Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography ed. James Clifford and George e. marcus 86

Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography ed. James Clifford and George e. marcus 86

“Intro: Partial Truths” by Clifford 1-26

2-“writing has emerged as central to what anthros do both in the field and thereafter”—and the fact that it hasn’t always been seen like this shows “an ideology claiming transparency of representation and immediacy of experc”, but “this ideology has crumbled”, “science is in, not above, historical and linguistic processes”
3-ethnogrphy is interdisciplinary and has spread to “all those studies that focus on meaning systems, disputed trads, or cultural artifacts”
4-“literary processes [anywhere, but esp in anthroy]—metaphor, figuration, narrative—affect the ways cultural phenoma r registered”

4- 4 fields in antrpgy: physical, archeology, cultural/social, and linguistics

5-Foucault , de Certeau and eagleton say since 17th ce, w. science has “exluded certain expressive modes from its legitimate repertoire”: rhetoric (v plain), fiction (v fact), and subjectivity (v objectivity), tho they sometimes overlapped. 19th ce lit emerged as a bourgeois instittn to balance our “vulgarity of industrial, class society”
6-this means art and culture r not constant, they change depending ; and before the 17th ce, art just meant “skillful fashioning of useful artifacts”

-ethnogrphies r constructed, “fiction”, might leave out conflicting voices, personal or historical circumstance, (7) use metaphors that covey meanings
6-“[anthros’] rhetoric empowers and subverts their message”
7-u can b conscious of this in ur writing, that enthogrphc knowledge is only partial
8-“im not sure I can tell the truth…I can only tell what I know”—that’s what ethnos r like
-ideas started changing w/ leiris’ “l’ethnograpghie devant” 50, end of empre, fr negritude movement, balandier, griqule, ortigues, rivet, maquet (9) “objectivity in anthrgy” 64, hyme’s reinventing anthrgy 73, diamond 74, scholte 71,72, 78; le clerc 72, asad 73, firth 77
9-“in popular imagery the ethnographer has shifted from a sympathetic authoritative observer…to the unflattering figure…Indeed, the negative portrait has sometimes hardened into caricature—the ambitious social scientist making off w/ tribal lore and giving nothing in return, imposing crude portraits on subtle ppls, or (most recently) serving as dupe for sophisticated informants. Such portrails are about as realistic as the earlier heroic versions of participant-observation…{Ethnogphc work, in reality] enacts power relations. But its funct w/in these relations is complex often ambivalent, potentially counter-hegemonic”

-new rules r emerging for ethngpc study: some native amers req ethnos “to testify in support of land claim litigation”’ and many restrictions have been placed by countries
10-they prevent giving anthrgy “automatic authority for others defined as unable to speak for themselves (‘primitive,’ ‘pre-literate,’ ‘w/out history’)…as if they were not involved in the present world systems…[techniques which] always involve simplification and exclusion, selection of a temporal focus, the construction of a particular self-other relationship and the imposition or negotiation of a power relationship”

13-“since malinowski’s time, the “method” of participant-observtn has been dominant, expercs w/ group most valuable, but r tempered w/ “objectivity”—tho it’s not completely “fiction” like dickens or Flaubert, but the “voice” is shaped by “tone, or embellishment of facts”—they leave our “serious confusion, violent feelings or acts, censorhips, important failures, changes of course, and excessive pleasures”’ tho it changed in the 60s
14-malinowskis diaries 67 “publicly upset the apple cart” when it showed his ?s, as opposed to his confident ethno voice
-our of these changes emerged a subgenre: “fieldwork acco0unt”, discussed previously forbidding things
-it now shows “specific instances of discourse”—w/ informants, confrontations—“monophonic authority is ?d, revealed to b characteristic of a science that has claimed to rep cultures” (15)
17-informants can b considered “’co-authors,’ and the ethnogpher as scribe and archivist as well as interpreting observer”

22-“There is no longer any place of overview…from which to map human ways of life, no Archimedian pt. from which to rep the world”—says “’world system’ now links the planet’s societies in a common historical process”—tho doesn’t like wallerstien’s 76 sense that it is all in a unitary direction

23-there’s been a similar crisis in socgy
-and “ethngy is moving into areas long occupied by socigy…rediscovering the otherness and difference w/in the cultures of the w. it has become clear that every version of an “other”, wherever found, is alsothe construction of “self,” and the making of ethngrphc txts,…has always involved a process of “self-fashioning”” cites greenblat 80
24-“cultural poesis—and pols—is the constant reconstruction of selves and others thru specific exclusions, conventions, and discursive practices”

-note #13 talkes that historicism’s “master narrative”—cannot necessarily re-formulated in a pomo world, urges always also looking at “local historical predicament”

-the book is not supporting relativism-or else they wouldn’t have bothered
25-they hope it all leads to “more subtle, concrete ways of writing and reading, to new conceptions of cultures as interactive and historical”
“Fieldwork in Common Places” by Mary Louise Pratt 27-50

27-malinowskis and others defining enthngy in “contrast to adjacent and antecedent discourses [travel books, personal memoirs, journalism and accounts by virous ppl] limits ethnogy’s ability to explain or examine itself as a kind of writing…[ethgy] blinds itself to the fact that its own discursive practices were often inherited from these other genres and r still shared w/ them today”

31-ethnos often have to give groups w. goods to get them to let them study them—creates guilt

-there is a confusion in anthrogy about if personal narratives can b accepted. They usu have w/ them formal ethnogpies—“personal narratives r often deemed self-indulgent, trivial, or heretical in other ways,” tho has become a “conventional component of ethngphies”, tho on margins, intros, footnotes
32-says it’s used to distinguish btwn personal and scientific authority—(33)ethnogphies therefor leave out things, put cultures in “time order from that of the speaking subject”

33-preceded by travel accounts, as far back as 16th ce, which had 2 distinct parts: a formal (narrative and a dsiciption section that had rest of info, and did not req formal training to write (34)
34-shift from present to past tense, tribal labels to specific ppl; description is usu subordinated (35) tho by late 1800s they were =, and ethngphy continued this trad

46-anthros inherit guilt from predecssors eg by the end of 18th ce, writing about bushmen (?kung) started having it—b4 they were colonized they were characterized as wild, bloodthirsty; after colonized, meek, passive, distinterst in mat goods

50-“surely a first step toward…change is to recognize that one’s tropes [eg arrival] r neither natural, nor, in many cases, native to the discipline. Then it becomes possible, if one wishes to liberate oneself from them, not by doing away w/ tropes (which is not possible) but by appropriating and inventing new ones…”
“hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographc Description” by Vincent Crapanzano 51-76

51-ethnogphy is a “provisional way of coming to terms w/…cultures and societies”, like translating langs, but u have to come up w/ ur own txt
-so since it’s a txt, its historically determined
-ethno acknowledges its provisional nature, “Yet he assumes a final interp—a definite reading”—therefore he doesn’t really recognize how provisional it is
52-and b/c ethnogrphies r “Embedded in interp…[they] limit reinterp”

-his job is to make his mssg convincing
53-anthros “foremost” strategy to do this is to appear authoritative and this is done in a “purely rhetorical” way; “He assumes an invisibility that, unlike Hermes, a god, he cannot, of course, have. His ‘disinterest,’ his objectivity, his neutrality r in fact undercut by his self interest—his need to constitute his authority, to est. a bond w/ his readers, or, more accurately, his interlocutors and to create an appropriate distance btwn himself and the ‘foreign’ events he witnesses”
-ethnos use other devices to “est the validity of his ethgphc presentations directly”; in the writers here 3: hypotyposis (catlin), nonmetaphorical theatrical narrative (Goethe), and interpretive virtuosity (geertz)

57-hypotyposis: “impress his exprc of what he has seen so strongly, so vividy, on his readers that they cannot doubt its veracity”—(56) uses rambling, repeating, simplify, exaggerate, metaphor
58-its “romantic”—diff btwn him and a mod soc scientist is his authority doesn’t rest on method, only on its beleiveability

65-Goethe (late 18th ce) describes in present tense generalities not giving subjects life or authenticity
67-then ends by reducing the experc to an allegory
72-and everyone is generalized

73-geertz calls cockfights metaphors tho nothing in the culture indicates that; (74) “no understanding of the native from the natives’ POV. There is only the constructed understanding of the constructed natives’s constructed POV”
76-the metaphor is geertz’s hermeneutics
“from the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor” by Renato Rosaldo 77-97

77-“attempts to dvlp an anatomy of ethngphc rhetoric by exploring modes of authority and representation” in EP’ the nuer 40 and Le Roy Ladurie’s [that whole thing is his last name] Montaillou 75—which is seen as rptative of classic (premo) ethngphic wirting (history), nuer is reptative of mod ethnoy

78-santayana’s dictum: those who forget the past r doomed to repeat it

-le roy’s [use this for short version of his last name] “work borrows ethnography’s authority to transform 14th ce peasants “direct testimony’” that was written in a register—cf clifford “on ethngphic authority”
79-le roy uses inquisitors confessions as if they were normal convos, not the result of power domination
81-he uses the tactic idfied by Foucault: invoking the will to truth to suppress the “equally present will to power”—the meticulously close attention to detail by the bishop supposedly justifies “entitling [le roy] to remove the context of interrogation from the ‘documentary’ findings thereby extracted”
-le roy uses the “ethn’s tactic of confining to an intro discussion of the pols of domination that shaped the investigator’s knowledge about the ppl under study”
83-he makes the mistake of conflating househould w/ fam (cf yaneg isako 79); and assumes some uses r good and some r distorted—but how?
84-uses modern psychoanalytic notions on these ppl, 14thce fr. Villiagers
85-defines ppl by what they don’t have as compred to today—makes them appear less dvlped, “less fully formed”
-ethnos genlly believe human nature is same across place and time and so to not say that is noticeable—he doesn’t

88-EP’s intro also downplays pwer relations—the govt of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan requested and financed the study, but doesn not say why
90-EP says his authority comes from knowing nuer the best and his intimacy w/ subjects, says he was treated as equal tho the txt shows sometimes treated hostile by nuer
91-attributes a nuer’s reluctance to give ones guys name to guy’s personality, ignoring poll circumstances—govt was till raiding nuer camps

94-and EP gives overemphasis to social structure, downplaying indvl response—so it’s easier to genrlze the ppl as “primitive”
-he also describes nuer about what they lack
95-says nuer r closer to stone age than us; and they have the “pastoral” personalities too ie, sedentary, wild, etc

96-says EP, like other anthros, idealizes nuer as pastoralists w/ qualities of democracy, “rugged indvlsm, fierce pride and a warrior spirit”—at the same time ethnos “take great pains to distinguish themselves” from tourists (to them, like nomads), missionaries and colonial officials (like peasants)—they say the primitives r like them
-this “discourse denies the domination” they take part in
-even tho nuer aren’t like” late medieveal fr. Shepards or contemp nilotic cattel herders”
97-calling them pastorialists “permits a polite tenderness that more direct ways of acknoleging in=ty could inhibit…Yet the pastoral also licences patronizing attitudes of condenscenscion, such as reverence for a simplicity ‘we’ have lost…”
-therefore the enthro c”can enjoy relation suffused w/ tender courtesy that appears to transcend in=ty and domination”
“On ethnographc allegory” by James Clifford 98-121

98-says: “Ethnogrphc writing is allegorical at the level both of its content (what it says about culture and their histories [as embodied in social performances]) and of it form (what is implied by its mode of textualization)”
99-eg shostak’s narrative of first persons !kung eperc of child birth is “an allegory of (female) humanity,” that all women can relate to it
-clifford says “these kinds of transcendent meanings r not abstractions or interps ‘coded’ to the origininal ‘simple’ account. Rather, they r the conditions of its meaningfulness. Ethngrphc txts r inescapably allegorical, and a serious acceptance of this fact changes the way they can b written and read…the very activity of ethngphc writing—seen as inscription or txtualiztn—enacts a redemptive w. allegory. This pervasive structure needs to b perceived and wighed against other possible emplotments for the performance of ethnogphy.”

-uses allegory in the sense of a “practice in which a narrative fiction continuously refers to another pattern of ideas or events”
100-ethnogrphc allegories always have poll dimensions (jameson 81) also has “aspects of cultural description that have until recently been minimized”
-“the fact that realistic portraits, to the extent that they r ‘convincing’ or ‘rich,’ r extended metaphors, patterns of assoc that pt. 2 coherent (theoretical, esthetic, moral) addtl meanings. Allegory (more strongly than ‘interp’) calls to mind the poetic, tradl, cosmological nature of such writing processes”
*102-“The specific accounts contained in ethnographies can never b limited to a project of scientific description so long as the guiding task of the work is to make the (often strange) behavior of a diff way of life humanly comprehensible. To say that exotic behavior and symbols make sense either in ‘humn’ or ‘cultural’ terms is to supply the same sorts of allegorical added meanings that appear in older narratives that saw actions as ‘spiritually’ significant”—so they “disguise, either moral qualitities or conceptions of the mind” (Coleridge 36:30)

-ethnographic allegories existed b4 social science, when ppl tried to explain foreign customs, to place them (Fabian 83) “w/in an assumed progress of w. history” (102)
102-cultural anthrogy “has tended to replace (tho never completely) those historical allegories w/ humanist allegories…But the representational process itself has not essentially changed most descriptions of others continue to assume and refer to elemental or transcendent levels of truth”
-Mead’s 23 analysis of samoans was overtly allegorical-moral imposing—and even her critic who proves this by showing counter expcs (freeman 83) is allegorical

103-to counter the allegory probs, anthros have used tactic of using native voices and other allegories
104-eg Shostak’s nisa has 3 distinct voices and refuse to integrate all 3 into 1 “full” reptation—it shows that the scientific allegory something (if it’s not the only “real” one because it selfconsciously leaves out some things)
105-the ea voice uses knowledge from the other
106-and the overall structure of the book is from a culture—autobiographies r not “universal or natural”, cites 3 sources
107-the allegory is that a narrative life makes sense to nisa
-“The assertion of common female qualitites (and oppressions) across racial, ethnic and class lines is newly problematic” cites ppl

110-michelle rosaldo 80 says evory idea still persists in anthro, ppl still look at “primitives” as origin of man

113-The pastoral ideal (that non city life was better) is placed on “primitieves”—nostalgia for eden
115-and it ussu places them “in a present beoming-past”—so ‘tradl’ is wrong

118-another reason for mistrust of ethnos’ authority in writing aobut a culture is that culture has already been “writing” about itself, as in “textualizing,” giving things meaning so “re-lit” is inaccurate

*119-conclusions: u cannot weparate fact from allegory in cultural accounts b/c they r always embedded w/ other meanings
120-2 counter this, u should “manifest the poll and ethical dimensions of ethgphc writing”
“Pomo Ethnogphy: From Document of the Occult to Occult Document” by Stephen A Tyler 122-140

123-we’re in a pomo world b/c “scientific thot is now an arcaic mode of consciousness” b/c “In the totalizing rhetoric of its mythology, science purported to b its own justification and sought to control and autonomize its discourse. Yet its only justification was proof, for which there could b no justification w/in its own discourse, and the more it controlled its own discourse by subjecting it to the criterion of proof, the more uncontrollable its discourse became. Its own activity constantly fragmented the unity of knowledge is sought to project. The more it knew, the more there was to know”—based off Habermas 75

126-a pomo ethnography might have a dia, “or possibly a serioes of juxtaposed paratactic telling of a shared circumstance, as in the Synoptic Gospels, or perhaps only a sequence of separate telling in search of a common theme, or even a contraptual? Interweaving of telligns, or of a theme and variations…the ethno would not focus on monophonic performance and narrativity, tho neither would he necessarily exlude them if they were appropriate in context”
*128-“the pt of discourse is not how to make a better pretation, but how to avoid reptation”
129-so instead of trying to rep, it shoud just try to “evoke”
130-meaning there r no longer “facts” or “truths” to b “verified”

131-“Ethogrphc discourse is not part of a project whose aim is the creation of universal knowledge…To represent means to have a kind of magical power over appearance, to b able to bring into presence what is absent, and that is whwy writing, the most powerful means of pretation, was called “grammarye,” a magical act. The true historical significance of writing is that it has increased our capacity to create totalistic illusions w/ which to have power over things or over others as if they were things. The whole ideology of reptational signification is an ideology of power. To break its spell we would have to attack writing, totalistic reptational signification, and authorial authority, but all this has already been accomplished before us” Ong 77 showed that oral world thot writing “reptations” is diff from it; Benjamin 78, adorno 77, derrida 74

-“A pomo ethngphy is fragmentary b/c…Life in the field is itself fragmentary, not at all orgzd around familiear ethnoglogical categories such as kinship, ecoy, and rel, and…the natives seem to lack communicable visions of a shared, integrated whole…At best, we make do w/ a collection of indexical anecdotes or telling particulars w/ which to portend that larger unity beyond explicit textualization. It is not just that we cannot c the forst for the trees, but that we have come to feel that there r no forests where the trees r too far apart…”

134-science strivesfor “the false hope of a permant, utopian transcendence, which can only b achieved by devaluing and falsifying the commonsense worldlll”, it still has an illusion of a transcendental—something that the pomo world rejects
135-pomosm “aims not to foster the growth of knowledge but to restructure experc; not to understand objective reality, for that is already extd by common sense, no r to explain how we understand, for that is impossible, but to reassimilate, to reintegrate the self in society and to restructure the conduct of everyday life”

“it is impossible in txt or speech to eliminate ambiguity and to structure for all time thte auditor’s purposes and interests”—the reader can interpret in countless ways b/c of “various states of ignorance, irrecptivity, disbelief, and hypersensitivity to form”

-b/c of this, text is “bound to b misread, so much so that we might conclude, in a parody of Bloom, that the meaning of the txt is the sum of its misreadings”
*136-this rejects the Cartesian pretense that ideas r clear

Pomo ethnogphy should b at this tension, “neither denying ambiguity nor endorsing it, neither subverting subjectivity nor denying objectivity, expressing instead their interaction the subjective creation of ambiguous objectivities that enable unambiguous subjectivity”
-“every attempt will always b incomplete, insufficient, lacking in some way, but this is not a defect b/c it enables transcendence”
137-“even tho I speak of polyphony and perspectival relativity, fragmentation, and so on, these r not necessary components of form. There is here no aesthetic of form…the writing is anti-genre, anti-form”
“The Concept of Cultural Translation in Brit Scoial Anthogy” by Talal Asad—pretty much same as the chapter in genealogies of rel

143-examines Gellner’s “concepts and Society”—an essay “concerned w/ the way in which Functlist anthros deal w/ probs of interping and translating the discourse of alien societies” in it gellner criticizes the “excessive charity” (giving meaning to absurd or incoherent things) tghat is common in anthroy
“Contemp Probs of Ethnogphy in the Mod World System” by George E Marcus 165-193

106-in most ethnogphies “change and the larger frameworkds of local pols have usu been treated in separate theoretical or conceptual discourse w/ some ethnogphc detail added for illustration…The world of larger systems and events has thus often been seen as externally impinging on and bounding little worlds, but not as integral to them”

*-“In anthrogy and all other human sicences at the moment, ‘high’ theoretical discourse—the body of ideas that authoritatively unify a field—is in disarray”

168-looks at ethngphy in macro social theories that have been experimenting w/ using them—ethnographies have genrlly shown the effects of big events on small groups, but rarely the other way around

170-cites ray Williams 81 who noted that as mod scoeity dvlped and became so complex that a person could not experc all its differences, ppl started reping facts in statistics, changing perrtation so much that personal experc stopped counting

171-how do u rep both micro and macro groups together? 2 ways
-1) “by sequential narrative and the effect of simultaneity, the ethno might try in a single txt to rep multiple, blindly interdepndnt locales, ea explored ethngphyclly and mutually linked by the intended and unintended consequences of activities w/in them”—ecoc ideas r the most obvious routes to go
172-2)”the ethno constructs the txt around a strategically selected locale, treating the system as the background, albeit w/out losing sight of the fact that it is integrally constitutive of cultural life w/in the bounded subject matter”
-2 modes r not muturally exclusive, the second is just a shortened version of the first

174-Paul willis does this to understand class formation in England—[socgy], he says working class youths dvlp class formation by resisting dominant class and then go to factories
176-has in his appendix the boys’ responses to the book

192-willis is realist, but how about mod (pomo) ethnos? Since they c the world as fragmented they don’t use metas anyways
-tho “actual examples” of this kind of writing r few
-calls these “the cyurrent outer limit to the ways ethngphy” handles the “micro-macro integration prob”
“Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory” by Micahel M. J. Fischer 194-233

194-note # 1 says he uses lyotard’s 79 def of pomo—“it is that moment of modsm that defines itself against an immediate pst (‘post’) and that is skeptically inquisitive about all grounds of authority, assumption, or convention (‘modsm’)”

-this essay looks at simultaneously “ethnic autobio and the academic fascination w/ textual theories of deferred, hidden, or occulted meaning” to c if they can refashion ethngphy

195-recent sociogcl lit on ethnic autobios “r inadequately comprehended thru discussions of group solidarity, tradl values, family mobility, poll mobiztn, or similar socgcl cats. Immigrant novels of rebellion against the fam, intermarriage and acculturation r more relevant to these socglcl conception”

-ethnic autobios bring: 1)”the paradoxical sense that ethnicity is smthng reinvented and reinterpreted in ea. Gen by ea indv and that it is often something quite puzzling to the indv, smthing over which he or she lacks control”—ethnicity is not just taught (what socgy says), it is gained “thru processes analogous to the dreaming and transference of psycghoanalytic encounters” (196)
196-2) there r no role modesl for being Chinese-amern; “it is a matter of finding a voice or style that does not violate one’s several components of idy”; gaining ethnic idy shows: “a process of assuming an ethnic idy is an insistence on a pluralistic, multidimensional, or multifaceted concept of self: one can b many diff things, and this personal sense can b a crucible for a wider social ethos of pluralism”
-3)”the search or struggle for a sense of ethnic idy is a (re-)invention and discovery of a vision, both ethical and future-oriented”
197-these “recreations r given impetus by” 2 fears: mindless assimilation, and losing “an ethical vision that might serve to renew the self and ethnic groups as well as contribute to a richer , powerfully dynamic pluralist society”—an “id-like” force [does this make it sui gen?]; a tendency traced back at least as far as Plato and pythagorus
-there is a study that shows (rampersad? 83) that blacks make more autobios, whites make more bios

199-anthogy has tradlly looked at 1 society in terms of another—“bifocality”—but as “primitieves” begin reading anthropgcl work and “growing interdependence btwn societies” , we need to re-evaluate what we write, and can’t anymore b so dichotomous, “simplistic better-worse judgments”, pluse there r many mixing cultures

200-“It is true that pros may adjust their readings of ethnogphies according to their knowledge of the writers. This makes reading richer and more informed…But in the case of casual or unsophisticated readers, reading in terms of the bio of the wirter can b invidious and destructive, explaining away the txt rather than enriching it. What I am suggesting instead is a reading of ethnogphies as the juxtaposition of 2 or more cultural trads and paying attention both in reading and in constructing ethnogphies to the ways in which the juxtapostiition of cultural trads works on both the conscious and unconscious levels”
201-ones writing needs to make sense to subjects as well as stand up to their criticisms, and can gain from their viewpts.—strive for “multi dimensionality”
-he uses passages from various authors and “while it remains true that I stage these voices, the reader is directed to the originals; the txt is not hermetically sealed, but pts beyond itself. Parallel writings from my own ethnc trad r evoked in the intros and copncls as pts of further contact in order…to avoid ‘the temptation to reproduce the voices of these figures as they really r.’ to try to do away w/ my own presence ‘for the other’s sake’…[or] to subjugate the other to myself, to make him into a marionette”

-“ethnicity cannot b reduced to identical soclgcl functs, that ethnicity is a process of inter-ref btwn 2 or more cultural trads, and that these dynamics of intercultural knowledge provide reservoirs for renewing humane values”

-“the ability of txts…to deliver cultural criticism w/out the stereotypic distortions that trad class-cultural categorizatns have often (202) produced is an important model for ethnophy”—cf Mingus beneath the , Salinas “a trip thru the mind jail”

206-pts out Michael arden’s feeling that idy is greater than personal expercs, it’s historical; and repititions; transference (reemergence of repressed thot into new situs)
208-says crapanzano 80 ptd out that transference occurs in fieldwork in the thno who wants the subjects to elciity smthing particular, creting role for the informant; and the informant who tailors his responses “as if the anthrost wer a a govt official, a physician, or other agent of aid or danger”
-and crapanzano and his wife ea got diff stories from their respective informants for same occurance

212-the autobio technique of “dream-wrk—simultaneausly the integration of dissonant past fragments and the day dreaming “trying-on” of alternative possibilities” can b used in ethgphy by using narratives from diff informers esp those from diff classes

217-biforcality, looking at complexities of stereotyped worlds

-look up Ricardo sanchez on chicano blends of culture

220-there is class tension, esp over mid class chicano writers writing about poor chicanos

223-inter-ref to diff levels of cultures

224-use of irony—self consciously aware of limits of knowledge, of own beliefs—“perhaps nothing dfines the present conditions of knowledge so well…”
229-its barely in antho (tho levi-strauss uses it as well as derrida—tho this makes these both problematic), it could 1) show humor of subjects 2) make reading lighter 3) show limits of knowledge
“Representations R Social Facts: Modty and PO-Modty in Anthrgy” by Paul Rainbow 234-261

234-Rorty 79 argued “that espistemology as the study of mental representations arose” in 17th ce eurp, triumphed in philosophy, esp used by 19th ce german philosophers
-it now sterilizes and sets the limits of our ideas
-rorty says the w’s epistemology “the equation of knowledge w/ internal representations and the correct evaluation of those reprtations,” shows w’s “triump of quest for certainty over quest for reason”
-this lines up w/ hacking and foucalut

235-rorty says philosophers “have crowned their disci;line the queen of the sciences…on their claim to b the specialists on universal probs and their ability to provide us w/ a sure foundation for all knowledge. Philosphy’s realm is the mind; its privileged insights est its claim to b the discipline that judges all other disci;ines”
-“This conception of philosophy is, however, a recent historical dvlpmnt. For the Grks there was no sharp division btwn external reality and internal reprtations”
-Traces change back to 17th ce and Descartes—separating thost from physical. (“consciousness and its rprtational contents”)
-epistmology tries to clarify these reprtations—and this knowledge would b “universal”, and “universal knowledge is, of course, science”

-kant, at the end of Englightnmnt , canonized the idea that xscience was the ultimate judge—“kant estd a priori the Cartesian claim that we have certainty only about ideas”—kant said everything we say refers to something we have constitutded
236-this was dvlped and institutionalized by neo-kantians and 19th ce germans, tho by 1920s it lost its respect as preeminent

-then Wittgenstein, Heidegger and dewer all said the idea that knowledge is accurate rertation of thots was wrong—they wanted knowledge w/out foundations, hermeneutics

-but “rejecting epistemology does not eman rejecting truth, reason, or standards of judgment”
237-hacking “Lang, truth” 82 said “truth” depends on prior events and reasoning is distinguisheing truth from false, and logic is the preservation fo truth
238-he says to find real truth we should keep an open mind to everybody’s ideas, *keeping in mind they have diff data and styles—not relativism, “good science”
-foucalut did same deconstruction

239-says rorty (always) and hacking (usu) do not account for power influences on thot
240-foucalut says probs of reprtation r necessary in all human institutions, so its not just philosophy that changed (the order of things 73)
-in “truth and power” 80, Fouc gave 3 hypothese: 1) truth is a system of ordered procedures for statements 2) truth is related circularly w/ systems of power that sustain it, produce it, grow it 3) it was necessary for the dvlpmnt of capitalism

241-rainbow says we don’t need epistemologies of others, we should locate how and when ppl started caliming epistemologies
-and pluralize approaches against philosophic or ecoc hegemony

242-clifford has created a new specialty (tho inspired by geerz), he only writes about anthgcl writing
243-says geerz has admitted the “ineluctability of fictionalizing, [but] he has never pushed that insight very far”
244-says clfiford says sicne Malinowski, “anthropgcl authority has rested on 2 textual legs”: expermntl “I was there” element, [and] then suppression in the txt establishes the anthos scientific authority”
-Rainbow says Clifford, in this, makes the same mistake—does not examine his own writing—tho pting this out “does not, of course, invalidate his insights (any more than his reading of malinowski’s txtual moves invalidates the analysis of the kula)”
245-clifford rejects experiential and realist /interpretive and supports dialogic and heteroglossic (but obsetnsibly denies a hierarchy)
246-tho he doesn’t define exactly how these look

247-f. jameson (“pomosm and” 83) said pomosm started w/ late capitalism when the whole world be3came capitalist, in 60s, reaction to modsm (248) and entered the academy in the 80s, tho it was packaged and domesticated as safe
250-jameson relates promosm to schizophrenia—in that “schiz is an exprc of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which fail to link up in a coherent sequence…a signifier that has lost its significance has thereby been transformed into an image” (:120)
-tho it does not become free from reference, it references other txts

251-macropoll ecoc conditions have not been affected by these debates

252-pomosm (as in Clifford) has its blind spots (esp of not looking at self)—it is the result of a specific historical situ too and is not universal
-bourdieu 84 showed that authors always write from a position of power and this creates restraints, tho ppl deny this
253-would “longer, dispersive, multi-authored txts…yield tenure”?—it needs to b addressed; also idea that fieldwork is necessary to b respected in anthgy
-a tactic of “elite group is to refuse to discuss—to label as vulgar or uninteresting—issues that r uncomfortable for them”
-need to look at hiring, grants, destroyed careers, etc

255-some say quest to add plurarlity is good, some say the conflict from it is better and groups should stay separate (ie some feminists)

258-says we r now cosmopolitain—“w/ an acute consciousness (often roced upon ppl) of the inescapabilties and particularities of places, characters, historical trajectories,and fates”

260-fouc 82:212 distinguishes btwn domination (control), exploitation, and subjugation (control of idy, culture)—last is least studied
“Afterward: Ethnogphc Writing to Anthropolgcl Career” by George E. Marcus 262-266

265-the “gen intellectual mood of the period,” can determine how a dissertation in received

-and now, b/c of the new self-critical trend, u don’t always have to produce an ethnography for a dissertation