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A genealogy of reflexivity: the skilled lithic craftsman as “scientist”
more intimate and personal level, as the example below will show. Thus, in
an article in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Agneta Lagercranz
discusses such a situation with reference to the Swedish politician and medi
If I am not
the one I think I am, nothing else becomes valid”. Showing that this one important
insight changes everything else, life has to be rearranged or rebuilt according
to this new notion. This is in essence an illustration of the force of historicity
Doctare amply states ten years after the collapse resulting in a loss of her his
tory as it was understood then, causing a painful loss of ontological security:
“It has taken me all these years to build my identity according to a new life-history” (Svd
10 October 2002).
The need for the construction of a personal narrative that is congruent
with the historical point at which we stand, like Doctare, has been eloquently
discussed by Pierre Bourdieu (1996). The “biographical strategy” of the type
Doctare uses, he says, is the result of the need to formulate an orderly nar
rative of one´s life in a situation of insecurity. These narratives show a conse
quence and stability through understandable correlations often organized as
a necessary (teleological) development. The personal narrative has features
such as important events, logical connections, and where single events are
given the character of causation. As such, these personal narratives echo the
drive for ontological security in a shaky present then, individuals reuse the
past to create personal or collective narratives of similar structure and con
tent and also use the aesthetic qualities of material culture as representations
for this story.
because, as related to a cultural idea of the Enlightment (Delanty 1999), we
doubt is a question that – once seen – becomes problematic not only for
philosophers of science but, as I have discussed above, existentially worrying
for ordinary people (Giddens 1991:31) including archaeologists like myself.
This theme, existential problems and tradition causing radical doubt, I will slightly
expand on here.
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