Seeing Oneself Seeing Oneself: White Nihilism in Ethnography and Theory

This essay dwells on the intersection of three historical contemporaries: (1) American anthropology's ‘reflexive turn’; (2) the rise of Michel Foucault's motif of ‘the gaze’ within anthropology; and (3) the spread of the aesthetics of ‘white nihilism.’ The intersection materializes in the visual trope of self-reflexivity. White nihilism, according to one account, is a self-loathing kind of reflexive gaze, preemptive of criticism and desirous of self-possession. The paper argues that Foucault's idea of the panoptic gaze had a similar effect on anthropological self-reflexivity. The essay contrasts the American reception of Foucault with the case of Francophone anthropology – including ‘the Other Foucault’ – in which self-reflexivity involves self-loss or self-division.