MSGID: 8:914/201.0 925f5dec From: Bernard ortiz de Montellano Subject: postmodernist anthropology Message-ID: <9305072116.AA13045@lll-winken.llnl.gov> Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 15:24:09 EDT Yes Taner, unfortunately anthropology is riddled with post- modernism. At the moment, it is one of the reigning theoretical schools, which means that all the graduate students feel that they must learn it so that they can sound in the know when they apply for jobs. Clifford Geertz, the founder of "thick description" is one of the earliest anthropologists to go this way but Derrida, DeMan, Foucault etc. have been very influential. For example, this week's issue of *The Chronicle of Higher Education* has a long laudatory story about Ruth Behar's new book. Behar, who is a recipient of the Macarthur Award, seems to be the current darling of the media. Her book, which presumably is about a Mexican peasant woman, is liberally laced with Behar's own feelings about her own situation and critiques of ethnographies done by white men and women. I have two statements about French postmodernists that I tell my graduate students. 1). About every ten years, some new theoretical movement sweeps academia. I interpret this as a new generation of assistant professors seeking tenure. It is much easier in social science to sit and blather theoretically from your office than to actually go do research. You can generate a lot of publications if they don't involve getting new data. 2) I hold to the Eliza Doolitle school on French philosophers: "The French don't care what you do, as long as you pronounce it properly." Meaning that, if you read much of this French postmodernist stuff, it is written primarily to sound elegant rather than to communicate. The style obfuscates rather than communicates. What seems to count is the written pyrotechnics not whether the ideas are valid or correct. I am of the old fashioned school that says that clear thinking is reflected in clear writing and that any idea can be communicated clearly and in simple language. I owe to Norman Levitt, Mathematics- Rutgers U., the following song by Gilbert and Sullivan, all you need to do is substitute "postmodern" for transcendental: If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line As a man of culture rare You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms And plant them everywhere You must lie upon daisies and discourse in novel phrases Of your complicated state of mind The meaning doesn't matter if its only idle chatter Of a transcendental kind. Bunthorne's song from "Patience" The basic problem in postmodern anthropology is the usual denial of the existence of some "objective" standard, and the attributing of equal validity to all views (except when PC intrudes and all of a sudden certain "voices"-feminism, "oppressed people," "people of color" are privileged over other " western, white, male). If one were a true postmodernist, then Hitler's views should be on equal par with Foucault's or any "oppressed person", (which perhaps explains DeMan's collaboration with the Nazis and Foucault's morals) but we must not let logic intrude. Traditionally, "cultural relativism" in anthropology has meant that one tries to "walk in the shoes of the culture being studied", i.e. "emic view" in the jargon. One does not try to impose one's ethnocentric views and opinions or let them interfere with how one does fieldwork. In writing ethnography one tries to describe as accurately as possible what another culture is like, what they believe and how they function. There has been a continuous debate about the next step-- does that mean, that as anthropologists, we should condone and defend actions which are morally repugnant (cannibalism, infibulation, clitoridectomy, slavery etc.). There are serious issues here and people of good will can differ on where this comes out. The right wing has used this to defame us, for example, the NSF social science curriculum MACOS was defeated by the right wing claiming that by describing practices such as cannibalism, or exposure of old people we were defending them and morally corroding the minds of students. The problem with postmodernism and people like James Clifford and George Marcus is that they deny that one can do fieldwork objectively, i.e. that as an outsider one can NEVER do a valid description of another culture (if this were true, anthropology should give up and disappear). What one is supposed to do, is to "reflect" and describe what one's reactions and feelings are to what one encounters in the field. In short, indulge in a lot of navel gazing. The other approach is to write ethnography as literature, which then allows one to get to Derrida, DeMan etc. Since, as we know, anthropology has trouble replicating studies instead of working to improve our approach to reality (since science does not claim "truth" but iterated attempts to approach it), postmodernists make a virtue of denying that there is any truth that can be obtained. I usually stay out of this field. My critiques are usually written about post-modernist claims in the physical sciences because the rules of evidence are clearer there. Anthropology was a squishy enough science without the influx of postmodernism. Bernard Ortiz de Montellano --- Mapped by UUCP (Mail-Uf 1.8k) @ 8:914/201.0 PID: FredGate 1.8k