Anthropological Theory, Siglo XXI
Folks over at the Valve have been discussing a new collection of essays, Theory’s Empire : An Anthology of Dissent edited by Daphne Patai and Wilfrido Corral.
It’s prompted me to reflect — not for the first time — on how glad I am I went through grad school just after the high water mark of high theory. Some necessary battles were fought without my help, which suited me just fine, and I could approach the work of controversial scholars from the safe angle of necessity. That is to say, I never had to shout at my scholarly seniors “I’m going to my room to read Derrida and Foucault and there’s NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!!!” Instead, I read them because it was a given that one had to, and one could like or dislike them as one pleased without anybody getting very worked up about it.
A downside, however, was that the available paradigms felt a bit hoary. While writing my dissertation I got detoured in one chapter by my own critique of Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, which consisted in part in chiding him for using the format of a self-help manual. Then it occurred to me he probably meant it as a sort of joke; that anyway, who was I to be so cranky when I’d found it so useful; and that somehow, the darn thing had become a decade old since I’d “discovered” it two or three years after its publication.
In the end… I just couldn’t get that worked up about it. What excited me toward the end of my graduate career was perfectly straightforward work in political ecology and ecological economics. I still find that work very useful, and I am truly glad I’m not a battle-scarred veteran of the 80s. Still I wonder… why hasn’t a new generation of exhilirating theorists come along for my generation of scholars to fight about? Or have they, and I’ve just missed the boat?
I don’t think there’s been a new generation of theorists. I’ve only been through my political science undergrad for a few years, and I did a good bit of philosophy, and the basics of Theory were still the same as it seems they have been for years.
I think a new generation of interesting theory would require some more meaningful conflict within Theory than we’ve seen over the past few years. Its good that Queer Theorists disagree with Race Theorists, and so on, but in terms of the big picture, that’s like saying that evangelicals arguing with baptists constitutes a full, vibrant discourse on religion. The big questions get left out.
So why are academic criticisms of Theory in the big sense so difficult to find?
First, too much jargon. The entry costs to even discuss Theory are so high that a significant portion of your life must be devoted to studying Theory just to get in the door. And if your intuitive sense about Theory is that its mostly 8th grade lunch room philosophy mixed with highly intellectual jargon and a political agenda, why would you want to do that? To dethrone Theory, you must become a Theorist. But if you don’t *like* Theory… The best analogy I can think of would be the reason why there weren’t too many outsider critiques of catholicism in the middle ages. If you didn’t want to become a priest, you weren’t going to learn latin, and if you didn’t learn latin, you couldn’t critique the priests.
Second, the highly political edge to Theory allows for some nasty criticism of those who disagree. I’m not going to go too into this, but we’ve probably all seen intellectually dishonest defenses of Theory that end with calling someone a racist, an imperialist, whatever, when its really not appropriate. This may occur more at the lower freshman level of theory, but you have to get through that to get to the less inane stuff, and its another entry cost.
There’s more, but that’s a start. I have to go, unfortunately, and cannot continue writing this.
that’s an awfully funny line about the evangelicals vs. the baptists, I hope I’ll get to use it myself someday.
Hmm, so even the younger set aren’t being taught new stuff. When I taught social theory I used the millennium as a convenient stopping-point and place to hedge my own pedagogical bets about what the Next Big Thing would be. I suspect, though, that whatever it is it won’t so much come out of critique (though your points about this are well taken) as out of left field to blow our minds. Fingers crossed, anyway.
p.s. Michael Bérubé has produced a tongue-in-cheek riff (please don’t make me find it again to create a link, go forth and google) about how the next big thing is “erudition” — ie, we’ve had a cycle of snarky theorists and now it’s time for a cycle of grindstone snorters. It’s brilliant and funny and mean in high “I wish I’d said that” style, but also contains within itself the demon seed of the ultimate put-down. More so even than theory, erudition lends itself to endless competition complete with alternatingly inevitable moments of glory and of public humiliation. If it does come into the ascendancy, WATCH OUT (you heard it here first). A charming weakness of theory was that people were seriously grandiose about it, which made them enormously vulnerable to mockery. “Erudition” can always cloak itself in humility, which is far more impervious a mantle: the patient devotion to learning, the meek admission that one has hardly begun to plumb the depths nor penetrate the mysteries nor comprehend the riches of [whatever]. Oh god. I want to hide under the bed just thinking about it.
So — I really do have my fingers crossed for the next big shambling over the top explanation for everything existing. I always love an occasion to bring out the party hats and the sharp knives all at once!
Slightly off topic, but you know what I find *really* interesting about the whole Theory’s Empire discussion going on right now? The implicit agreement that seems to exist to ignore the normal rank and file college student.
Theory’s Empire apparently omits discussion based in the less academic, intellectual critiques of Theory. You know, the Rush Limbaugh stuff, screaming about how its all the communists, and they’re all insane, etc. But by ignoring this, they ignore the thousands upon thousands of undergraduates who get a taste of Theory, and all its associated bits of philosophy, and go out into the world and talk about it. Sure, these students don’t know much about the subject most times, but they are the ones taking classes from the Theorists, and what they think they’re learning, and how they use it in their lives, is certainly worth looking at.
I suspect this issue was ignored out of a sense of collegialism. The book is a broadside at something of a sacred cow, and discussing the girl from the pro-choice rally who dresses up like a giant anthropomorphic vagina and rants at passerbyes about patriarchal hegemony probably wouldn’t help keep the discussion at a mature level. But that girl got that from somewhere; she didn’t think it up herself.
I think this discussion is necessary to a real understanding of Theory. In the end, its something done by educators and taught to students. Not being an essentialist myself, I tend to think that if we want to answer the basic question of, “Theory, what the hell is it?” then we need to look not only at what is written about Theory in academic journals, but also how it is practiced in the classroom, and understood by the students.
But that would mean prying the lid off of the postmodernism, identity politics, and political activism of undergraduate liberals, and the undergraduate conservatives who hate them. And I’d sooner eat glass.
actually, the giant anthropomorphic vagina shouting about patriarchal hegemony sounds far too funny and brilliant to have come from a prof. I say, credit the “girl”.
I appreciate Patrick`s thoughts on undergraduate appropriation of anthropological theories (and the methodologies implied), as it means i.e. focussing on conditions of learning within academia.
Anthropology student Emma`s “outcry” comes back to my mind and the issue of time students are given to understand what they are tought. I obviously do belong rather to an ancient humanistic ideal of education than to the currently in Germany manifesting neoliberalistic one.
Btw, you indeed need no anthro prof to recognize patriarchial hegemony, but it indeed is theoretically contextualized and conceptualized by parts of anthro theory, as it`s representation are made explicit i.e. by ethnographic studies which–here`s the link–professors use within their teaching.