Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Lecture Plan
Part 1: Writing culture debates Part 2: Feminist critique Part 3: Between a Melanesanist and a feminist
Traditionally anthropologists in classical texts positioned themselves as authorities and the sole authors of their text (Malinowski, Margaret Mead, Linhart etc..) They are the observing Western eye writing about the non-Western other Anthropologist has authority to write a coherent seamless narrative about others The experience and process of writing about people who different to themselves rarely reflected upon in the 1980s
Clifford writes: The subjectivity of the author is separated from the objective referent of the text. At best, the authors personal voice is seen as a style in the weak sense: a tone, or embellishment of the facts. Moreover, the actual field experience of the ethnographer is presented only in very stylised ways (i.e. the arrival stories) (1986: 13)
E.g. Nisa: the life of a !Kung Woman: Marjorie Shostak juxtaposes her voice with that of a !kung woman to show two different interpretations Kevin Dwyer in Moroccan Dialogues shows the text to be a production between himself and a Moroccan farmer
Here we have the idea looked at last week from feminist (point return to below) That there is no gods eye view For the anthropologist: in ethnographic fieldwork can not capture the whole no such standpoint in reality Writing the text anthropologists leave out irrelevant personal and historical circumstances that do not fit the narrative/ argument
External and self-imposed limits to all research what makes it good research Informants will leave out information of talking to the ethnographer Key is to be reflexive on what left out, what not included and the power dynamics involved in the politics of representation
Ethnographers are more and more like the Cree hunter who (the story goes) came to Montreal to testify in court concerning the fate of his hunting lands. He would describe his way of life. But when administered the oath he hesitated: Im not sure I can tell the truth I can only tell what I know. (Clifford 1986: 8)
So why is a feminist perspective missing from this important book on writing culture: Clifford writes: Feminism has not contributed much to the theoretical analysis of ethnographies as texts (1986: 20).
Feminist argue why then do those involved in writing culture LOOK TO postmodernism for their inspiration and NOT TO feminism Why because Clifford, Marcus et al misunderstand the complexities of feminist theory Irony Clifford draws on Nisa: a !Kung woman in his essay in the writing culture volume (key feminist ethnography) To show polyvocality and engagement with the other in the production of the text Therefore shows his desire not to include feminists a political agenda of exclusion
Argument is that Clifford and his co-writers want to give the impression that their approach is unique like colonial explorers when in reality they are covering old ground trodden by feminists Emphasis upon postmodernism is also critiqued Postmodernism critiques the idea of an objective truth reality to favour multiple perspectives, meanings and interpretations Feminist find it ironic that postmodernism popular in the 1980s when postcolonial people and women gaining a voice They contend the emphasis on contested truth in postmodernism shared by feminist but they grounded in politics (equality for women) in the way postmodernism not grounded in political standpoint
Also argued that this whole writing culture and reflexive turn about jobs for the boys who has tenure who part of the establishment and so about institutional power in the academy
I can not substitute feminism for anthropology or vice-versa, listen to one and forget the other. At the same time, each constitutes a position from which to regard a counter position each side affords a position from which to see the other (1991: 35 Partial Connections)
The relationship between feminism & anthropology becomes: A single perspective seen twice (1991: 113) In this way feminism becomes an aid or tool for Strathern as an anthropologist it introduces thoughts she might never wise have had But there remains a disjunction between what she learns about the world of Melanesian people as an anthropologist and what she learns about the world from Western feminists these knowledges like the duck and the rabbit figure and ground (explore in more detail now)
So feminists can argue that culture is incomplete when womens body processes do not correspond to dominant ideologies learnt in the process of socialisation For example - womens bodily waste should be constrained to the private sphere, pregnancy is about the private sphere and menopause is a private issue (hegemonic view) But this view of world is negotiated by women while engaging the public sphere In this way women make an absence a kind of presence Our experiences of pregnancy, menopause etc.. Challenge a notion that all of this is about the private sphere we complicate that division in our lived experiences of our bodies
And the challenging of a kind of absence through our experience reflects the way in which you might take a text apart to reveal hidden meanings And so un-do certain social values in order to find reasons for constructing alternative ones And find that as feminist we continue this practice multi-layers of text and also culture are taken apart
Mekeo conceives a foetus on the outside of her body to be displaced to the inside Look inside a bush not to find more inside more bush but becomes displaced to reveal what it is not the outside the village So no infinite regression no hidden meaning but displacement In this way, the feminist notion of deconstruction does not capture and explain Melanesian peoples understandings of the world and social life
To summarise
She has a feminist understanding of deconstruction which relates to the reading of texts, the body and socialisation We learn things and can take them apart to find hidden meanings As we can a text this a feminist perspective However Mekeo people dont see the world in that way as something to be taken apart rather displacement no hidden meanings
In her writing then she conceives her relationship between a feminist and a Melanesianist as awkward, figure: ground, a single perspective seen twice she can only think of a Melanesian perspective in this way because she has the contrast to a feminist perspective
She writes: figure and ground work as two dimensions. They are self scaling not two perspectives as it were, but one perspective seen twice, ground as another figure, figure as another ground. Since each behaves as an invariant in relation to the other, the dimensions are not constituted in any totalising way (Strathern 1991L 113)
To end with paraphrasing Donna Haraway - a feminist who ideas Strathern believes are good to think with:
one (perspective) is too few and two is too many (Haraway 1991: 117)
Questions
What do the debates about writing culture tell us about the experience of writing social research? What issues does this debate raise about the position of the sociologist / anthropologist in relation to the people with who they research? Why were feminist angry with this critique? Why does Strathern find the relationship between feminists and anthropologists awkward?