Some leftover notes from Taussig, for the scrapbook, extracted from:
Taussig, Michael. (1993). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.
•••••••
The end of “inquiry” and the mastery of the First World:
“To call these reflections on Western reflections an ‘inquiry’ suggests that the anthropological project can continue unabated with the same old desire for intellectual mastery of the object of study and the same old desire for the enigma of the ‘powerful explanation.’ But world history has decreed otherwise. mastery is mocked as First World and Other worlds now mirror, interlock, and rupture each other’s alterity to such a degree that all that is left is the excess — the self-consciousness as to the need for an Identity” (pp. 236-237)
“Mastery is no longer possible. The West as mirrored in the eyes and handiwork of its Others undermines the stability which mastery needs. What remains is unsettled and unsettling interpretation in constant movement with itself — what I have elsewhere called a Nervous System — because the interpreting self is itself grafted into the object of study” (p. 237)
“explanation” is a “defensive appropriation of the unfamiliar” (p. 237)
•••••••
The Second Contact Era:
“To become aware of the West in the eyes and handiwork of its Others, to wonder at the fascination with their fascination, is to abandon border logistics, and enter into the second contact era of the borderland where ‘us’ and ‘them’ lose their polarity and swim in and out of focus” (p. 246)
•••••••
Fragmented Knowledge and Representation:
“In this world the glimpse, like the sound-bite and the after-image, is where the action is, Dada-like impulsions of Otherness hurled at disconcerted beings splayed open to the future” (p. 249)
True scientific knowledge, on the contrary, demands abandonment to the very life of the object
– G.W.F. Hegel, Preface, The Phenomenology of Mind
Discourse of all kind is heavily embedded with speech that has previously occurred, typically in the form of the first person direct quotation.
– Joel Sherzer, quoted in Michael Taussig (1993, p. 109), quoted here.
Another installment of “Monday Morning Madness,” a double feature in fact, that begins with a song/performance that I very much enjoyed the first time I witnessed it on Dimanche Gras in 1992 in Trinidad, during the Calypso Monarch finals in Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain. I was pretty sure that I was one of very few people who thought the performance by Singing Sonia was enjoyable and distinctive, so I am thankful that a Trinidadian “youtuber” seems to have picked this for uploading, among the dozens and even hundreds of candidates from years gone by.
And, as seen below, I think a lot is going on in Sonia’s performance, teaching anthropology and social theory at every step.
Sonia in the Shadow of the Mighty Finds Originality
The ever charmingSinging Sonia performs a piece called, “Professional Advice” — the advice coming from The Mighty Shadow, who is the author of the song, and this is just the start of the tension between learning and creation, between originality and mimesis. First let me say the performance was, as far as I can tell, unprecedented, and nothing similar has been done since. The melody has a Ska beat, with some of the big brass of modern calypso, featuring dramatic bursts that might remind one of theme music for a James Bond film, interspersed with a staccato rhythm and an innocent looking bird dance to suit. During calypso monarch finals, and given the finite number of standard calypso melodies (and only one for ex tempo performances — you can get a sample of that here), yes, definitely not part of the crowd. Also “original” was the fact that she was impersonating another calypsonian, and doing it very well, adopting his voice, his mannerisms, his dance. Singing Sonia did not win the crown, by the way, so perhaps the judges frowned on innovation, even when it bore the imprimatur of a figure as great as The Mighty Shadow, who put in an appearance in the performance itself, as seen in the first video below.
The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power. In an older language, this is “sympathetic magic,” and I believe it as necessary to the very process of knowing as it is to the construction and subsequent naturalization of identities.
– Michael Taussig (1993, pp. xiii-xiv)
First, about the singing. Sonia sings with her hands, so one should look at them as she sings — they punctuate. Note also the very smooth voices of her backup singers, who play in the role of the girls in the circle … I have yet to explain that one. Sonia sings in two voices, mirrored by her split costume. On her right, she sings mimicking Shadow, the darker side of her (without suggesting any moral quality here). On her left, she sings in her own voice, the lighter side, and she seems to have chosen a dress that resembles a wedding gown.
The chanter chanting creates and occupies a strange position, inside and outside. …This is not to be confused with liminality because it is both positions at one and the same time. – Michael Taussig (1993, p. 111)
Sonia has become the shadow of The Shadow, a corporeal photograph, and in that there is magic, for as Taussig tells us, among the Cuna of Panama their notion of “purpa” (spiritual doubles) includes the shadow and the photograph (1993, p. 101).
Sonia even borrows Shadow’s “ay-yay-yay” line, singing it in his heavy voice, and then alternating with her own broad voice. She claims to be learning, to be taking the professional advice, and boasts of her originality, and does this by dividing herself, and always seeking out her master. The mimetic faculty, as Taussig (1993, p. xviii) argues, involves the compulsion to become the Other — Sonia is here performing an attempt at shamanic / anthropological crossing into the Other, into the Shadow. By imitating Shadow, she acquires Shadow.
the chanter chants [herself] into the scene. [She] exists not just as a subject but also as a mimeticised Other. In this way, as both chanter and person chanted about, as demonstrator and demonstrated, [she] creates the bridge between original and copy that brings a new force, the third force of magical power, to intervene in the human world.
– Michael Taussig (1993, p. 106)
Is Sonia’s performance a statement on the classic education pattern of the colonial, West Indian, “Afro-Saxon”? Or is it something much more fundamental?
Now the strange thing about this silly if not desperate place between the real and the really made-up is that it appears to be where most of us spend most of our time as epistemically correct, socially created, and occasionally creative beings. We dissimulate. We act and have to act as if mischief were not afoot in the kingdom of the real and that all around the ground lay firm. – Michael Taussig (1993, p. xvii)
Second, I would ask the viewer to pay attention to Sonia’s dance. Her dance visually mimics the staccato of the music, but also the famous up-and-down bounce of her mentor, The Mighty Shadow, who in a culture of elaborate “wining” restricted his movements to a kind of skip-rope style, going against the grain. She takes that on for this song, and adds a dance routine of her own, performed when she is not singing. I am calling it a bird dance since it seems to mimic some of the movements of a bird. She dances around the stage like a lone, lost, little birdie, her little wings attempting to fly, and look at how she steps out in the darkness of the stage looking for orientation, scouting for her parent. The dance also conveys innocence, and Sonia never ceases to smile. There is no point in seeking and being open to advice if you do not have some “innocence.”
One of the key elements of the song is the repetition of “girl, show me your motion!” People who went to school in the Caribbean would immediately recognize where that line comes from. It is about learning and performing in the school yard, encouraged by peer spectator-participants, in a ring game. What happens is that little school girls, as shown in the second of today’s videos, form a circle, with one girl in the centre. Those forming the circle sing: “There’s a brown girl in the ring, tra la la la, and she looks like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum. Girl show me your motion!” Then the girl in the centre is supposed to make some physical movement, a motion.
Protean Sonia appears split into two, one side her master, the other side her emergent self. In her dance at the end, as the crowd erupts in applause as Shadow appears on stage, she dances over to meet him. They then part — he takes the centre of the ring, conveniently provided by the logo of Carib beer. She dances around the perimeter. From the girl in the ring she has now become a moon orbiting Shadow, a satellite that is half illuminated by him, copier revolving around copied. The bird dance has now turned into a playful enactment of centre and periphery. The divided self, resulting from a child that has undergone mentoring, is one that exists in a state of tension between originality and mimicry. The blurred dividing line between learning and mimicry places a question mark over authenticity, originality, and even sovereignty. The self becomes impossible without the other, by viewing oneself in the eyes of the other. And their relationship spans the spectrum as tutoring begins to resemble fathering which then mutates into a subtle courtship, and finally a partnership (the collaboration between the two artists). And courtship is not far fetched here, as we shall see below.
Shadow and Sonia do not teach social theory, they chart it out in dance, and practice it through sung metaphor. And as Taussig argues, they show us one critical motion: that any representational act cannot possibly be achieved without the intervention of the mimetic faculty. It also puts the currently dominant, orthodox notions of “copying” in a different light, revealing them as pompous misunderstandings that arise from aspiring monopolists who can never own that which comes distributed to begin with.
Sonia, show me your motion
The quality is not the best, yours ears will hopefully filter out the static after some time, and you may need to increase the volume.
Pulling you this way and that, mimesis plays this trick of dancing between the very same and the very different. An impossible but necessary, indeed and everyday affair, mimesis registers both sameness and difference, of being like, and of being Other. Creating stability from this instability is no small task, yet all identity formation is engaged in this habitually bracing activity in which the issue is not so much staying the same, but maintaining sameness through alterity.
– Michael Taussig (1993, p. 129)
Brown Girl in the Ring
Alan Lomax, J.D. Elder and Bess Lomax Hawe’s There’s a Brown Girl in the Ring, featuring an anthology of Eastern Caribbean song games, suggest that ring games are children’s precursor to adult courtship. Indeed, the second video, a Jamaican one, shows the “grown up girls,” doing altogether different motions, and you can see examples of the Butterfly Dance in that video. Lomax, Elder & Hawe explained that in the ring game the players form a ring by holding hands, then one girl goes into the middle of the ring and dances around to the song, exactly like we see Sonia do at the end of her video. At some point, the girl in the centre is then told “show me your motion”, and she does her favourite dance moves as explained above. The authors here note that she may be asked “show me your partner”, in which case she picks a friend to join her in the circle. In Sonia’s case above, she picked Shadow.
There has been some discussion about the use of the phrase “brown girl.” Some think this is an internalization of the colour-coded hierarchy inherited from colonialism. Others argue, that in such a festive, positive, joyful setting, “brown girl” enhances self-esteem. In fact, it helps to form solidarity as well, by exclusion — no mention of “white girl.”
Given the particularities of the way Jamaican creole English is pronounced, the word education often sounds like head-decay-shun. I once heard a Guyanese professor claim that this pronunciation, in this case, was more than just coincidental: it was a critical rejection of the formal school system by some Rastafarians in Jamaica, given what they saw as the continuing mental colonization being perpetrated and perpetuated in those schools. Volumes, novels, and decades of discussions and debates have been devoted to the subject of Caribbean education, and this is not the place, nor am I the one to do the reprise of all the material, much of it critical with famous examples including learning the history of Oliver Cromwell and Sir Walter Raleigh rather than Sam Sharpe or Paul Bogle, or reading about farms in temperate climates, or poems about nightingales, and so forth. Yet, and yet, there has been widespread recognition in the Anglophone Caribbean that education is the path to “success,” especially among working class urban African descendants, with notable success stories of achievement through education being figures such as Eric Williams. Indeed, it seems that the Anglophone Caribbean has more Nobel laureates per capita than anywhere else in the world.
But, I am not convinced, not entirely anyway.
I recently viewed some documentaries about Canadians overseas teaching poor children and orphans in India how to read, and these teachers were really devoting themselves, body and soul, spending their life savings, changing their lifestyle, and so forth. Seeing the little children reading big pink and blue letters accompanying pictures in their books, their little fingers dragged across each letter as they read each word … prompted me to think some gloomy thoughts.
I thought of people I have known, living in rural areas, whether in Canada, Trinidad, or Central America, who almost seemed to boast that they had no education at all, and lived full and happy lives and had everything they needed and wanted. I then think of these urban children in India, with nothing, no land, no food that they grow for themselves, the exact opposite of self-sufficiency, and the perfect picture of dependency.
Education, centred in cities, in urban civilizations, post-hunting and gathering, post-nomadic, accompanying the rise of inequality and tyranny. If we want to talk about the social context of education, we have to keep in mind the conditions under which education became education, and when it became mandatory. Those children in India need literacy if they are to have any chance of succeeding, of surviving, in modern India — and while that is almost certainly true, is it an endorsement of literacy as good in itself?
Few would question the value of literacy, not even the Taliban (who rejected literacy for females only), people of the book. Literacy is a tool of the dispossessed and displaced, those urban refugees who are born as “citizens” without any stake, without any basis in their nation, divorced and cut off from any independent access to resources of their own. Citizenship comes without land, and with lots of dependency on institutional structures, on wages, on rented apartments, and so forth.
What strikes me as being endlessly ironic is that “development workers” will then take the tools of the refugees, the dispossessed, the urban landless, into rural areas, to peasants and claim that literacy is for their good. To me this is the equivalent of someone who lives in a tent in a refugee camp telling someone with a mansion that if they want to improve their lives they ought to try on a tent for size. It’s always amazing how “we” can make the “fruits” of dispossession and displacement look like “progress.”
An interesting discussion has been taking place on Savage Minds titled, “Philosophers discover lost tribe in jungles of free will” by Chris Kelty. The discussion and debate that ensues there centres on the development of what some call “experimental philosophy” (with a digest available here). This movement, shortened to X-Phi, involves using quantitative research, especially opinion polling, to address certain questions in philosophy, with some additional interest in cognitive science and evolutionary biology as well. This new movement seems to have gained ground since 2000, and Kwame Anthony Appiah dubs it the “new new philosophy” in an article in The New York Times Magazine (Dec. 9, 2007). I was interested to learn that there was a philosophy calling itself “experimental,” since I thought of all philosophy as “experimental” in broad terms (with its famous thought experiments). X-Phi might do better by relabeling itself grounded philosophy, or G-Phi.
X-PHI CONTROVERSY
X-Phi seems to be generating a tremendous amount of controversy among philosophers, and exciting some anthropologists about the possibility that experimental philosophers might become interested in ethnography. I am not so excited, but I do see some positive developments taking shape. Appiah characterizes the movements as follows:
a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments. The newborn movement (”x-phi” to its younger practitioners) has come trailing blogs of glory, not to mention Web sites, special journal issues and panels at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association. At the University of California at San Diego and the University of Arizona, students and faculty members have set up what they call Experimental Philosophy Laboratories, while Indiana University now specializes with its Experimental Epistemology Laboratory. Neurology has been enlisted, too. More and more, you hear about philosophy grad students who are teaching themselves how to read f.M.R.I. brain scans in order to try to figure out what’s going on when people contemplate moral quandaries.
ARMCHAIRS IN IVORY TOWERS VS. RUGGED ETHNOGRAPHERS
An article in Slate essentially comes out and calls traditional philosophers “wankers”, by way of Marx and Engels:
Marx and Engels once remarked that “philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.”
Kelty at Savage Minds appears to agree with the X-Philes that philosophy has traditionally been conducted in an armchair within the Ivory Tower. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Savage Minds has a sense of mission, and I don’t mean this sarcastically, I mean I honestly did not know they had anything like an unwritten or written “mission statement”. Kelty is enthused by X-Phi and states in this regard:
I think the “x-phi” attitude is part of the same zeitgeist that formed Savage Minds—the possibility of a new form of scholarly organization and interaction, of which blogs are an emblematic tool, that subverts and gets around the conservative edifice of the professionally organized disciplines, without being forced to drop out of academia.
That same spirit of course is part of the explicit purpose of Open Anthropology. I am cheered by Kelty’s statement, but as I mentioned, nowhere before did I see such a clear statement of purpose behind Savage Minds, which often struck me as “anthropologists blogging about stuff and such” rather than representing a coherent vision of why they are doing what they are doing, and if they are doing this collectively (apart from the act of blogging as such).
On the other hand, Kelty’s own essay appears to reaffirm and defend the self-conscious angst of professionally organized discplinary anthropology, namely by repeating the theme that we are being ignored, we have a contribution to make, and so forth — and certainly some of that is true. What should be embraced is the fact that in all the social sciences there are moves to open out onto one another, and anthropologists as determined borrowers of other discipline’s theories and theorists know about this from first-hand experience.
Kelty’s main complaint against the X-Philes is that they have not discovered ethnography, and have instead opted for a positivist, scientific approach. I take issue with those criticisms, and with the one-sidedly positive portrayal of ethnography.
EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY? THEORETICAL ANTHROPOLOGY?
First, there is the assertion by Kelty that anthropology is an “empirical philosophy.” I might be prepared to agree, if the idea were developed further. For now, it seems that we often have a serious problem in formulating research questions, in ways that might be remedied by more study of philosophy. By the same token, traditional philosophy could also call itself “theoretical anthropology”, so I am not sure that anything is gained from these labels, other than easy claims to parts of each other’s territory. Kelty argues that professional philosophers would never attempt this empirical approach because, “it requires all kind of commitments to the real world that are verboten in most mainstream philosophy departments.” Here is the idea of the ivory tower and the armchair, and I do not think it is a fair one at all.
IT’S THEM, OVER THERE, THEY ARE THE ONES WHO ARE DISENGAGED
First, philosophers have had many “real world” commitments, assuming that we can define what that means in a way that satisfies even a handful of people (and I hope Kelty understands that teaching should be considered a real world commitment if ever there was one). There have probably been more, and more famous, philosophers who have actively taken part in all sorts of social and political movements, than anthropologists. (In the Latin American case, are there anthropologists who led guerrilla movements, such as the philosophers subcomandante Marcos in Mexico or Abimael Guzman who, out of the Philosophy Department at Ayacucho, went on to found the Shining Path army?)
Secondly, the notion that life within the university is not a “real world commitment” is not a valid or valuable argument to make (I have critcized that idea here).
In line with the latter, the third point to make is this: is the idea here that “old school” philosophers live in some vacuum? How is that even possible? It will be a pretty interesting spin on social and cultural theory that suggests that these individuals have no life experience, have never read a newspaper, have no contact with other human beings, and so on. It’s not credible. More problematic is the kind of popular anti-intellectualism that Kelty may be unwittingly endorsing. And even more problematic is the romantic view of anthropology that remains implicit: as if we, on the other hand, have no armchair lives, we are all active and committed, out there in the trenches — also not credible.
THE PROBLEM OF “SCIENCE”
Secondly, Kelty has a problem with X-Phi’s leaning towards “science,” a problem I do not share for reasons that I will discuss below:
what they are emeshing themselves in is something anthropology also knows all too well—the Game of Authority. X-Phi is an attempt to make philosophy convincing not only to philosophers themselves, but to cognitive scientists, neuro-scientists and evolutionary biologists—in short, to the people and pundits closest to the global mic these days, in so far as anyone listens to science of any kind.
The risk here is the tilt towards a sweeping rejection of science as such. When faced with creationists in our classrooms … I wonder what we will turn to? I do not say this as someone who has a scientific axe to grind — any reader of this blog will see my acute preference for fiction and poetry. What I don’t like is anything that sounds like methodological bigotry, that is, entrenching a prejudice against anything quantitative because that is positivist. Numbers do not make an approach a positivist one. A qualitative ethnographic approach can be, and for most of its history has been, one informed by positivist thinking. Kelty admits as much, and makes a passing reference to the critique of ethnography, but these are not concerns that are central to his essay.
In addition, it remains to be proven that the X-Philes would have much to gain from adopting an ethnographic approach. When wishing to contest what is common sense, does immersion within a micro-community offer a satisfactory answer? At best, if common, the sense could be dismissed as being common only to those of the small community. In other words, surveys have their merit, and should not be rejected out of hand. Anthropology should also be seen as “bigger” than ethnography, and actively reconceive of itself in these terms so that particular methods are not fetishized (in a way that I worry Kelty is doing). That way we can avoid problems such as speaking of an ethnography of the world-system which is, strictly speaking, so impossible that one wonders why such notions are even spoken. Likewise, when criticizing published ethnographies reviewers should avoid asking about where is the material on X, Y, and Z case studies from other parts of the world — that is not what ethnography does.
Where I do stand with Kelty is in his obvious excitement with ferment, with collaboration, with questioning, and with the rapprochement between disciplines. This will continue to the point that, probably in our lifetimes, we will have to make some hard but necessary decisions about de-disciplining the social sciences. To do that will require a more open meeting ground between the sciences and the humanities, not one over the other. In the meantime, I am all for philosophers covering the ground for themselves, asking their own questions, doing their own trials, and even reinventing the wheel if it serves the purpose of better understanding for themselves how wheels work. They can do this without being badgered by us.
In the meantime, hats off to Kelty for doing such a great job at condensing key ideas of the X-Phi debates and in stimulating such interesting discussion on his post.
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Things can change quickly in blog land. Since I finished this post, I saw comments by Kelty in response to commentators that suggest a somewhat softer view of science, surveys, statistics, etc., than may be apparent from the post above. His main post itself remains as it was originally.
•••••••
(A side note here — one of the interesting byproducts of this X-Phi research is the realization that, as Appiah summarizes it, “foreseen side effects of our actions are taken to be intended when we conceive them as costs incurred for a benefit.” Agreeing with writers such as Ward Churchill, I have been arguing that the notion that the U.S. does not “intentionally” kill civilians in its bombings of civilian areas, and thus is “not terrorism” is not a convincing argument. U.S. military planners know that the bombings will kill civilians, they pre-label the fatalities as “collateral damage” and prepare press briefings in advance condemning the enemy for using “human shields” — that the enemy wants to defend its neighbourhoods is dismissed — and this amounts to a logic of calculated killing, of knowing murder, and thus terrorism. One might quibble about whether the primary or secondary target is civilian.)
This is a fragment of a thought, admittedly jaded, but I would not say it is fictitious. The ideas listed below are thoughts that have been thought, words that have been uttered, statements expressed by students, by colleagues, in bits and pieces in passing in a wide assortment of published pieces in anthropology. These are two ways of conceiving and doing anthropology, leading to an unremarkable synthesis that seems to capture the worst of both worlds. It seems that no matter what has been done with anthropology, one cannot “win.”
SELF: I STUDY MY OWN CULTURE, and therefore some say that approach is, or shows,
unable to recognize and criticize the taken-for-granted aspects of one’s own culture
not distinctively anthropological, more like sociology
trying to exoticize the familiar, does not escape the preeminent prejudices of a colonial discipline
OTHER: I STUDY OTHER CULTURES, and therefore some say that approach is, or shows,
alienation
a search for the exotic, the erotic
voyeurism
primitivism, romanticism
can never know the other
STUDYING SELF AND OTHER — THE SYNTHESIS:
writing one’s self into the other, ventriloquizing the other — domination, fiction (as in “untruth”)
remaking one’s self in the image of the other — alienation, fiction (as in “untruth”)
cultures don’t translate into one another, or else they would not be different
self remains the subject, the author, while the other remains the object
still idiographic, still particularistic
Is this the double bind that will afflict any “science” that claims to study “difference”? Is the problem one of conceiving one’s research in terms of self and other, rather than in terms of specific social and political problems? Is the problem above the child of the culture concept and its flaws?
If anyone has an answer, I would love to hear from you. In the meantime, speaking of exotic and erotic, it brought to mind a poem by Suheir Hammad:
don’t wanna be your exotic
some delicate fragile colorful bird
imprisoned caged
in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings
don’t wanna be your exotic
women everywhere are just like me
some taller darker nicer than me
but like me but just the same
women everywhere carry my nose on their faces
my name on their spirits
don’t wanna
don’t seduce yourself with
my otherness my hair
wasn’t put on top of my head to entice
you into some mysterious black voodoo
the beat of my lashes against each other
ain’t some dark desert beat
it’s just a blink
get over it
don’t wanna be your exotic
your lovin of my beauty ain’t more than
funky fornication plain pink perversion
in fact nasty necrophilia
cause my beauty is dead to you
I am dead to you
not your
harem girl geisha doll banana picker
pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker
town whore belly dancer private dancer
la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl
your immaculate vessel emasculating princess
don’t wanna be
your erotic
not your exotic
One of the striking features of MIT’s Doing Anthropology video (see the video sidebar), an attempt to market and pitch anthropology, is that it actually looks and sounds an awful lot like sociology, except for one thing: its insistence on only one particular methodology, one with the very peculiar name of “fieldwork.” Otherwise, the content of the research projects is far ranging, far reaching, and not especially distinctive (marine biology, immigrants, cheese making), and without much to hold them together that would be apparent in any way to a novice, apart from the idea that we talk to people in person. And if it tries too hard to be distinctive, it can end up looking like “Cannibal Tours” with its voyeuristic “fieldworkers” (as in the photograph). The language of the MIT video sometimes sounds borrowed from other disciplines, for example, when speaking of “authoritative knowledge,” or otherwise lacks a definite shape beyond generalizing statements that anthropology allows you to look beneath the surface and to make connections, to ask questions, to see the links between social and cultural life (which surely is neither the monopoly of anthropology, nor is it something that it “allows” as such). This is not to criticize the video. I think it is good, and when examined with some distance it appears as an accurate and quick rendition of what is the “shape” of contemporary anthropology, what it says about itself to attract new recruits perhaps.
One positive feature, from my perspective, is that it shows the great degree to which anthropology has become open to other disciplines, and opens itself out onto them, in a manner that becomes routine and taken for granted. I am tempted to believe that with a few shifts in naming practices and organizational design, anthropology can easily bleed into all other disciplines and vice versa, and may even be a pioneer in de-disciplining itself. (There are other forms of opening anthropology, and I am not yet ready to get into that.)
And why is that openness “good”? One reason is that it shows a declining need to continue to uphold irrelevant traditions that do not make any sense. Anthropology arose out of a nineteenth century European structuring of knowledge in the social sciences that saw the radical separation of the social, economic, political, cultural, and historical. Upholding this as if it were sacred, besides being too obedient for my tastes, is an abdication of the social responsibility of the full time thinker (because one hopes that they are thinkers and not just researchers). Anthropology is itself an arbitrary invention, rendered conventional, and we should never forget that, especially when we lecture others about the constructedness of their communities and traditions. We should be asking some hard questions about ourselves, and not just others.
What is distinctive about anthropology today is precisely that it is not distinctive. What is special about anthropology is not that it has any particular content or meaning, but rather that it does not. And in that there should be great freedom, freedom to undertake virtually any kind of study that is imaginable. That is, unless, one wants to stop and insist on speaking in terms of “an anthropological contribution,” or “the anthropological perspective,” in the defensive and uncertain manner that this is often done, as if one has to become one’s professional identity, as if we cannot do, say, or think anything unless it redounds to the credit of “anthropology.”
Where some sense of “anthropological” distinction is manufactured usually is in the notion of “fieldwork.” Unfortunately, for all of our famous questioning of the taken-for-granted, and our careful scrutiny of naming practices and the intersection of knowledge and power arising in labeling, we seem to be little prepared to question our own labels and names when it comes to our sacred cow: fieldwork. We can even talk about how “field sites” are “constructed” as units of analysis, but not about how we construct peoples, communities, and cultures as “fields” to begin with.
The start of the video above features an anthropologist beginning with discussion of “the field” noting that the term came from the natural sciences, and was meant to signal a difference from lab work. He is right in noting these distinctions, and that really is the basis for marking the difference between experimental and naturalistic science. We tell students that traditions are constantly changing, the world is in flux, everything is on the move … everything and everyone except us? So why hang on to this peculiar way of labeling people and their lives? Are we still trying to show off that we too can be scientific? Do we still need to objectify and dehumanize the people we research, turning them into static and inanimate “fields,” lest anyone accuse us of being too subjective, too partial, too human?
(And if we choose to persevere in maintaining certain traditions, and to hold them beyond the pale of questioning, then why we do we continue to deny “stillness” to others as if it were beyond their human capabilities? Can there even be movement without stillness as its backdrop? This will take us off track for now, but it is worth mentioning that we still live in a world where — in spite of all the “immigration studies” — the vast majority of people remain where they were born [only 3% of all humans live in a country other than the one in which they were born].)
The hangup here is not just one of natural science, but of colonialism as well, and it’s not surprising to see that pair together again. Decolonizing knowledge ought to involve a reconceptualization of where others stand, and to show some basic respect. When those we write about can now read what we write with much greater ease, I wonder how many are surprised to learn that their anthropologist “friend” refers to them and their homes in cold and dry terms as a “field.” Moreover, as came out during an exchange in my story about Daniela Rubin, there is something definitely proprietary, turf-like, and territorial about the notion of “the field” like something that is to be owned and cultivated by the anthropologist.
“Field” also echoes the notion of terra nullius, of an empty land ready to be appropriated by those arriving from outside. That the Human Terrain System should implicitly invoke the field image, by referring to social and cultural life in terms of territory, is not surprising, especially as the program involves colonialist fieldwork on behalf of an invading and occupying power, the United States.
I hope that eventually we will grow out of these scientistic and colonialist hangovers and hangups.
I came across two blogs today that have left me very excited, and deeply impressed with the depth and wealth of material that is being produced on blogs these days. One I discovered through comments posted by Erik Davis, his blog being:
What a title. Blog titles are almost always more fascinating than book titles, or personal names. Erik Davis is in an interesting position: he is both an assistant professor in Religious Studies at Macalester College and a doctoral student in the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. So you know that this man is gravely busy — and he produces an excellent blog that he subtitles, very simply, “about buddhism, cambodia, and the cultural power of death.”
Another blog, that I found because someone presumably clicked a link to it on my blog (and yet I had no such link before now), left me speechless. The title of the blog is:
I have already told Maureen Flynn-Burhoe, the author of the blog, that I am very thankful for the great work she is sharing online. Maureen subtitles her blog in this way: “Virtual synapses: an exploration of Web 2.0 innovations to enhance connectivity of enriched multimedia content with a sociological cosmopolitical imagination and an ethical turn.” That is modesty — there is some very dense and far ranging content that should excite philosophers, museumologists, indigenous studies researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, and various orders of Web 2.0 maniacs.
I want to suggest four crucial ingredients of a more public social science that are not always stressed in such discussions.
1. Engagement with public constituencies must move beyond a dissemination model. It is not enough to say that first scientists will do whatever “pure” research moves them and then, eventually, there will be a process of dissemination, application, and implementation. Writing more clearly is good, but not the whole answer. For one thing, we should be cautious about assuming that social scientists should always write directly for broad publics; this may be more the task of some than others, and raising the standards for how journalists draw on social science may be equally important. As the crises of libraries and university presses reminds us, we have also failed to ask enough questions about what publications deserve public subsidies and which should proceed on market bases. In the process, we have made it hard for both ourselves and especially our nonspecialist readers to identify what is really worthwhile. We also need to bring non-scientific constituencies for scientific knowledge into the conversation earlier. Those who potentially use the results of social science in practical action, and those who mediate between scientists and broader publics, should be engaged as social science agendas are developed. Neither broader dissemination nor better “translation” of social science will be adequate without a range of relationships to other constituencies that build an interest in and readiness to use the products of research.
2. Public social science does not equal applied social science. More “applied” research may be helpful, but the opposition of applied to pure is itself part of the problem. It distracts attention from the fundamental issues of quality and originality and misguides as to how both usefulness and scientific advances are achieved. Sometimes work undertaken mainly out of intellectual curiosity or to solve a theoretical problem may prove practically useful. At least as often, research taking up a practical problem or public issue tests the adequacy of scientific knowledge, challenges commonplace generalizations, and pushes forward the creation of new, fundamental knowledge. Moreover, work engaging important public issues-democracy and the media, a ids and other infectious diseases, immigration and ethnicity- is not necessarily short-term or limited to informing immediate policy decisions. While putting social science to work in “real time” practice is vital, it is also crucial to recognize that none of these issues will go away soon. We won’t learn how to deal with them better in coming decades if we don’t commit ourselves now to both long-term pursuit of deeper knowledge and also systematic efforts to assess and learn from the practical interventions made in the meantime.
3. Problem choice is fundamental. What scientists work on and how they formulate their questions shape the likelihood that they will make significant public-or scientific-contributions. Of course there are and must be research projects driven by intellectual curiosity and by attempts to solve theoretical problems-and these may produce useful, even necessary knowledge for a range of public projects. But it is also true that many academic projects are driven by neither deep intellectual curiosity nor pressing public agendas, but simply by the internal arguments of academic subfields or theoretically aimless attempts at cumulative knowledge that mostly accumulate lines on CVs. To justify these by an ideology of pure science is disingenuous. To let these displace the attention of researchers from major public issues is to act with contempt towards the public that pays the bills. Making the sorts of social science we already produce more accessible is not sufficient; we have to produce better social science. This means more work addressing public issues-and being tested and pushed forward by how well we handle them-and high standards for the originality and importance of projects not tied directly to public issues.
4. A more public social science needs to ask serious questions about the idea of “public” itself. What is “the public?” How are its needs or wants or interests known? How are they formed, and can the processes by which they are formed be improved, made more democratic, more rational, or more creative? Are there in fact a multitude of publics? How do they relate to each other and what does this plurality mean for ideas of the public good? How is public decision-making saved from “tyranny of the majority?” When are markets the best way to achieve broad public access, and when are governmental or philanthropic alternatives most helpful? Can ideas of the public be reclaimed from trivialization by those who see all social issues in terms of an aggregation of private interests? What are the social conditions of a vital, effective public sphere and thus of an important role for social science in informing public culture, debate, and decision-making? Indeed, science itself must be public- findings published and debated, theories criticized. This is how it corrects and improves itself. And social science informs public debate, not only the making of policies behind closed doors. Good science raises the quality of debate, clarifying its factual bases and theoretical terms; it doesn’t just support one side or another.
To imagine how we might move toward a globally connected, public social science-and, indeed, why it is critical to do so-we must know something about the context of our work as well as the character of the intellectual issues that require our attention.
The Context of Our Work as Scientists
There are five factors concerning the context of the work of the social scientist today.
First, the world is a different place now than it was immediately following World War II. Globalization is a large part of this difference, engendering both interconnection and fragmentation.
Second, our education and research systems for the training of research professionals and the development of their careers are better suited to the needs of past decades than to the needs we envision in the future.
This has, third, created a global need for new kinds of research professionals who are capable of understanding local situations in relationship to global, transnational, and international trends and impacts. The impacts and resonances of globalization are two-way streets.
Fourth, the research community today includes people both inside and outside the traditional academy. Similarly, the researchers and analysts we train will be employed in both the public and private sectors. Regardless of their affiliation, it is important that their skills be retained in service of society.
And fifth, changes in the environment in which we work encourage working in partnership and in collaboration with multiple actors from the initial stages of a project to ensure that the project meets a specific need.
First Postulate: The production and reproduction of the structures of knowledge has been a process constitutive of and constituted by the Modern World-System.
Second Postulate: The social sciences emerged in the nineteenth century as a medium-term solution to the tensions internal to the structures of knowledge.
First Proposition: The structures of knowledge have entered into systemic crisis.
Second Proposition: The uncertainty of the future opens up the character of knowledge production and the definition and role of the knowledge producer.
Immanuel Wallerstein has written that world-systems analysis, as an unfinished critique of nineteenth-century social science “has not been able to find a way to surmount the most enduring (and misleading) legacy of nineteenth-century social science—the division of social analysis into three arenas, three logics, three levels—the economic, the political, and the sociocultural. This trinity stands in the middle of the road, in granite, blocking our intellectual advance” (1991: 4). In conclusion, I want to suggest that the structures of knowledge approach with its emphasis on processes and TimeSpace rather than categories and development can bring us one step closer to the goal of constructing the historical social sciences and achieving a more useful vision of long-term, large-scale social change.
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Richard E. Lee
Cultural Studies, Complexity Studies and the Transformation of the Structures of Knowledge
Abstract
The structures of knowledge of the modern world, those patterns of what can and cannot be thought that determine what actions can and cannot be deemed feasible in the material world, are undergoing a transformation. Two knowledge movements, cultural studies with roots in the humanities and complexity studies in the sciences have challenged the separation of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities by upsetting the epistemological underpinnings of the mutually exclusive epistemologies based on the separation of truth and values in knowledge production. For the future, social analysts may shift from fabricating and verifying theories to imagining and evaluating the multiple possible con-sequences of diverse interpretative accounts of human reality and the actions they entail.
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Richard E. Lee
The Crisis of the Structures of Knowledge: Where Do We Go from Here?
For now, the future intellectual and institutional organization of knowledge production is “uncertain”. It remains to be constructed. In this context three things can be noted. First, not only will it be exciting for those committed to the process, but given that change is in the offing, direct involvement becomes a moral imperative. Second, since interests, that is, values, are entailed, the process is likely to be a site of real struggle. Third, the outcome of the process will have profound impact in the form of a fundamental transformation of the structure of social relations. Nonetheless, as the recognition that all knowledge has a social aspect gains ground and the possibilities of “containing” the study of human reality within existing disciplinary arrangements becomes increasingly dubious, it remains unclear exactly “what is to be done”. …
…Direct advocacy of alternative models of social reality presented by dedicated proponents and the logical consequences that follow from those alternative conceptual schemes at their limits favors the disclosure of the articulation of symbolic codes and material practices and thus the exposure of the historical construction of relations of authority and legitimacy. Direct advocacy fosters the recovery of the link between values and difference and thereby undermines the separation of personal morality from professional neutrality….
…From this perspective, that is, of an emancipatory project, the professor/student relation also begins to appear increasingly problematic. Already a new, collaborative subject, in recognition of the ultimate social construction of knowledge and in tune with the lives of real men and women caught up in the making of a new world, is emerging….
•••••••
Immanuel Wallerstein
“The Structures of Knowledge, or How Many Ways May We Know?”
Where then does social science fit in this picture? In the nineteenth century, the social sciences, faced with the “two cultures,” internalized their struggle as a Methodenstreit. There were those who leaned toward the humanities and utilized what was called an idiographic epistemology. They emphasized the particularity of all social phenomena, the limited utility of all generalizations, the need for empathetic understanding. And there were those who leaned towards the natural sciences and utilized what was called a nomothetic epistemology. They emphasized the logical parallel between human processes and all other material processes. They sought to join physics in the search for universal, simple laws that held across time and space. Social science was like someone tied to two horses galloping in opposite directions. Social science had no epistemological stance of its own and was torn apart by the struggle between the two colossi of the natural sciences and the humanities.
Today we find we are in a very different situation. On the one hand, complexity studies is emphasizing the arrow of time, a theme that has always been central to social science. It emphasizes complexity, and admits that human social systems are the most complex of all systems. And it emphasizes creativity in nature, thus extending to all nature what was previously thought to be a unique feature of homo sapiens.
Cultural studies is emphasizing the social context within which all texts, all communications, are made, and are received. It is thus utilizing a theme that has always been central to social science. It emphasizes the non-uniformity of social reality and the necessity of appreciating the rationality of the other.
These two movements offer social science an incredible opportunity to overcome its derivative and divided character, and to place the study of social reality within an integrated view of the study of all material reality. Far from being torn apart by horses galloping in opposite directions, I see both complexity studies and cultural studies as moving in the direction of social science. In a sense, what we are seeing is the “social scientization” of all knowledge.
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Michael G. Doxtater
Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era
American Indian Quarterly; Summer/Fall 2004, Vol. 28 Issue 3/4, p. 618-633
Abstract: Examines the trend of resistance to colonial influence through the maintenance of Indigenous knowledge. Dilemmas facing Western knowledge; Inclusion of Marxian ideology and liberal theory on the syzygy of modernity; Description of human and world development according to colonial-power-knowledge.
“Western knowledge faces two dilemmas. First, Western knowledge rests itself on a foundation of reason to understand the true nature of the world, yet it also privileges itself as the fiduciary of all knowledge with authority to authenticate or invalidate other knowledge (when it gets around to it). Colonial-power-knowledge conceptualizes intellectual colonization in Foucaultian terms, in this case with a Western knowledge fiduciary acting as guardian over its Indigenous knowledge ward (Foucault 1977; Feldman 1997). I suggest that the resulting contradiction embroiders some Western knowledge expertise with unreasonableness through its ignorance of other knowledge. Posing as the fiduciary of all knowledge exposes the limits of Western knowledge. Early twentieth-century poet Carl Sandburg poses the knowledge landscape as circles in the sand that help explain Western knowledge’s conundrum. “The white man drew a circle in the sand,” Sandburg begins immediately, “and told the red man ‘This is what the Indian knows.’” Continuing, Sandburg describes the white man drawing a big circle around the smaller one: “This is what the white man knows.” Then, as though responding to international development and Western knowledge experts, Sandburg shows the Indian sweeping an immense circle around both rings in the sand. “This is where the white and the red man know nothing” (Sandburg 1971, 30). Often it never seems to dawn on experts that there are limits to their knowledge….”
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Leanne R. Simpson
Anticolonial Strategies for the Recovery and Maintenance of Indigenous Knowledge
American Indian Quarterly; Summer/Fall 2004, Vol. 28 Issue 3/4, p373-384, 12p
Abstract: Offers a look at anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of indigenous knowledge in 2004. Focus of the United Nations on Traditional Ecological Knowledge; Elements comprising the renewal of indigenous knowledge; Representation by the Indian Act of the criminalization of indigenous knowledge systems; Role of ecological damage in the destruction of indigenous knowledge; Documentation as a means of further colonizing indigenous knowledge.
“Indigenist thinkers have advocated for the recovery and promotion of Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems as an important process in decolonizing Indigenous nations and their relationships with settler governments, whether those strategies are applied to political and legal systems, governance, health and wellness, education, or the environment. Recovering and maintaining Indigenous worldviews, philosophies, and ways of knowing and applying those teachings in a contemporary context represents a web of liberation strategies Indigenous Peoples can employ to disentangle themselves from the oppressive control of colonizing state governments. Combined with the political drive toward self-determination, these strategies mark resistance to cultural genocide, vitalize an agenda to rebuild strong and sustainable Indigenous national territories, and promote a just relationship with neighboring states based on the notions of peace and just coexistence embodied in Indigenous Knowledge and encoded in the original treaties….”
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Waziyatawin Angela Wilson
Indigenous Knowledge Recovery Is Indigenous Empowerment
American Indian Quarterly 28 (3/4) Summer/Fall 2004: 359-372.
Abstract: Examines the importance of Indigenous knowledge recovery as a means of combating the effects of colonialism; Details the ways in which colonialism required the subjugation of mind and spirit in addition to physical subjugation; Disputes the irrelevance of Indigenous traditions in the modern world; Examines the deterioration of health conditions amongst indigenous peoples as a result of colonization; Highlights educational programs which attempt to reinforce and celebrate Indigenous identity; Discusses the loss of indigenous language and tribal rule.
“Indigenous knowledge recovery is an anticolonial project. It is a project that gains its momentum from the anguish of the loss of what was and the determined hope for what will be. It springs from the disaster resulting from the centuries of colonialism’s efforts to methodically eradicate our ways of seeing, being, and interacting with the world. At the dawn of the twenty-first century the recovery of Indigenous knowledge is a conscious and systematic effort to revalue that which has been denigrated and revive that which has been destroyed. It is about regaining the ways of being that allowed our peoples to live a spiritually balanced, sustainable existence within our ancient homelands for thousands of years. In privileging writings about current work in Indigenous knowledge recovery, we are challenging the powerful institutions of colonization that have routinely dismissed alternative knowledges and ways of being as irrelevant to the modern world. Because Indigenous Peoples and other advocates of Indigenous knowledge have typically been denied access to the academic power structures that legitimize such knowledge, this special issue of American Indian Quarterly offers us a rare scholarly opportunity to validate it….”
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Duane Champagne
In Search of Theory and Method in American Indian Studies
American Indian Quarterly; Summer 2007, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p. 353-372
Abstract: The article discusses the role of American Indian studies in the autonomy of tribal nations and the multidisciplinary perspective of academic and other research institutions. Understanding the values of and socioeconomic issues in indigenous societies–such as land stewardship, claims to territory, self-government, community relations, and maintenance of cultural orientations–is necessary in light of globalization and nation-building. Topics include relations between American Indians and the United States government, research methods in sociology, and reasons for developing theories about indigenous communities and nation-states.
“American Indian studies should have a theoretical and methodological focus sufficient to organize an academic discipline. American Indian nations, or more generally indigenous nations, form distinct political and cultural groups that are informed by creation and cultural teachings that encourage preservation of self-government, community, and stewardship of land within the context of surrounding nation-states that prefer assimilation and political inclusion to recognition of indigenous goals and values. Most contemporary theories of group action can provide only partial explanations for the conservative cultural and political organization of indigenous peoples and for their cultural and political continuity to the present. The distinct cultural, institutional, and political organization and nonconsensual relations of American Indian nations with the U.S. government constitutes a unique pattern of socialcultural organization and cultural and political contestations. A primary focus of American Indian studies as a discipline is to conceptualize, research, and explain patterns of American Indian individual and collective community choices and strategies when confronted with relations with the American state and society. American Indian cultural emphasis on retaining culture, identity, self-government, and stewardship of land and resulting contestations with the U.S. government and society forms a body of empirical social action that constitutes the subject matter of American Indian studies as an academic discipline. American Indian studies defined in this way should be capable of generating theory, performing empirical research, making generalizations, commenting on policy, and supporting the goals and values of American Indian nations. The suggested framework for American Indian studies as an academic discipline can be generalized to the international level in the form of indigenous studies….” •••••••
Welcome to the blog for the OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY PROJECT
A project designed to liberate anthropology from the confines of discipline, profession, and institution, as a new form of knowledge acquisition and production, in a changing world, and in the struggle to create a new world.
