Western ethnography’s ‘understanding’ conceals a repressive grasping impulse

Evidence

The vague feeling that the end of the wodd had been reached, in the geographical sense, removed whatever element of adventure and perhaps blind belief there had been in the discovery of the other. Since the beginning of this century the shrinking of unexplored regions on the map of the worId has made minds less infatuated with adventure, or less sensitive to its beauty, inc1ining more toward a concern for the truth of human beings. Understanding cultures then became more gratifying than discovering new lands. Western ethnography was structured on the basis of this need. But we shaH perhaps see that the verb to understand in the sense of “to grasp” [cornpTendn!] has a fearsome repressive meaning here. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 191

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology: comprendre (‘to grasp/understand’) is flagged as carrying a fearsome repressive meaning — anticipates the opacity/detour argument where the Other resists being pinned down.
• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s opacity/detour/ruse thread: understanding-as-grasping is precisely what opacity refuses. — connects to: Knowing another culture needs uncoercive contact and interpretive self-consciousness — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 328; Western epistemology’s root metaphors sexualize and dominate the known — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1352

Broader Connections

• Knowing another culture needs uncoercive contact and interpretive self-consciousness #complicates (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 328
• Western epistemology’s root metaphors sexualize and dominate the known #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1352