Reading Ethnography with a Political Theoretical Sensibility: Revisiting Timothy Pachirat’s Every Twelve Seconds

In this paper, we aim to illustrate the potential of revisiting published ethnographies with a political theoretical sensibility, subjecting them to the kind of analytic treatment and parsing of unstated normative premises that is characteristic of normative political theory. We argue that this can serve to reveal tensions in the interpretation ethnographers offer of their observations in the field, and unlock new areas of significance in their published material, leading to different conclusions than the ones they reach. We illustrate the generative potential of such an approach by revisiting in detail one of the sterling examples of ethnographic research in recent political science, Timothy Pachirat’s, Every Twelve Seconds. Pachirat is concerned with political interventions that use visibility as a catalyst for reform – what he describes as the “politics of sight.” We argue that the politics of sight rests on three premises, which are all mistaken: (1) that exposing our morally repugnant practices will make us see them, (2) that seeing such practices will stop us from acquiescing to them, and (3) that owning up to such practices is preferable to keeping them concealed. To build our case, we carefully reconstruct Pachirat’s argument and, by examining it in light of the ethnographic material he presents, suggest different ways of interpreting his findings. This leads us to a more pointed critique of the politics of sight and of the conditions under which it can be both desirable and successful.