print: 1980

Walter de Gruyter

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