Reflexivity and the Doubles of Modern Man: The Discursive Construction of Anthropological Subject Positions

Abstract

Scientific knowledge is situated, it has been argued in recent decades, and in debates on scientific knowledge, whether natural, social or human scientific, reflexive writers¹ have focused their attention on the social and cultural context of knowledge production. The common argument is that knowledge is not just a passive reflection of an object ‘out there’ but also a projection of forces working from ‘within’ the author, the academy or Western culture at large. Knowledge is seen as shaped, or even as exclusively determined, by shared conventions for knowledge production, and ‘truth’ is understood to be more a matter of providing a culturally recognizable representation of reality than a direct correspondence with reality. This constructivist epistemology has prompted a large amount of reflexive research into the conditions of possibility of traditional scientific knowledge and extensive discussions of what scientific knowledge is and should be.