Turbulences of the present

ANDRES DAPUEZ

Londres

Workshop; ESRC seminar series 'rethinking economies'; 2008

London School of Economics and Political Sciences

Even if the word “reciprocity” is currently used to mean almost anything (Graeber 2001: 217), what it certainly signals, in the context of most ethnographic accounts, is a timeless metaphysic of sociality expressed by a timely repayment (Bourdieu 1990). Kant describes reciprocity as an abstract relationship in a canceled time. In this paper I will address Kant’s relation to Malinowski’s teachings (Parry 1986) on reciprocity. I will argue that we should avoid reducing reciprocity to an “urban ideology” (Weiner 1992: 29) so that we may attend more carefully to the turbulence of temporalities each reciprocal act implies. In looking for a fluid mechanics for such turbulences, I will return to Mauss’ (1925) understanding of The Gift as a sociological approach to the norm orreciprocity or relation (Allen 2000: 92). In Mauss’ work the present-time does not offer a stable background for human actions. It is through recurrences, survivals and future possibilities that the gift given encompasses and normalizes current human actions. Following Mauss, I will conclude that instead of an “impossible gift” (Derrida 1991),reciprocal gift-giving produces an understanding of time that, by means of turbulent recurrences, implies an impossible simple-present-temporality or tense.