Chapter 6 Academic (In)Discipline, Research (In)Sanity and the Conundrum of (Indigenous) Timescapes
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Abstract
This contribution focuses on resonant, or empathetic, strategies to bridge what in anthropology is called ontological incommensurability: Indigenous worlds often seem inaccessible to modern thought. Instead of trying to open Indigenous worlds to westerners, I rather intend to make western worlds accessible to Indigenous thought; and likewise, academic disciplines accessible to transdisciplinary thought. The connecting principle, I suggest, is time, temporality, and particularly synchronisation and entrainment. On a human level, lack of synchronisation is causally related to psychosis, and often results in delusional constructions or reality models that only allow for limited access to the environment. On a larger scale, similar restrictions may occur: if a society, researcher or a discipline is bound to a predetermined temporal regime, synchronisation with the rest of the world, the research object, or the scholarly environment becomes difficult if not impossible. This is true not only in anthropological investigation but possibly in all forms of scholarly and scientific reasoning. Thus, the most rebellious aim of this chapter is to show that a researcher has to understand the timescape of the researched in order to be able to tune in to it. Only then can synchronisation occur, and consequently eye-level communication and interaction with the entities becomes possible, both in research and in inter-community life.