The Trip To The Dialoge. The Labyrinth of The Postmodern Anthropology
The Trip To The Dialoge. The Labyrinth of The Postmodern Anthropology
The Trip To The Dialoge. The Labyrinth of The Postmodern Anthropology
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José-Luis Anta
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Abstract: This short work is a first approximation, always provisional, to the controverted
topic of the postmodernism in the current Social Anthropology. Labelled by a
series of authors in connection with what in its day was call the Seminar of Santa
Fe (New Mexico) and after analysing to the principal figures that compose it, I
introduce me in what has meant the semiotic revolution. The principal purpose
is to make a critique to its problems, proposals and methods, not without other
intention that to put in relief the ideological meaning in their, apparently, radical
and critical propositions.
1
Expression used for the postmodern Paul Smith (1988). That not few they have preferred to use in the sense
of the representation systems, or the “violence” of the Anthropology theoretical in front of the ethnography
observed. See in this respect Whitaker (1996: 1-13).
II.
All this is not, obviously, a new problem (without going farther, for example, Lévi-Strauss already
makes it his in a constant way. see Pérez, 1991: 71-79). But rather it indicates the rising difficulty
of the Anthropology to be assigned to itself the science condition (what has put of relief, in another
context epistemological, Llobera, 1975: 377-378). But it is not less certain than the nature of these
dilemmas he loses temper depending of how it is described, how the linguistic turn is used (García
Canclini, 1991: 58-64). Clifford Geertz, for example, proposes the “combination” of the own point
of view –subject– and that of the “other” –object– (see, Tilde, 1991: 179-193. To have a critical
vision of Geertz can be consulted Keesing, 1987: 161-176. Llobera, 1990. Nivón; Rosas, 1991: 40-
49. Schneider, 1987: 809-839. Shankman, 1984: 261-279), burying in a way very particular years of
humanist tradition –that I obviously don’t enter to value–:
“Is the problem partly in knowing on what they consist those big ideals exactly
(against what is it supposed that it protects us the «objectivity»? The passion?
the relativism?, the intuitions?, the prejudice? What is what recommends the
«rightness»? Precision? fidelity?, authenticity?). But in a more critical way, the
problem resides in the operation of speeches that you/they are prescribed to
work [...] is the question: from where does the style that we use for bean-field
We observe that here that James Clifford (1991b p. 42), follower without mufflers of Geertz,
calls the “the experience interpretative” and that it has driven to the literature of the anthropological
text and to care for the discipline the basic budgets of the western hermeneutics (Sangren, 1988:
405-435). But now the problem is not this, but solving, that mediation that Geertz stops supposes the
fundamental difficulty of assimilating the point of view from the native one to the anthropologist’s
look (Geertz, 1994a: 73-90). That without a doubt ends in a species very peculiar of paranoia
that is expressed as a “perplexity” in its texts (Doody, 1991: 285-303). In fact it is simply another
way that the humanism claims a reality that doesn’t possess and it will never possess. But, also,
Geertz, although he hides after an innovative writing and impacting, it is part of that liberal world
of palace (the academy in their maximum protocol prides), the last haven from where to fight for a
liberal ideology, and where “the sense common to the power” it could be perfectly their motto. Has
everything allowed him to it to be gone up to a pedestal –what are it if not the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton, where he works?–, From where shamelessly, in a cruel and radical way, it has
finished for relatives to right and to the lefts.
The strategy of the interpretative Anthropology who’s epistemological resides in re-affirming
another one empirical (the native one) like substantial object of the Anthropology. At the same time
that revindicar the observer’s innocence –than a pure being that is simply an onlooker–. It is similar to
the classic position of paranoiac’s illusions, where a process of fictionalisations of the external world
is given. Designing this way a strategy to protect the topic (I hold and object like “a native point of
view”) from any alteration or influence that he can threaten him to betray him (Winch, 1994: 82-101).
This way, because, for Geertz (1994a: 89-90; and in a wide way for all the humanist ones liberal) the
defences before such threats leads to a negotiation potentially endless, or him what a Geertz calls a
process of “approach” of the cultural meanings that circulate and they are exchanged between the
own thing and the other people’s thing. For the paranoiac most of the knowledge is hidden, for what
the cosmos is the construction of its desire that is always whole and healthy, for what is fundamental
its “capacity” to interpret everybody, whichever it is its point of view. From this position type, the
construction is a “general knowledge”, or knowledge that significant and it preconceives an entirety.
In the modernist Anthropology the tension on this endless dialectical –entry him what a he calls
himself “empirical” in the reality of the other one and the defensive coherence and it interns of the
topic that is– it is maybe a symptom of the conception of a general knowledge.
However, the interpretative Anthropology is view like a way of reconstructing the entirety, in
the form of a general relativism that has brought, although not in a simple way, after the collapse
of the modernity, the possibility to think a new theory. Those of a complete world (global) in that
all the parts somehow are adjusted to each other and where the own thing and the other people’s
thing unite (Sperber, 1985). But it is not less true than the collapse of that modernity he has brought,
also, the emergency of a certain world postcolonial (Scott, 1992: 371-394) that although potentially
autonomous for certain concessions, their reclaims is painful. Clifford Geertz (1990) and their
interpretative Anthropology, together with many of their followers, they have gotten him to be
suspected of him and, consequently that is accused of distorting the reality when supposing that the
load hermeneutics that uses is a way to defend of the political post colonialist. But Geertz has had,
always, the undeniable virtue of being ahead to its critics (generally proposing “traps” in its works:
distractions for the critic) and this way, in a given moment, he made its –apparent– retreat of the
circle of the hermeneutic. Causing, already in the decade of the 60, but mainly in the 70, its new
plays in the battle that they had the hermeneutic, on one hand, and those then emergent semiotic and
sociology. For other, he stops this way to carry out its you swim innocent political readings of all
them (Goldstein, 1991: 21-30). But the structuralism and the average post-estructuralists put great
III.
The last book of Tyler (1987. On the reactions that it has risen see Kirby, 1989: 36-45) it confirms
in great way all this. And the most effective critics to the interpretative Anthropology arise from the
works of the followers of Geertz (or those that more they have read it, revered and bolstered), like it
is the case of James Clifford (1991a: 151-182). The central work of Clifford (1995) it consists on a
series of articles that inspect, one after other, the genesis of the ethnography, writing from a posture
that deliberately leaves of side the perspectives post-estructuralists. That he shows off the separation
of the modernist visions and their problems (in fact, the French anthropology is for the floors). For he
pays it attention to different theories, to the forms and the genesis of the representation systems, and
how everything is it a way “paranoiac” of making Anthropology. Always present in the modernist
ethnography and in the ways, of that that the flame of “imperialistic direct” in that the most traditional
anthropologists act (Clifford, 1995 p. 122). The work of Clifford appears, without place to doubts,
among the most important ideology exercises (Hutnyk, 1998: 339-378), of what in principle Tyler
will come to call “ethnography and postmodern anthropology” (Tyler, 1991: 188-189).
But the postmodern Anthropology, besides other collateral facts that for the time being doesn’t
interest me too much to highlight (for sees it you, for example, the “presentation” of the compilation
of Reynoso, 1991: 11-60), it proposes a “new” look. The Anthropology for them conceived two
lines and that for them they appear as especially important. One that is known as of the “I dialogue”
(dialogic), and one seconds that it is the way “collaborator” (without a doubt there is other, as the way
“surrealist” that comes of the French ethnography). In the way of the “I dialogue”, for example, they
are books like Moroccan Dialogues of Kevin Dwyer (1982), where it is given a classic representation
of the Other one and a constant dialectical process among the observer and the one observed. Where
they offer in form of lightly published copies the conversations and interviews characteristic of the
work field (see Dwyer, 1977: 143-151 to have, also, an ideology this postmodern way of making
Anthropology). On the other hand, in the way “collaborator”, the intent is to give the voice to the
native one, in a situation of similar to similar with the anthropologist. The book of Crapanzano
(1980)2, Tuhami: Portrait of a Maroon, it is maybe the most radical example. In this work, the
native informant, Tuhami, supplies the text3, while the anthropologist supplies the challenges and
the questions for his western auditory (I eat he had already made, in a different way but with the
same intention, Geertz, 1994b. Also, Morocco, like object is behind this whole Anthropology, what
could be only a coincidence, or maybe not). In both cases what is demonstrated belongs the pretence
absence from the anthropologist to a general knowledge, even an abandonment of the own relativism.
Ultimately, it is an anthropological encounter that offers highly provisional, specific and not global.
The immediate danger that these visions run, instead of excusing the aspiration to the general
knowledge, is that the desire moves to produce a general relativism. But there is something more. In
2
To see, also, Crapanzano (1977: 69-73) and their first intent in this line, (Crapanzano, 1972) that “accidentally”
he resembles the work of Briggs (1970). What is not of missing, because if something has the postmodern ones
it is their capacity to assimilate the ideas of the other ones. Ultimately they don’t look for the originality in the
investigation, but the continuity of the speech, generally, written.
3
This name is a fiction more. Like it allows to see, with foreword to María Catedra’s Spanish version, Rabinow
(1992) before being foucaultian; and also Betteille; Madan, (1975). Middleton (1984). Powdermaker (1966).
Spindeler (1970).
Bibliography
Badcock, B. A. (1993) “Feminisms-pretexts: fragments, questions, and reflections”, Anthropology
Quarterly, 66, 2: 59-66.
Betteille, A.; Madan, T. N. (1975) Encounter and Experience: Personal Accounts of Fieldwork. New
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
Boddy, J. (1991) “Anthropology, feminism and the postmodern context”, Culture, 11, 1-2: 125-133.
Briggs, J. L. (1970) Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
4
The bibliography, more keeping in mind that it is a topic of “fashion”, it is immense, I find even this way
they useful the following works: Badcock (1993: 59-66). Boddy (1991: 125-133). Di-Leonardo (1993: 76-
80). Downs (1993: 141-437). Kirby (1993: 127-133). Mascia-Lees; Sharpe; Cohen (1987: 251-282). Rothfield
(1991: 54-67). Sharpe; Mascia-Lees (1993: 87-98).
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