“The Critique of Anthropological Reason”: Indubitable Truth and Cuban Divination

Abstract

This paper approaches the study of ‘apparently irrational beliefs' in anthropology. The author traces how the debate that emerged in the 1960s around Evans-Pritchard's work on Azande magic has developed in the context of the ontological turn. The author focuses on how Martin Holbraad is engaged in the debate. Holbraad argues that Evans-Pritchard was the forerunner of the ontological turn. His followers have overlooked his argument about the fundamental difference between ‘empirical causality' and ‘mystical causality'. Holbraad develops Evans-Pritchard's idea by drawing on his empirical study of Cuban practices of Ifa divination. He seeks to prove that the region of ‘mystical causality' is autonomous. This region has a ‘movable ontology', which makes it possible to have alternative criteria for the truth of predictors. In turn, these criteria allow the verdicts of the oracles to be regarded as indubitable truth. Holbraad suggests exploiting the unrepresentative truth of oracles and rewriting anthropology's epistemological foundations so that anthropologists can formulate truth statements but do not allow for the existence of universal criteria of judgment. However, this move fails because Holbraad admits a contradiction by justifying the autonomy of the two regions of causality. According to some of his assertions, the two regions are interdependent: each is a "condition” or "prerequisite” of the other, though logically, they are incompatible. The author proposes a solution that makes it possible to define an independent ground for both regions. He analyses how Holbraad and De Castro understand the concept of belief and suggests an alternative conceptualisation of belief, referring to interpretations of Wittgenstein's "On Certainty”.