linuxmafia.com 2016/linuxmafia.com.tar/linuxmafia.com/pub/skeptic/files-to-classify/postmod.txt

Text File | 1996-02-19 | 5KB | 103 lines

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From: Bernard ortiz de Montellano <[e-mail]>
Subject:      postmodernist anthropology
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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

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