One of the common complaints that came up in the comments of my last entry on Said was his tendency to essentialize the people he criticized. This is discussed more at length in Scott McLemlee’s “interview with Robert Irwin”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/12/13/mclemee over at IHE — which I think is worth reading. However, the reference that really jumped to my mind about stereotyping as analysis as political act came from Sartre and his attempt to trash the Marxists who were trying to snake his brand and destroy his value proposition:
Marxist voluntarism, which likes to speak of analysis, has reduced this operation to a simple ceremony. There is no longer any question of studying the facts within the general perspective of Marxism so as to enrich our understanding and clarify action. Analysis consists solely in getting rid of detail, in forcing the signification of particular events, in denaturing facts or even inventing a nature for them to discover it later underneath them, as their substance, as unchangeable, fetishized… The open concepts of Marxism have closed in. They are no longer _keys_, interpretive schema. They are posited for themselves as an already totalized knowledge.
Today’s Marxist[‘s]… sole concern, at the moment of ‘analysis’ will be to ‘place’ entities these entities. The more he is convinced that they represent the truth a priori the less fussy he will be about proof. The totalizing investigation has given way to a Scholasticism of the totality. The heuristic principle… has become the terrorist practice of liquidating the particularity (Search For A Method, pp. 27-28).
This tendency to liquidate the particularity is not unique to post-colonial studies or cultural studies, of course. Those who denounce ‘cult studs’ or ‘the closing of the american mind’ or ‘radical professors’ are just as guilty of failing to take the complexity of their enemies seriously. It’s easy — and comforting — to do. But personally I try to resist it.
Personally I think liquidating the particularity is a very common tactic in anthropological discourse. Doesn’t our default politics consist in finding someone on the right, labelling them an ethnocentrist, and then denouncing them? I suspect that one of the reasons that anthropology has so much trouble being ‘public’ because the average reader doesn’t share our outrage when one or more of our disciplinary rules has been broken.
I suppose there is a rule somewhere that any appeal to particularity must include at least one generalization which can be critiqued by an appeal to particularity … in this case I\’d apply it to the concept of an undifferentiated anthropological \”public.\” Study after study have shown that most of America\’s white population doesn\’t believe that our country has a problem with institutionalized racism, while the majority of the black population holds the opposite view. I doubt a public which believes in institutionalized racism would view exposing such racism as simply a matter of disciplinary boundary maintenance.
“any appeal to particularity must include at least one generalization which can be critiqued by an appeal to particularity”
I think this is actually Weberian method (though definitely not the cold-war, modernization-theory version canonized by Parsons…but if one keeps reading the entries in Economy and Society, past the initial ‘ideal’ definitions into the heart of the articles, where he uses historical data to dismantle them, then dialectically reconstitute them in more complex, supple, and historically particular form, it comes through).
I am curious about the anthropological reception of Nadia Abu El-Haj’s Saidian crit of archaeological knowledge in Israel. Much of what I have seen has been refutations from Israeli archaeologists, who may know the material better but I assume share a diametrically opposed ‘subject position.’
What do you mean by “the closing of the american mind” ?
“The Closing Of The American Mind” is a book by Allan Bloom that (used to be?) well known in the US.
Very astute, SLS. I like the Sartre quote because it can be assimilated into a sort of standard Weberian epistemology, which is more or less where I’m coming from (Weber was himself an existentialist in some vague sense).
Kerim, of course one needs to suss out the demographic of one’s audience before writing a popular book of anthropology for a ‘general audience’. But I think you’ve made my point for me — there is no point in talking past our anglo-protestant audience by frothing at the mouth about Discovery Channel specials that feature ‘cannibalism’ in order to show solidarity with the 2% of the population that, like us, has an ethical commitment to the idea that “talking about cannibals is bad”. And clearly the wasps are the people we need to reach — not only is there more of them than anyone else, but they are also in charge.
Rex, I think my point was more that we need different books for different publics and that we shouldn\’t assume that one is more important than the other. I think Zizek is right to say that there is a certain amount of \”willful ignorance\” about these issues, and it might be that empowering minorities to fight for their rights is just as important as appealing to the better side of those in power.
This seems to me to be a tactical question which of course could admit of different answers depending on circumstances and temperament. I imagine you are thinking of your own work in India when you mention empowering minorities. When I think “public” I think “widest possible audience” which is the majority. And I am thinking of the US. But that’s cool — the more publicity the more better.
Actually, I was thinking about the US, and about work of scholars like Manning Marable who are unhesitatingly saying things that are sure to put off members of that wider audience. I just think it is OK for anthropologists to work in such a vein as well, insofar as they are being intellectual honest. There is more than one way to be a public intellectual. I think we need both John Stewarts and Michael Moores out there and I worry when people say that only one or the other is appropriate.
With the India project we are actually trying to reach as broad an audience as possible, although we have already made some choices which are sure to limit that audience. For instance, it is fairly well understood that films about “brown” people don’t get wide US distribution unless there is a mediating white figure with whom the audience can identify – something we don’t feel would be appropriate as the group we are working with are eloquent enough at expressing their own situation without the need for an interlocutor. Still, we hope that we can still get wide release despite this.
Doesn’t our default politics consist in finding someone on the right, labelling them an ethnocentrist, and then denouncing them? I suspect that one of the reasons that anthropology has so much trouble being ‘public’ because the average reader doesn’t share our outrage when one or more of our disciplinary rules has been broken.
Yes, that does seem to be the default politics of many anthropologists…I caught myself doing that very same thing a few years back, getting on the case of so-called “Conservatives.” And then I realized that I was guilty of doing the very same thing that I was accusing them of: being close-minded, stereotyping, etc.
So that was the end of that for me.
Another thing that struck me about this kind of thing is this: I have had many classes, and read many books and papers, that pushed the idea of understanding other cultures, behaviors, and peoples ON THEIR OWN TERMS. YOu know the gig. Anthropologists are often very good at this, sometimes. And they often study some of the most conservative cultures on the face of the earth. The only way that some cultures have survived, of course, was because of their stubborn or conservative elements that fought change and conquest. Hmmm.
Here in the US though, many anthros are openly bashing the conservative aspects of American culture without viewing them in that same relativistic or open-minded light. I did this as much as anyone, but have since made a conscious effort to stick to the ideals of anthropology as much as possible and keep an open mind…even in the face of something or someone that I severely disagree with. In fact, I have learned a few things in the mean time.
So it goes.
Nice blog, glad I found it. I linked up with you.
mistake: that first paragraph should be in quotes…i must have messed up with the tags. oops.