OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

David Price has a new article featured on CounterPunch: “Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus’s Counterinsurgency Manual.” In it he describes the hastily assembled military manual, which engages in frequent plagiarism of anthropological works, and the defensive posture of Montgomery McFate in her purported effort to “anthropologize the military.” What is perhaps most striking about the piece is the fact the University of Chicago Press, long a respected heavyweight in the world of academic publishing, is the publisher of the US Army and Marine Corps’ Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Otherwise, the question of plagiarism is not scandalous in comparison with the real atrocities committed by the US military in places such as Iraq.

Speaking of the Manual, Price notes:

“Some view the Manual as containing plans for a new intellectually fueled ’smart bomb,’ and it is being sold to the public as a scholarly based strategic guide to victory in Iraq. In July, this contrivance was bolstered as the University of Chicago Press republished the Manual in a stylish, olive drab, faux-field ready edition, designed to slip into flack jackets or Urban Outfitter accessory bags. The Chicago edition includes the original forward by General David Petraeus and Lt. General James Amos, with a new forward by Lt. Col. John Nagl and introduction by Sarah Sewell, of Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Chicago’s republication of the Field Manual spawned a minor media orgy, and Lt. Col. Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, became the Manual’s poster boy, appearing on NPR, ABC News, NBC, and the pages of the NYT, Newsweek, and other publications, pitching the Manual as the philosophical expression of Petraeus’ intellectual strategy for victory in Iraq.”

Speaking of the role of anthropologists such as McFate, Price writes about his doubts that the work done by McFate and others like her can in any way be defended as ethical research:

“In a recent exchange with Dr. McFate, Col. John Agoglia and Lt. Col. Edward Villacres on the Diane Rehm Show, I pressed McFate for an explanation of how voluntary ethical informed consent was produced in environments dominated by weapons. In response, McFate assured me that was not a problem because ‘indigenous local people out in rural Afghanistan are smart, and they can draw a distinction between a lethal unit of the U.S. military and a non-lethal unit.’ It also remains unclear how Human Terrain Teams comply with basic ethical standards, mandating that their research does not result in harm coming to the individuals they study as a result of their work.”

Price also introduces us to another entry in the military’s lurid lexicon…”the kill chain”:

“Human Terrain research gathers data that help inform what Assistant Undersecretary of Defense John Wilcox recently described as the military’s ‘need to map Human Terrain across the Kill Chain’. The disclosure that anthropologists are producing knowledge for those directing the ‘kill chain’ raises serious questions about the state of anthropology.”

It raises “serious questions”? I would say that it reinforces serious condemnations–it does, however, answer certain questions about the state of anthropology.

What I also appreciated of Price’s treatment was his summary of critiques of this Manual:

“The few published critical examinations of the Manual focus on the text’s provenience and philosophical roots. In The Nation, Tom Hayden links the Manual to the philosophical roots of U.S. Indian Wars, reservation policies, and the Vietnam War’s Phoenix Program. In the Royal Anthropological Institute’s journal Anthropology Today, Roberto González criticizes McFate and Kilcullen’s contributions to the Manual, observing that the Manual ‘reads like a manual for indirect colonial rule.’ That a press as drenched in “reflexive” critiques of colonialism as Chicago would publish such a manual is an ironic testament to just how depoliticized postmodernism’s salon bound critiques have become; and a recent New York Times op-ed by Chicago anthropologist Richard Shweder indicates a stance of inaction from which the travesties of Human Terrain can be lightly critiqued while anthropologists are urged not to declare themselves as being ‘counter-counterinsurgency’.”

That the University of Chicago Press rushed this book to publication, claiming it was “peer reviewed” renders laughable the much vaunted posturing in academia about the quality-control of knowledge production:

“The role of University of Chicago Press in bringing the Manual to a broader audience is curious. That such shoddy scholarship passed so easily and so briskly through the well-guarded gates of this press raises questions concerning Chicago’s interest in rushing out this faux academic work. Ramming a book through the production process at an academic press in about half a year’s time is a blitzkrieg requiring a serious focus of will. There was more than a casual interest in getting this book to market — whether it was simply a shrewd recognition of market forces, or reflected political concerns or commitments. The Press is enjoying robust sales of a hot title (it was one of Amazon’s top 100 in September); but it did not consider the damage to the Press’ reputation that could follow its association with this deeply tarnished service manual for Empire….The significance of the University of Chicago Press’ republication of the Manual must be seen in the context of the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda campaign to generate support for an indefinite U.S. presence in Iraq. Here is an’independent’ academic press playing point guard in the production of pseudo-scholarly political propaganda.”

What is “fortunate” about this confluence of events is the extent to which they break open for public inspection the workings of academia, the works of academics, and the social and historical circumstances of the production and application of anthropological knowledge. It will be a great pity if all this critical energy is expended without going further, and tackling the inherent colonialism of anthropology itself. Opposing the war in Iraq matters little, other than a mere exercise in putting out one fire, if the other fires of the discipline are left burning: the newly strengthened anti-indigenous tendency of the discipline, its elitism, its pandering to middle-class white kids, and so forth.

[see "Me so horny, me love you long time": The Phallo-Fascism of a Vainglorious Anthropologist in the Academilitary]

…in a decaying hegemomic power, I might add.

I just finished reading through one example of what will surely become a more visible, more audible set of apologia in anthropology for the work of the likes of McFate. You can find an example of politely reactionary, subtly head-kicking anthropology at its best on Grant McCracken’s blog. (”Cracken,” “Fate,” “Kil-Cullen”? Some of these surnames sound as if they had been made up by a novelist to reflect the character of the protagonists.)

McCracken admonishes us, protesters and nay-sayers: “Some anthropologists may be too good for the world. But they have to understand that their refusal to participate has consequences and that these consequences have moral implications.”

Well, I certainly hope so. If the refusal to participate in imperialist projects has no moral implications, it would seem to diminish the need for the refusal to begin with. What McCracken wrongly assumes is that there can be only one set of moral implications, that we inherently support the jihadists by not supporting the cluster bombers and mercenaries of the American side. This is rehashed Bush doctrine: you are either with us, or against us.

McCracken asks: “But I wonder now if the object of our concern shouldn’t be something like ‘high horse’ anthropology, that inclination to address the world outside the ivory tower as if it were always and only an exercise in compromise and prostitution.” Interesting choice of words — compromise and prostitution — as they seem to immediately bring to mind the oversized glossy image of McFate that McCracken reproduces on his blog. The fact is that anthropology, whether applied in the service of imperialists or engaged in elitist withdrawal from public discourse, has been more than just compromised and prostituted to begin with: it never left the ranks of the elite. It has always been “high horse anthropology,” in all of its manifestations.

If anything, this is McCracken’s very useful contribution: bringing out yet another, deep structural basis of imperialist anthropology that continues unchanged, because changing it means dismantling a discipline that is already in a state of internal collapse.

I very much appreciate the sentiments of the prominently featured opponents of “weaponized anthropology,” such as David Price, Roberto Gonzalez, and Hugh Gusterson. At the end of the day, however, I will depart from them as well: their ultimate goal is to safeguard the integrity of a very questionable discipline. My goal is quite different.

To echo McCracken’s clever and catchy blog title, let me say:

THIS BLOG SITS AT THE
Intersection of Fury and Disgust.

Coincidentally, while reviewing a chapter in Vassos Argryou’s compelling book, Anthropology and the Will to Meaning (2002)–I will have much more to say in coming weeks and months about this unique text, the first anthropological work I have read in many years that has so excited me–I came across this rather innocuous paragraph on an argument between Max Weber and Leo Tolstoy that may be relevant to the “impermanence” theme:

“For Tolstoy, Weber points out, science makes death, and therefore life itself, meaningless. In earlier times, before the advent of modernity, life gave people everything it had to offer so that they lived their lives in full and were ready to go when the time came. With the rise of science, however, what the world has to offer always extends beyond the individual’s life span, so that finite human lives are now caught up in the infinite march of progress and inevitably remain unfulfilled. Under such circumstances, death has no meaning. It can no longer be considered as the natural closing of the life cycle, but appears instead as an abrupt and timely end” (Argyrou 2002: 84-85).

This is important, because along with the ascribed heroism of the autonomous subject at the centre of modernity, is one who usurps the role of the demystified deity. This is a simple idea really–while some of us claim that god is dead, it has not stopped some from claiming the role of god for themselves. Imperfect gods to be sure, requiring large doses of botox, multiple bypasses, transplants, vitamin supplements, and personal trainers. The idea here is that a man can now become a living god, his own emperor…and this is very powerfully, memorably summed up in whose words? Al Pacino, playing the role of the devil, in a film titled The Devil’s Advocate.

The words are memorable when he characterizes a go-get’em protege as being “250 pounds of self-serving greed on wheels,” whose “belly is too full” and whose “dick is too sore” and “eyes are bloodshot” from a life of gluttony and lust. More:

“You sharpen the human apetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals…grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god.”

“Who has got his eye on the planet, as the air thickens, the water sours? Even the bee’s honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity.”

“We got a billion Eddie Barzuns jogging into the future, getting ready to fist fuck god’s ex-planet and lick their fingers clean…”

For those who wish to hear the complete sound file, see the TheDevil mp3 in the DOCUMENTS sidebar on this page.

Such a brief foray into such large topics is hardly worth undertaking, but I must break the ice somehow. With reference to the “utopistics” of the Open Anthropology Project, I have been haunted for several years by what are actually common philosophical observations, common enough that you can pick them up in any pop cultural art form, the mass media, and so forth. My aim is to eventually link the two sides of these ways of thinking–impermanence and what I call re-animalization–into a whole.

First, impermanence. By impermanence I mean, first, the observation that we live temporally limited lifespans. Furthermore, whatever legacy we may leave as individuals these too are often very limited. Most persons who have children are probably forgotten within their own families by the third or fourth generation (this will be extended as more persons leave records of themselves on the Internet, assuming the longterm survival of humans, which is in doubt). As researchers, few of our written products will be consulted even twenty years after the first printing; by then the items will have gone out of print, and remaining printed copies become relatively sparse and may begin to decay. Any buildings we construct also decay and can be subject to both natural and human-made disasters. But let’s assume that none of these things are true. Even then, the planet exists in a solar system whose sun has already reached the midpoint of its own life. When the sun expands and eventually collapses, the planet will perish. Indeed, the planet could be vaporized, leaving only dust that then burns up when entering the atmospheres of other planets. No matter what, whatever little mark we make on this tiny speck of dust we call Earth, that will all vanish at some point. Artists who erase their works as they complete them have the right idea: no matter how beautiful, it cannot last and must go. This is what distinguishes history from eternity, and it is what limits our presence and our ultimate universal (in)significance. I say all of this without any sense of agony or despair.

What happens when you live, day by day, with such thoughts at the forefront of your mind? Many things can result in different mindsets, to be sure. For me the result is an increased sense of peace that comes from the brutal reduction of the significance of any current institution, life goal, social situation, and so on. Ultimately it does not matter, none of it, and the best one can do is to not burn up one’s life with needless and pointless complications, with being “busy,” with always trying to get “more,” and with trying to extend one’s life (or even blogging for that matter, which shows the reader what a contradictory life I live, divided against myself). If early hunters and gatherers might have lived to their mid-twenties…so what? We are not immortal: no matter the amount of medication, surgery, salad and jogging, we will all die. We have one actress currently appearing in television ads–for a pharmaceutical company, please note–who defiantly (and thus comically) asserts, “But I refuse…I absolutely refuse to die from breast cancer.” What does it matter how you die? Are we now to shop around for the preferred death?

Second, re-animalization. I am disturbed by the Judaeo-Christian bases of the concept of “dehumanization” which suggests that humans are at the apex of all life on the planet, and any violation of the human is a “step down” to the level of animals. Indeed, the radical existential disconnection between these so-called humans and the natural world which they inhabit and which created them, is especially prominent in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which paradoxically have three of the most thunderous histories of conflict and domination of other humans. The “dehumanization” concept has its obvious benefits for it also acts as a critique of turning people into mere objects, and the intent is to foster respect for humans. I cannot be against that. What I am against is the built in notion that we are better than animals, when we are animals. Re-animalization involves seeing oneself in all other living creatures, for we share common ancestry with all of them, and with some of them the lateral evolutionary distance between us is hardly that striking. I agree with a great deal that various animal rights philosophers, lawyers, and political activists have argued along these lines.

For me, one the ways forward in terms of utopistics will come from, not just significantly elaborating on the above sets of propositions (eliminating elements, adding, revising) and deepening my own knowledge of the thinking behind these, but in linking the two in a way that, I think, will result in a truly revolutionary synthesis.

Any comments, idea, observations? Please feel free to share.

Read more at:
http://gazingwestward.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/cobb-amanda-j-powerful-medicine-the-rhetoric-of-comanche-activist-ladonna-harris-sail-184-2006-63-85/

Read more at:
http://tillje.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/sshrc-policy-on-open-access/