Awkward alignments: Towards empathetic skepticism and agonistic confrontation in anthropological knowledge-making

Abstract

Anthropological knowledge is increasingly contested in our postliberal world, both from within and outside the discipline. Against this backdrop, this article addresses two interrelated questions: first, how should we methodologically address this challenge of contested anthropological knowledge-making and, second, what should be anthropology’s political approach in the (post-)truth era? We argue that anthropology best handles these conundrums through a research orientation we describe as aiming for “awkward alignments.” In awkward alignments, anthropologists engage their interlocutors with an ethico-onto-epistemological attitude of “empathetic skepticism,” attempting to understand how people think and act on the basis of their own experiences with similar situations while at the same time systematically questioning all knowledge claims. While suggesting that anthropologists should practice empathetic skepticism across the full spectrum of their research encounters, they should simultaneously not shy away, politically, from an “agonistic confrontation” when engaging “normative others” during and beyond their research.