The Elementary Forms of Relus Life by e. durk 12, this translation by Karen e. fields and intro 95
“Translator’s Intro: Rel as an Eminently Social Thing”
xvii-durk insists “that rels r founded on and express ‘the rea’” and durk says no rels r “false” and “grounded in the nature of things”’ (xviii) tho even critics since his time said that meant durk’s search for an underlying reality does not rest on a logical basis
xviii-and rel meets ppls’ “needs”; durk says totemism is a “system of collective reprtations”, (xix) w/ which society and indv mentality constitutes itself—these became real for indv—b/c humans r social beings
-rel/symbols helps to connect ppl to non human objects and other ppl (mutal idy)—and it only works for ppl who believe it, “for things exist only thru reprtation”—and humans have a distinct way of knowing
-eg human sociability, and “rel is reason’s first harbor”, the mind is a collective product and science as an offspring of rel via ‘abstract thot’ (xx), and thru the “social treasurey of lang”
xx-def of rel: “above all, a system of ideas by which men imagine the society of which they r members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have w/ it” (see p227); rejected every theory of rel and wouldn’t have survived if hadn’t been grounded in the real
xxii-formes is a classic in socy and anthrogy; xxiii Foucault (see note #25) acknowledges a debt to durk, so then do other pomosts
xxiv-why read calssics? Says “b/c it presents the opportunity to encounter a dazzlingly complex soul whose burden of life animates the work”, like great art it “leaps beyond technical limits of the artist’s discipline…into a felt reality of elemental truth”; and durk was a “hard-nosed” on “positive science”, (xxvi) tho says “the man who has command w/ his god…is stronger” (441)
xxvii-durk comments on e. b. tylor’s idea that many ppl believed in a soul that it was rt and necessary to understand real, unlike st. Augustine who said ppl believed in absurd, tylor said idea of soul was to explain dreams
xxviii-durk criticized tylor asking why humans insist on understanding dreams so fast, when it took them centuries to understand what the sun was; durk says soul is to explain why communities live on after someone’s death, (xxix) the soul stood for the social part of man, picked up only before, fouc 71 (xxx) durk said it thusly also repd a sense of a “spark of the divinity”’ (xxxi) and implies that even science is rel b/c it has same funct—“to make us act and to help us live” (p419), she says durk’s vackground influenced him; (xxxiii)says swain’s translation made things unclear
xxxiv-real def of rel: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one singe moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them” (p44)—rel is not defined in terms of any unobservable phena, system means it’s “internally ordered”, and its done by community
xxxv-breaking down the famous line: “Is it not that the god and the society r one and the same”” (p288)—which many have taken to mean god=society, (xxxvi) but no. Durk thot belief in rel is fundamntl for society, not god
xxxvii-belief in what’s real and stuff beyond reality and even science needs that, too (xxxviii) but rites r more important (social) b/c rel, just on faith would die w/ doubt, (xxxix) and any form of rel is still rel, tho he ?s it; criticized for seeing the Australians as “tradl” (evory), he didn’t think that, it appears like that cuz he used them as a “simple” example
*xli-Durk: ppl exprc a force that is greater than them (mana), and that it is also in an object—they start to think that, soon, the object starts to remind them of that feeling, and ritual renews that feeling in the object b/c it always fades (xlii), ; what this exprc is is of xsociety’s “pulling itself together”, it’s a real power, felt by indv and “collective conscience”—durk says all ppl exprc this
xiv-sacredness is not an inherent quality, (xlvi) “it is a quality that objects axquire when they r, in the phrase from durk’s def, ‘set apart and forbidden’”, and if its thot of as real, it is
xvii-“The truth of the mind is in the fictions that, via conscience collective, construct the real”’ so (xlix) many “nonrelus” domains could b called relus
-and after man not trad social force, he noticed forces in nature, then incorpd nature, then started to imitate it—science and morality relate as ppl try to mold interaction based off nature
*li-and unfortunately this means monstrosities commited by ppl r not aberrations but normal and “socially responsible”
1-says he’s studying most primitive and simple rel—tho not #1 says it’s a vague term, but it can be helpful if used carefully; uses it b/c it appears no other rel has preceded it in that society
-ed. Notes durk’s use of “positive science” refers to comte (1798-1857) who saw it also as “empirical”, it’s the progression from theology to metaphysics to sicence
-durk says diffc btwn history/ethnoy to sociology is that they simply become “acquinted w/ bygone civilizations”, socy’s “purpose above all is to explain present reality that is near to us and thus capable of affecting our ideas and actions…that reality is man” and studies “archaic rel…b/c it seems better suited than any other to help us comprehend the relus nature of man, that is, to reveal a fundamntl permanent aspect of humanity”
-says most ppl think rels have unequal value
2-a “fund postulate of socy [is] that a human instittn could not rest upon error and falsehood. If it did, it could not endure”, they r “grounded in the nature of things” so those who c rel as false must b mistaken
-they dislike rel b/c its myths seem impossible, “But we must know how to reach beneath the symbol to grasp the reality it reps and that gives the symbol its true meaning”
-so ppl may b mistaken in how they justify their beliefs, but “there r no rels that r false”—“All fulfil given conditions of human exprc, tho in diff ways”---and all rels “r equally relus”
3-all rels “fulfill the same needs, play the same role, and proceed from the same causes”
-believes in evory theory and Australian reps a primitive rel that became more complex [tho not more relus], looks at history to explain dvlpmnt
-based on “Cartesian” method of linking historical and observable idea together to get scientific truth, all directed by an unproven hypothesis—“even the most specialized scholars must” do this
4-says understanding rel has always been a prob for philsophs and they ususly just take their idea and use examples to prove it, but he says look at similarities outward, then figure out deeper ones, that all symbols and rituals serve same funct, but rels r too complex and diverse to simply observe commonalities (5) but “lower societies” r not as complex, not as many power struggles, division of labor, classes
6-it was by studying primitives that ethnographer bachofen (mid 19th ce) proved that not all societies have male head of house; and idea of divinity was provent not to b ubiquitous (eg australisans)
-“ethnogy has often brot about the most fertile revs in the various braches of study” despite it not being respected by historians
7-so he is looking at the origins of rel—tho not in its historical sense, “there is nothing scientific about the ?, and it resolutely must b set aside. There is no radical instant when rel began to exist…Like every other human instittn, rel begins nowhere. So all speculation in this genre r rtly discredited; they can consist of only subjective and arbitrary constructions w/out checks of any sort” [geertz expands on this]
*-durk instead looks at “the ever-present causes on which the most basic forms of relus thot and practice depend”—and thses “r more easily observable” in less complex societies
-note #3 says when durk says origin of primitive he uses those in “an entirely relative sense”—not an “absolute” evory idea
8-“It has long been known that the first systems of reprtations that man made fo the world and himself were of relus origin”, all rels have “both a cosmology and a speculation about the divine”—sicence and philosophy came from them
9-arist’s cats of thot r found in austrailans rel—proving these ideas came from rel—(10) b/c they r social ideas—need to relate things w/ other ppl, time and space have relus significance
12-also conceptions of “genus, force, personality, and efficacy”
15-since for the indv the sensing of objects is subjective, the social/rel brings them together to form reality (16) so when an indvthinks and acts, he transcends himself—b/c in talking or thingking about things, consensus is necessary—*and if this is left up to free choice of indv, society would dissolve—that’s societiy’s pull to conformity, judgment
17-and thse r more than “just symbols”, they r very close to what the reality is, the symbols “closely follows nature”—(18) the concepts r not completely subjective, he says this combines apriorism and empriricism [bu doesn’t this reject empriricsm really?]
23-says the idea that rel is belief in supernat/ mystery/ incomprehensible (h. spencer, m. muller) is wrong b/c its not in all rels and primitives didn’t think rel was stuff beyond reason—even tho to uis it would b
24-not even belief in spuernat bodies that force things in universe is gainst apriori reason, tho it’s not directly supported by sicence; “universal determinism” is a new idea (laws of all nature)
25-u can c examples when looking, socieal sciences—only a few ppl believe society is guided by laws—common undertandigns of society r oversimplifications, like primitieve resl
-agrees w/ Jevons 1896
27-another common way to describe rel is belief in divinities; “spiritual beings”=”unconscious subjects that have capacities superior or to those of ordinary men” (see tylor, revile, frazer, brueses)
28-but many rels where spiritual beings r absent or play only small role (eg bud, cf burnof, barth , bilderberg?); (31) also Jainism; (32) and their rites void of idea of god in deistic rels)
32-eg dietary restrictions, (33) and relus formalism done for its own sake
-“rel is a whole composed of parts—a more or less complex system of myths, dogmas, rites, and ceremonies…Since a whoel can b defined only in relationship to the parts that compromise it, a better method is to try to characterize the elementary phena from which any rel reulsts, and then characterize the sytem produced by their union”
34-says folklores aren’t rel—but “jumbled survivals”
-2 basic cats of relus phena: beliefs and rites
-what distinguishes rites from moral practices is it addresses a diff object (which is defined by belief)
-“all known relus beliefs” “presuppose a classification of 2 distinct things”: sacred and profane, (35) even Bud (4 noble truths); its not necessarily based on hierarchy b/c sometimes gods r treased as =s
39-magic is rel that is more in pursuit of utilitarian ends, myths and beliefs less well dvlpd—what distinguishes them:
41-“Relus beliefs proper…[r] indvlly accepted by all members of that grp, but they also belong to the group and unify it. The indvs who comprise the grp feel joined to one another by the fact of common faith. A society whose members r united b/c they imagine the sacred world and its realtions w/ the profane world in the same way, and b/c they translate this common reprtation into identical practices, is what is called a Church. In history we do not find rel w/out Church”, churches can b many sizes and b governed or not, “But wherever we observe relus life, it has a definitive grp as its basis” (he includes ‘private cults” like a fam or corp)—and says these r more “like chapels to the society’s larger church”
42-magic, otoh, “do not bind men who believe in them to one antoehr and unite them into the same grp, living the same life. There is no church of magic.” No ties comparable to rel’s, just clients. “The official and public character w/ which the magician is sometimes invested makes no diffc”, and magic grps “r not at all indespensible for the functng of jagic”, rare, while “rel is inseperable from the idea of Church”—rels have a “moral community”, magic doesn’t
43-and as for ppl who chose their own gods w/in a relus trad, durk says they r still w/in church—tho h. spencer 1896 and a. Sabatier 1897 predicted these indv rels would b how rel is all practiced in the future
44-and as for “present-day”, “entirely interior and subjective” rel “freely constructed by ea one of us”—thi is “of uncertain possibilities”, not “real, accomplished facts”’ tho *“It is possible that this relus indvlsm is destined to become fact” but to understand we must understand first “what rel is”
44- def of rel: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one singe moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them”
45-says even primitive rels r complex “…that it has seembed impossible to regard them as anything but a product of a rather long evo”
-so scholars have tried to find shared elements to all rels and have came upt w/ 2 contrary sols “natureism” and “animism” (worship of spirits)—they ea say the other derived from them
46-tylor came up w/ animism in primitive culture 1871, h. spencer adopted it in principles of socgy 1886, (51) but not enough rels believe it to be real, (52) tho tylor was first to apply history to idea of soul, philosophiers had taken it for granted before, (53) tho that the dream state is necessarily antoher soul is not apriori; (59) and if u say that rels just got more complex since its primitieve version, then all low societies would have grp worship as predominant; (68) animists r primarily anthros/ethnos—and animism does not really express reality
69-ppl started seeing similarities in indo-euprn myths and started looking for origins, esp in the Vedas (m. muller 1856, a. Kuhn 1850J, (70) muller believes in the empiricist adage that there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses—and they r firstly nat phena, (71) gods were named after them, (72) and b/c nature feels so infinite and powerful man feels completely dominated by it
72-when man tried to describe this exprc he put them into words, (74) but worlds r very bague (and actions resemble human action, cuz that’s all he can relate it to eg “wind pushes”) and this metaphor was (mis)taken literally
76-m. muller thot similar rel spread w/ indo erupn lang (wrds), tho others said there have been borrowings everywhere
77-durk says that b/c naturism said ppl said ppl wanted theories of nature, tests of these theories would have proved otehrwaise and ended rel
-errors can only perpetuate unless it “proves to b practically ture” –good enough—or “clever ticks prevented [ppl] from noticing that it did not give them what they expected of it”, (78) and if that’s the case, that’s like like a simplistic 18th ce explanation (rel is delirium, wrong); for muller lang and thot r inseparable
79-muller also distinguished btwn myth and rel—rel only dealt w/ morality, everything else is myth, but then, durk says, u must also subtract rts from rel b/c they r mostly to embodied dieties, and it wouldn’t then explain cults (80) so durk warns against “differentiating among relus beliefs”’ (81) durk also criticizes idea that primitives “marvels” at nature, calling it divine—he says that’s a mod idea put on them, (82) and that primitives saw nature infinite a distinct from profane; (83) beises, man feels he has control over nature (rites do that),a dn he says his study discproves the primacy of cosmic divinities—says the first were actually of plants and animals
85-word “totemism” first appeared late 18th ce on nat amers, then mclennan applied it to all humanity 1870, and others had noted its linked w/ social org
86-robertson smith then explained it thoroughly that humans saw animals as same
91-frater ? made a compendium of totems—throughout world and ages, following the “aim” of anthrogy, “not 2 situate rels in the social milieu of which they r apart”
-notes that even tho both he and anthrogy r looking for smthing universal to man, they c rel “as an innate given”, he sees it as “a product of social causes” and social history is therefore necessary
92-and so even when things from 2 cultures appear similar, they often have diff import (eg equating primitives and w. democracy, collectivism, monogamy)
-can only compare “the fact we know well”, u must know a society thoroughly, quality over quantity, and at most only compare 1 or 2 places (after thoro research)
99-ritual and beliefs r so closely related that they can’t be truly separate, “Altho in principle derived from the beliefs, the cult nevertheless reacts upon them, and the myth is often molded on the rite”, But “still, they r often of such a diff order that separate study of them is indepensible and sicne it is impossible to understand anything about a rel w/out knowing the ideas on which it rests, we must first beome acquinted w/ those ideas”
-doesn’t look at all details, just “elementary ideas”
100-for Australians, the clan is the grp “that has a dominant place in collective life”, ea person in it feels they r kin, and it bears the name “of a definite species or material things w/ which it thinks it has special relations” (esp kinship relations)—this is the clan’s totem, as well as ea indv member’s—and not 2 clans have same 1, (101) and members can live in diff areas
101-word “totem” comes from ojibway and Algonquin tribe to mean what durk said
102-totems can b named after parts of objects (rare), or (103) mythical ppl (rare), or a cosmic body (rare); (104) sometimes totem is passed thru mother (tho in that case child still lives w/ father’s fam), sometimes fathers all must marry outside clan
104-rarely, a child get neither parent’s totem but that of a mythical ancestor
105-w/in clans, there r no more than 2 phratries (fraterneties)—apparently old clans that have been brot together by new clas; (107) and thse r further broken down into marriage classes
109-there r a lot of clans in a tribe (compared to nat amers who have only a few # of clans in a tribe, but bigger pops for ea), says (110) australian’s clan disorg is due to whites
111-totem is an emblem, every person is reqd to wear it, (112) on housing, weapons (durk relates to eupn feudal lords), (113) burial sites , (115) intentional scarring, hair styles
118-used in relus ceremonies—and they classify things as sacred (eg the churinga)
127-prohibition against eating totemic animal or plant, except for mystical/ritual eating, (128) tho there r exceptions
133-“the images of the totemic being r more sacred than the totemic being itself” b/c they have more restrictions
-a person believes he is also the totemic object—so he is partially sacred—(134) believe he and animal r genealogically related and (135) evolved into man
136-human blood is hold, (137) so is hair
139-the totem and man r seen as relatively equal, not like a god man
141-durk warns of applying eurpn ideas to Australians—eg thinking clans r simply small grps of men w/in tribe, (142) but they really c everything as part of the tribe, like body parts, and certain things belong to ea phratry and ea clan
*145-says this is how all humans first tarted, says the ideas of classification is “modeled on social org”, “It is b/c men formed grps that they were able to grp things”, (146) “The unity of these first logical systems merely reproduces that of society”, tho does not discount indv seeing similar and dissimilar things
147-“But a feeling of similarity is one thing; the notion of kind is another” Kind is a framework, and their “content cannot itself provide the framework in which it is placed”, (148) “The only groupings of that kind w/ which exprc acquints us r those that man form by coming together”; (149) include hierarchy
149-“Neither the panorama of physical nature nor the mechanisms of mental assoc could possibly give us the idea of it. Hierarchy is exlusively a social thing. Only in society do superiors subordinates, and equals exist”—[why not nature, sun?]
151-all things under a totem “Really r of the same flesh”, kin; (152) subtotems/clans can emerge when ppl have friendships or other ties
154-and sicne everything is classified under some totem, everything is somewhat relus; and (155) the toems for nat phena will (as in some societies) become divine personalities
155-and everyone shares the beliefs of diff clasn—as one whole (goes thru rutials to use objects from others’ totems)
158-a person’s name is also his indv totem (160) and he has that animal’s quilities and faults, and destinies r indpndnt—more prohibitions for this animal, (161) and has power to control there and its not a whole species but a special indv one, tho sometimes it’s the spicies, called (162) “indv totemism”—phrase invented by frazer
163-diffc btwn caln and ind totem—indvl does not believe he is descended from it and he tries to prevent others from eating it, and its not hereditary, but deliberate thru rites, and is not always (166)
166-sexual totemism is btwn ind and collective (only in Australia), not in all tribes too, (167) men and women have animals for ea sex which is a protector, (168) sexes live apart
169-says Australian rel is “in all probability the most primitive that has ever existed, for it is insepearable from social org based upon clans, and, futehermore, that clans, in the form they take in a great many Australian societies, could not have come into being w/out the totem”—the dispersion of clansppl
-there has never been a society w/ only 1 clan “yet been found”, and so a society w/ 2 clans is simplest
171-says tylor’s and wilkens examples of groups who totemism as derived from anscetor worship, that their evidence come from ppls that have “a relatively high level of culture”, and “have gone beyond the phase of pure totemism”, they have families, not clans, (170) and they don’t explain why ppl distinguish btwn animals but souls don’t, tylor and wundt c it as animal worship: and (174) jevons’ theory that man sought animals for protection doesn’t explain why clans only have 1 animal
177-if indv totemism came first—others have thot it “but they r totally w/out indv support” (177) (eg used it for protection for indv then others), (181) and if indv totems is the most primitive, then Australians would b doing it most, but it is in fact rare; and indvl totemism presupposes the clan—and 3rd partygrants th ppl their totems—and that totem becomes part of the clan
183-frazer changed his original hypothesis and said totemism started w/ holy geography, where children r born, then later (184) detached from territory by imagining soul travel and gollow their ppl
184-but still, why does man distinguish himself from animal?
185-durk reemphasizes diffc btwn rel and magic is rel’s distinction btwn sacred and profane
186-lang said totemism emerged as easily identifieable names needed to distinguish ea clan; 1872 and like frazer denies totemism is a rel, and were later added to rels
*191-def of totem: “the tangible form in which that intangible substance is repd in the imagination; diffused thru all sorts of disparate beings, that energy alone is the real object of the cult”, (192) it is a force, and has a moral nature (moral obligation for reverence)
193-tho admits has not sure if Australians think of totems in these terms—but idea is “no way beyond the primitive”
194-some believe in an all unifying spirit (durk says this came from totemisms unifying) (eg Sioux wkan—tho it’s not a supreme being, (187) and mana)
195-defends australians’ ability to think in abstracts; (199) but reason why a universal rel didn’t really dvlp in Australia is it needs a large centralized trib
201-says his theory is based “on the grounds that man is at first ruled mainly by his senses and by sensuous repretation”
-says this totemic idea is the basis for “rels of all time”—(200) and mana (and therefore totemism) is used to describe the force that causes things to happen
208-the totem is the symbol of g and society—they r the same; society “undoubtedbly has all that is reqd to arouse the sensations of the divine”
209-like g, “society also fosters in us the sense of perpetual dependence. Precisely b/c society has its own specific nature that is diff from our nature as indvls, it pursues ends that r also specifically its own; but b/c it can achieve those ends only by working thru us, it categorically demands our cooperation. Society reqs us to make ourselves its servants, forgetful of our own intererests…[it imposes rules]. And so, at every instant, we must submit to rules of action and thot that we have neither made nor wanted and that sometimes r contrary to our inclinations and to our most basic instincts”—and we submit out of “genuine respect” for it—this is its “moral influence”—(210) and the fact that this is shared by everyone makes it more dominant that petty thots
210-this is manifested in ppls opinions—giving it authority, and tho science tries to get correct opinion, it can only do so b/c it has authority and that authority is granted by opinion, so if public opinion was against science, “it would run the risk of seeing its credibility erode”
*211-evidence is one gets the same elevated emotion in rel and social situs, (213) social mvmnts; in all actions, b/c they relate to others and therefore society, esp when we feel we have same morality as others, (214) using instittns from previous ppl (rts, tools, knowledge)
214-and since “man is man only b/c he is civilized…he could not escape the sense of mighty causes existing outside him”—man sees it as the force of society and nature; and physical things wouldn’t b as respected w/out seeing this force—that’s the distinction btwn the sacred and profane
*215-and things society feels res its “deepest aspirations as well as the means of fulfilling them” can become sacralized—that’s why pols is so close to rel—even totems (216) like liberty, reason, etc.
216-tho passion may wane as causes end
217-“Since the emotional and passionate faculties of the primitive r not fully subordinated to his reason and will, he easily loses self control” (gives examples of running around, throwing)
216-“Prolly b/c a collective emotion cannot b expressed collectively w/out some order that permits harmony and union of mvmnt, these gestures and cries tend to fall into rhythm and regularity, and from there into song and dance” [problematic]—describing the clan coming together for the corroboree in which they break several taboos
220-these parties r where most Australian relus activity takes place—so durk says this is where “the relus idea seems to have been born”
221-tho admits some rites happen other times
-thinks that moving from such opposite social situs—“utter colorlessness, one of hyper excitement”—was done in order to “realise the exprc” [but y?]
-“It is, in fact, a will-known law that the feelings a thing arouses in us r spontaneously transmitted to the symbol that reps it” says eg black is a sign of mourning and therefore “evokes sad thots”—its b/c both “idea of the thing and the idea of its symbol r closely connected in our mind”
*-and its easier to imagine smthing when its clear than if its complex—that’s why symbols r used; (222) the totem is the flag of the clan
223-the community effervescense, “lifts them up to a higher life”—these “moral pwers” (224) r also the “life-principles of things…that make the plants grow and the animals multiply”—so things (225) that perpetuate moral life (law, morals, fine arts) and those that r useful to material life (nat sciences, industrial techniques)—sprang? From rel, directly or indirectly”
*225-rejects the theory that rel started w/ mans fear of nat forces—says its not proven by facts , totemists c gods as friends and protectors
*-says “jealous and terrible gods” don’t, come later in rel’s evo (226) b/c that’s when societies r harsh and oppressive Leviathans, but in primitive societies, they surrender w/out resistence to society—and rel couldn’t justi from physical nature b/c that doesn’t have idea of something unseen
227-and this force is real, so rel contains “a sense and a reasonableness”; (228) but rel cannot cause delirium—men predisposed to extreme psychological conditions become important ppl for rels—and that’s why liquor is used in rts—what rel brings is simple exciteemtn, but it allows for delusions b/c they think it will expose a true seer
228-then again, everything is a delusion—thinking tha something is something else is what a symbol is—and even (229) tho symbols r “purely ideal, the powers thereby conferred on that object behave as if they were real…b/c social thot, w/ its imperative authority, has a power that indv thot cannot possible have”—230 “peudo-delirium”
*230-“Relus force is none other than the feeling that the collectivity inspires in its members, but projected outside the minds that exprc them, and objectified. to become objectified, it fixes on a thing that thereby becomes sacred…Where relus force become objectified depends entirely upon what circumstances cause the feeling that generates relus ideas to settle here or there…”
231-that an emblem can b a rallying pt for ppl is b/c “By expressing the social unity tangibly, it makes the unit itself more tangible to all”
*-“By themselves, indv consciousnesses r actually closed to one another, and they can communicate only by means of signs in which their inner states come to express themselves”
232-w/out symbols the feelings from social gatherings would fade w/ memory and ppl will revert to indv thots, but a symbol can keept that idea
233-one of the most basic and common symbols is the tattoo-(234) it is “the most direct and expressive means by which the communion of minds can b affirmed”
234-that’s why totems r not of the actual animal—their purpose is to show their community, moral life
*-the clan, of all society forms, lacks the most cohesion, so it needs most emblems to keep it together
235-y r most the emblems animals or plants? 1) b/c they needed an emblem—it had to b smthing they could draw 2) should b smthing ppl were “most closely and habitually in contact”--animals r best, exp b/c of their ecoc import, and they have a more “kindered nature” w/ man than plants, and cosmic things weren’t distinct enough from ea other; *(236) cites research that found that “totemic centers r most often situated near a mountain, spring, or gorge where the animals that serve as the groups totme r found in abundance…”—so they also could of got the totem during assemblies
238-the reason primitives believed that pplplants, animals, etc could b part of ea other (like mythical ppl) was not thru simple observation, but b/c of totemism’s idea that all these things share the same essence (“Nowhere can a collective feeling become conscious of itself w/out fixing upon a tangible object; but by that very fact, it participates in the natureof that object, and vice versa”
239-reasoning (ie that a makes b, and c is related 2 d)—not just that everything is a distinct object) could only been produced by collective thot b/c it “would req a hyperextension of intellectual forces that is possible only in and thru society”
240-criticizes levi-bruhl’s critique of primitive ideas (that saying man is bird, is a violation of rule of law of contradiction) b/c science still does eg light is a vibration of the ether, etc—we still unify things, plus primitives won’t mix totems from dif clans—only diff criteria—(241) so that is the most basic “logical” thot
242-all known rels deal w/ “soul—its origin and destiny”, but its characteristics (244) r indefinite, esp from grp to grp, even in Australia, (249) tho they r genlly all similar
251-for Australians, “the soul is none other than the totemic principle incarnated in ea indv” esp b/c it started at beginning of time and is immortal
257-humans get the soul of ancestor and is also their totem (258)—passed thru reincarnation
266-and like relus ideas and divinities, the “idea of the soul is not w/out reality”—society does indeed enter us, “It arouses in us a whole world of ideas and feelings that express it but at the same time r an integral and permanent permanent part of ourselves”
270-denies the idea that a soul’s immortality stems from man’s own desire for immortality and retribution—says those ideas would b alien to primitives b/c of his self-view of insignificane compared w/ society—but lieks idea of seeing dead in dreams as explanation, and (271) births (their gods couldn’t create souls)
272-says for along time ppl have thot the soul was the source of a personality; (273) of philsophs, leibniz’s monad was the most vivid idea—indvl, autonomous part and these r reflections of the “universal consciousness” that is impersonal to us—similar to kant’s reason (impersonal) that is interpreted by our “will”
-soul doesn’t equal spirit, spirit is mostly tied to an object, not a body; (277) ghost is not a true spirit, less power
281-and research showed that some believed objects got sould b/c they rep the bodies of anscestors who died by them—and the souls chose to stay there (at least part of it)
284-durk makes it a pt. to note that harmful nat events could b explained by primitieves in ways other than by supernatural forces, but the relus principle was their system of explaining things—they r not inferior, (285) harmful spirits r outside normal social totemic, tho their magicians use them
286-altho many rites vary btwn clans, some r same (eg tooth extraction, circumcision, subincision, etc) and these rep universal ideas to a tribe—(287) and similar anscestor who is raised to a higher level, the founders of rites and several tribe even have (288) a supreme god, an (289) eternal being, creater of men, (292) sometimes the same god is recognized by multiple tribes at once
*292-tylor thot this was a xn import, lang thot it was a 2nd tribal rel, an advanced stage—(293) both shown to b false: its indigenous and occurs at same time as spirit worship
294-high god is explained w/ the higher level “civilizing heroes”—who gave arts of civilization—but the god is (297) creator of all (tho they may have characteristics of totemic spirits; its animal and human parts”—and they r only celebrated rites for intitiantion to tribe (where many clans meet), meetings of gods, sometimes the supreme gods are winners of battles btwn clan gods
298-an “internatl mythology”
305-“Every cult has 2 aspects; one negative, the other positive”
-“negative cult” is term to describe rites that prohibit it, sacred and profane beings (or sacred from sacred)” from encroaching on the other” , calls it “taboo” (304), tho says here only means “interdiction”, he only uses it b/c its so pop and to reject it “would b an excess of purism”—and there r punishments for violation tho not in magic
309-profane ppl cant talk to sacred or say their names—(310) smtimes foreign words r used instead, (311) profane activities like eating r prohibited during rts
313-weven time must b separate—holy days or weeks—all rels/societies have them
314-ppl must go thru rites of taboo to b able to interact w/ sacred—asceticism dvlpd (316) from this b/c there r so many things that req rites of prohibitions
319-and ritual pain is similar—and that pain is used to revitalize (320) in many rels is not “unfounded”—man subdues pain to rise above animal instincts—it’s a sign of his touch w/ sacred, social—“b/c he has silenced nature, he is stronger than nature”—and there needs to b extreme examples of these to keep the faith
*321-the reason these prohibitions exist is b/c sacred and profane cannot go together in our minds, they r very diff b/c collective vs. indv interests conflict
322-and b/c sacred things r often not objects, its easy for them to mix w/ profane, so rites r done to prevent this—sacred has “contagiousness”, “mere touch”
326-this still goes on in mod sacred things, (criticizes those who think primitieves do it b/c theyre dumber)—it is b/c (327) relus forces r collective, extend over many objects
330-“positive cult” r rites that draw men closer to the sacred, teach him, protect sacred (331), fertility (333) for land—if don’t work (337) he thinks they’ve just been cancelled out by another hostile clan—these r the foundations for relus (340) sacrifice, giving (341) regenerative food to the spirit to live long and helup us, (342) replenish the social energy, and thru rites (343) the sacrificed thing is made divine—tho admits (344) there is no proof that its inherent in totemism or the seed of all other rels
345-criticizes rob smith’s view that men sacrifice food to gods b/c they view them as kings, durk says they r just giving back what they were given b/c gods r everything and can take anything—gods r esp like an animal)—(346)—so sacrifice has 2 important functs—communion and offering (commune by eating some food)
*351-take away society and culture (“laws, sciences, arts, and moral beliefs”) from ppl and they r just animals—(352) but seeing this does not mean we’re past it b/c society still exists
353-and the rhythm of having rites is need of society—it cannot stay doing rites b/c it needs time to work to survive so constantly has to come back together
-“manifest funct of the cult is initially to regularize the course of nat phena”—nat life helped shaped which rites held eg harvests—tho exact form varies
*354-“The more societies dvlp, the less is their tolerance for interruptions that r too pronounced”
355-other rites “mimic the behavior or traits of the animal whose reproduction is hoped for”—“animetic rites”—based (360) on idea that “like produces like”—imitatic totem will produce it (the animal/object itself)—(363) and primitives thinks it works b/c after doing it they “come away from it with an impression of well-being whose causes they do not see clearly but that is well founded”—esp since the only goal is reproducing animal
364-says this is why mod faithful intellectual arguments against ritual as inadequate—they get the emotion (365 says xn is “superior” b/c he knows that this is a psychic process—salvation by “faith alone”), and even if it doesn’t produce results rt away—they don’t just discard it, like in science they have to have lots of evidence before they change beliefs
366-magic is derived (and detached) from rel, not other way around
367-this is of “direct interest to the theory of knowledge: In effect, it is a concrete statement of the law of causality and, in all likelihood, one of the earliest statements of it to have ever existed” eg in “like produces like”—based on the idea of “force”, the “collected force” (eg man, wakan, the totemic principle, etc) is “objectified and projected into things” and durk insists again (368) that nothing besides the social “can give us the idea of that constraining and determinative influence”…”Nothing [of the sense] can teach us can possibly suggest to us the idea of smthng that is an influence or an efficacy” [I disagree]
*-“Granted, physical forces have the same property, but we cannot have direct consciousness of them…we perceive its effects but not the force itself…[but social forces] we not only know the results of their action but c them in action. The force that isolates the sacred being—hodls the profane ones at a distance is, in reality, not in that being; it lives in the consciousness of the faithful. The? Faithful feel it at the very moment that it acts on their wills to to prohibit certain actions and prescribe others…of course, we do not always interpret that influenc adequately, but we cannot fail to b conscious of it”—and it entails ideas of power, domination and subordination
370-this produces idea of cause and effect and it is taken as a priori “in advance of any proof”
371-b/c social interest is at stake, society can’t leave itself up to “mercy of circumstances” and intervenes –so if u reject “like produces like” u reject society
372-says empriricsm tries to prove cause and effect by using cause and effect—durk shows how it started [but doesn’t connect it w/ genetic evo]
*373-and admits its not “a complete theory of the concept of causality”, it varies from place to place “Therefore, one cannot possibly determine what causes and conditions lie behind it after considering only one of the forms it has taken historically. The views that have just been set forth must be regarded as only indicative; they will have to b tested and fleshed out”—tho since this is a primitive society here, it must have played “an important role in the dvlpmnt of human thot and industry, it constitutes a choice expermnt” as so should be generalize alone? “in some measure”
374-tho the tribesmen don’t say they do these rts for moral reasons, (375) they do say they do it b/c ancestors did it—this is thus revitalizing trad, socity
378-other rites depict mythical history, (379) they r only to “make the clan’s mythical past present in ppls’ minds”
384-these rites r like plays, r often fun for observers (recreation) and make men forget about day-to-day (entertainment)—these are 2 other functs of rts
-and they easily blend into acts of pure recreation plays—so (385) plays and art were born form rel; and some rts serve no purpose toehr than need to act, gesticulate
385-all serve as zones for “free comos” “to refresh a spirit worn down by all that is overburdening in dy-to-day labor”
386-so mythology and poetry r part of rel
390-and rts purposes an change, and several rts can b used for same end
392-for rts of mourning, fear—durk calls them “piacular rites”, from “expiate”, similar to “misfortune”, (394) extreme self-wounds, silence, appearance, (396) can even cause death, (397) and a “kind of anger is mingeled w/ it” , fights of revenge and other beatings
400-mourning is doen also by ppl not too close to deceased, says often u talk to them about smthing else during this, they suddenly turn “cheerful”—ppl r obliged to lament—(403) if don’t’, there r social punishments—(403) says it’s b/c if they were indiff, it would b like saying that he/she “does not hold its rightful place in their hearts…for a fam to tolerate that one of its members should die w/out being mourned would give witness there by that it lacks moral unity and cohesiveness: It abdicates, it renounces its existence”
406-also “When enemies or white men “ see their sacred relus objects eg churingas, (407) bad harvests, drought
412-says rob smith pointed out vagueness of sacred—good and evil spirits r opposites, but neither r profane (413), (414) and can change to both
415-durk says “pure and impure r …2 varieties of the same genus that includes all sacred things”
416-evil spirits still “rep society, but society captured in a very diff positive”—that it has to affirm itself
“Concl”
419-the believer is “stronger” and more confident than nonrelus, and this can’t be accomplished or w/ just ideas (tho most rel sciencests say rites r unimportant), thot only brings out own emotions, (420) action is necessary b/c that is participation w/ social
420-relus beliefs, from “a definite exprc”, “not inferior to that of scientific expermnts, tho it is diff”, “it by no means follows that the reality which grounds? It should conform objectively w/ the idea the believers hav of it” –proof is the infinitely diff views of reality
421-b/c “society is above all an active cooperation”—so the action dominates relus life
-“nearly all the great social instittns were born in rel”…”b/c the idea of society is the soul of rel”
424-“Collective life awakens relus thot”: “effervescence,” “vital energies become hyperexcited, the passions more intense, the sensations more powerful”, man feels “somhow transformed and in consequence transforms his surroundings” and to account for this he imputes to the things nearby w/ “exception powers and virtues that the objects of ordinary exprc do not possess”—“ideal conceptions”—and we refer to that object during everyday life (425), *and sometime society doesn’t know which way to go--”conflict breaks out”
425-this “faculty” is “a condition of his existence” –w/out it, he would not b social, a man—and then collective ideas r indvlzd
*426-so this creates all sorts of feelings, ideas, laws, etc that “mutually attract one antoehr, repel one another, fuse todether, subdivide and proliferate”—none is “directly commanded and necessitated by the state of the underlying reality”—even somte things happen w/ no purpose other than pleasure or self affirmation
427-indv cults r just like totemism; but cannot b sustained alone
*428-prdicts that the more important intl grouping become, the more a “universalistic tendency could dvlp and the pt. of affecting not only the highest (429) ideas of the relus system but also the very principles on which it rests”
-“there is something eternal in rel that is destined to outlive the succession of particular symbols in which relus thot has clothed itself
-all societies renew themselves in ceremonies, evne if ty aren’t called same thing
-“If today we have some difficulty imagining what the feasts and ceremonies of the futre will b, it is b/c we are going thru a period fo transition and moral mediocrity”, old ways lost their power b/c they r common sustom, or we’ve forgotten them, or “they no longer syuit our aspirations”, and xnty seems to leave too much room for unjest inequalities. (and comte was trying to bring them back) but it won’t b “artificially revied. It is life in itself, and not a dead past, that can produce a living cult”
- “But that state of uncertainty and confused anxiety cannot last forever. A day will come when our societies once again will know hours of creative effervescence during which new ideasl will again spring forth and new formulas emerge to guide humanity for a time” and there (430) will b celebrations, revivals (eg fr rev)
430-“Never, perhaps, has the contrast btwn reason and faith been so pronounced” than now
431-but rel and science have same goals: “scientific thot is only a more perfected form of relus thot. Hence it seems nat that rel should lose ground as science becomes better at performing its task”—tho this is seen as profanation by some
*432-this is the real conflict—but “pple often have a mistaken idea of it”, they say science denies rel, but it cant deny reality; and sicence can’t really replace rel b/c it can’t offer a substitute “means of making men live”—science “does not create life”, “rel seems destined to transform itself rather than disappear” and rel must always be justified for men—and sicence can do this
434-sense perceptions r elusive and so we also can’t know what others sense, (436) but w/ so many ppl thinking about the same thing there becomes a “type” of thot or action—from the collectivity (eg most words talk about stuff we never expercd and who knows all the wrds and their meaning in his lang?)
-so concepts r collective rertations—and they relect what a society thinks about it eg if its vague
437-so when indv tries to use a concept, he uses it w/ one particular meaning while someone else might use it w/ another
-logical thot is “when man has managed to go beyond the fleeting reprtations he owes to sense exprc and in the end to conceive a whole world of stable ideas, the common ground of intelligences”—it is impersonal—(438) grks were first sonscious of it, in formulas, others had known vaguely; (439) and things wouldn’t b collective if they didn’t think they were true
*439-msot concepts today still come from exprc—not scnece, but they genlly agree w/ “the nature of things” they refer to, and gives confidence b/c it can b tested methodically—and this is what our faith is in, “not essentially diff to relus faith”, but in the end (440) science rests on opinion
440-theory, “logical thot has always existed”, tho it does evolve
441-and the ideas thots describe r social creations eg genus, causality, time, space, (442) totality—and that necessritly reqs collective thot b/c I know mine and his sense exprcs r diff—so (445) we depend on others for ideas, logic
444-and we don’t’ need this to survive by ourselves b/c even animals can c one thing resembles another
-and society in natlly n groups, so our concepts r too
446-objectivity was created by intlsm—communicating w/ others—and this thot then no longer coordinates w/ social structure and becomes detached
-kant understood science and rel came from same, but kant couldn’t explain why man must limit/hurt/”do violence” himself to “transcend his indv nature”
447-the answer is that “impersonal reason is but collective thot by antoehr name”—b/c “there is somtng impersonal in us”—the social
*448-“…it cannot b said at this moment how far these explanations can b extended and if they can lay every prob to rest…What must b done is to try out the hypothesis and test it against the facts as methodically as possible”
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Sacred and the Profane by Micrea Eliade or 57, this transl by Willard r. trask 59
The Sacred and the Profane by Micrea Eliade or 57, this transl by Willard r. trask 59
8-says otto’s the sacred 17 got “extraordinary interest” b/c it “was certainly due to the author’s new and original pt. of view”—instead of ideas, otto studied exprcs
-otto show that “living God” was not for philosophers, only for believers—not an idea, it was a power (9), “manifested in the divine wrath”—gives feeling of terror (mysterium tremmendum), “majesty”
9-otto calls all these exprcs as numinous (latin, numen=god) divine power—it is “wholly other” not even cosmic (10)—man feels “his profound nothingness”
10-“lang naively expresses the tremendum [and other such exprcs]…by terms borrowed from the world fo nature or from man’s secular mental life”
-says hes a little diff, present the “sacred in all it’s complexity, and not only in so far as it is irrational”, “the sacred…is the opposite of the profane”
11-hierophany—it “the act of manifestation of the sacred” (cf eliade 58 patterns… for etymology of word); says all rels, even primitive, have them
-says “The mod Occidental” doesn’t like to accept that the sacred can b, for others, “manifested in stones or trees”’ and then thot (12) object becomes both sacred and profane
12-“The man of the archaic societies lends to live as much as possible in the sacred or in close proximity to consecrated objects…b/c, for primitieves as for the man of all premod societies, the sacred is equivalent to a power, and, in the last analysis, to reality. The sacred is saturated w/ being”
13-dichotomy “often expressed as an opposition btwn real and unreal or peudoreal…Thus, it is easy to understand that relus man deeply desres…to participate in reality…”
-it’s a feeling that is not exprecd by all, esp by these men w/out rel b/c of desacralization—whih he says emerged in a particular historical situation, but he won’t discuss it
14-Plans to show the relus and nonrelus man have diff meaning for the “city or house, nature, or work”’ for nonrelus, physiological acts r just that, for relus, they have more many
-these r also the “2 modes of being in the world” (sacred and profane)
15-he says to prove this, he will give examples from other cultures (eg of their sacred space) B/c “Nothing can take the place of the example, the concrete fact” [this is problematic]
*16-tho admits that in doing this, “there is always the reist of falling back into the errors of the 19th ce and, particularly, of believeing w/ Tylor or Frazer that the reaction of the human mind to natural phenoma is uniform” and admits “that man’s reaction to nature r often conditioned by his culture and hence, finally, by history” but he says he’s showing commonalities and says its “valid if our object is to describe the poetic phenon [which hes comparing it to] as such, if we propose to show the essential diffc btwn poetic lang and the utilitarian lang of everyday life” [this is problematic b/c it doesn’t justify it at all—and just says its valid in “literary history”]
17-says hes not going to dwell on variations of relus exprc, he says one can c similarity btwn nomads and sedentary—they live in a sacralized world an mod societies don’t
*”…and we shall immediately b aware of all that separates him from them”—this is his justification
18-and will not pt. out the “historico-cultural contexts”
22-says for relus ppl, man must b created from a center, and that is the sacred space, pt. of orientation (23), no homogenous
23-a profane/desacralized life is never pure/completely desacralized, so no true orientation is possible, its all relative, homogenous
24-tho even nonrelus man has special placesw of his “private universe”—(birth, first love, etc)
26-sacred spaces have theophanies—(27)”places of passage btwn heaven and earth” (both ways)—tho sometimes this (not a hierophany) is necessary, just a sacred sign
28-says reuls man’s desire to live in sacred “is in fact equivalentto his desire to take up his abode in objective reality”
29-and ritual doesn’t make sacred space, “it reproduces the work of the gods”
-says “tradl societies” made the whole cosmic world sacred, (32) and their rituals recreate the sacred universe being formed, says that’s even what conquestadors were doing when planted cross [problematic b/c they could have been doing it for diff reasons, maybe poll]
32-says “nomadic Australians whose ecoy is still at the stage of gathering and small-game hunting”
35-pts out several various examples of this, of spaces that show axis mundi [maybe, but relying on evory theory, he expands it too far, not for every “rel”]
42-“From all that has been said, it follows that the true world is always in the middle, the Center…”
48-says dragon is chaos to this [limited view of dragon as only evil]
50-in comparing diffc btwn relus and nonrelus ideas of dwelling—cites Le Courbusier saying “the house is ‘a machine to live in’”—utility; but says it’s not all his province to write about the history of desacralization of dwellings, and admits (51) that “certain tradl images, certain vestiges of the behavior of archaic man still persist, in the condition of ‘survivals,’ even in the most highly industrialized societies. But for the moment our concern is to describe, in its pure state, relus behavior…”
51-“The process [sacralization] is an integral part of the gigantic transformation of the world undertaken by the industrial societies, a transformation made possible by the desacralization of the cosmos accomplished by scientific thot and above all by the sensational discoveries of physics and chemistry”
52-“whatever the structure of a tradl society—be it a society of hunters, herdsmen, or cultivators, or already at the stage of urban civilization…”
53-“…in all tradl cultures, the habitation possesses a sacred aspect by the simple fact that it reflects the world” [may be true]
-says india is a “a highly evolved culture”
55-there r 2 kinds of cosmology—1)a god destroys chaos and 2)a giant is slain (purusha in india, ymir in germny, p’an-ku in china) and his body parts become diff parts of the world’s things
-these r reacted in diff kind of ritual
62-“At least the most important mythological constructions and ritual scenarios…r based on the exprc of sacred space. For in the course of history, relus man has given differeing valorizations to the same fundamental experc”, says not to dwell on diffcs but unity (63) [its problem is when its used to predict or to say smthing other than man responded to nature similarly]; (65) these things reflect mens’ “relus nostalgia”—“ the desire to live in a pure holy cosmos, as it was in the beginning…”
68-sacred time: “a primordial mythical time made present”
-“Every relus festival, any liturgical time, reps the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, ‘in the beginning’”
69-it does not “pass”, no duration, indefinite, (70) “circular, reversible and recoverable”—it distinguishes time from nonrelus man’s time
71-admits nonrelus man has some “heterogeneity” of time (eg celebrations, music, etc), “But in comparison w/ relus man…The latter exprecs intervals of time that r ‘sacred,’ that have no part in the temporal duration that precedes and follows them, that have a wholly diff structure and *origin…inaccessible to a nonrelus man”
75-proof—“the term world [in No Amer Indian langs]…is also used in the sense of year”
80-rels annually reinact the time creation myth in ritual and by participating in this, man was also born anew—“illud tempus” where world first came into existence
88-“It can b said of sacred time that it is always the same”
90-tho this does not mean “primitive man” refuse progress (“hence a refusal of creative freedom”), he accepts it but sees its divine origin
93-relus man assumes responsibility for recreating time in ritual, “But it is a diff kind of responsibility from those that, to us moderns, appear to b the only genuine and valid responsibilities. It is a responsibility on the cosmic plane in contradistinction to the moral, social, or historical responsibilities that r alone regarded as valid in mod civilizations”—relus looks infantile-like
95-says “myth becomes apodictic truth”, ontology (96) and since nonrelus man doesn’t have this his actions lose meaning (only keep subjective meaning); (99) says relus men follow myths, (100) that he is only truly a man when he is imitating gods in his life
105-for relus, all life has meaning
107-the eternal sense of tiem become lost “in certain more highly evolbed societies, [in which] the intellectual elites progressively detach themselves from patterns of tradl rel” and becomes terrifying [circular time]…repeating itself to infinity” (in hindu, grks), (110) tho Judaism is innovative saying it will have an end b/c (111) of god’s “personal interventions in history”
111-“Xnty goes even further in valorizing historical time. Since God was incarnated, that is, since he took on a historically conditioned human existence, history acquires the possibility of being sanctified”, the events of X took place in history, not at the origin of time (tho it is seen as a rebirth later),; (112) Hegel applies it to “universal history in its totality…Thus the whole of history becomes a theopany; everything that has happened in history had to happen as it did, b/c the universal spirit so willed it”—opens up philosophy
116-“For relus man, nature is never only ‘nat’; it is always fraught w/ relus value”, (118) “that nature always expresses smthing which transcends it”
118-“Transcendence [for any man] is revealed by simple awareness of infinite height [of the sky]”
121-looking to understand “the relus history of humanity as a while”
*126-in the evo of rel, man first worshipped cosmos, then, being more concerned w/ day to day living (agriculture, fertility) stopped giving that god as much attn and focused on lower gods, only going to highest in emergencies
135-“primitive” ideas of water: flood—catalclysm; water is a slayer, and rich in germs and creativity; birth—(135) inherited from old rels to Judaism
144-“Woman, then, is mystically held to b one w/ the earth, child bearing is seen as a variant, on the human scale, of telluric fertility”, (145-6) that’s why marriage is often seen as a “cosmic hierogamy”—man (heaven), woman earth—(hindu 146, grk)
147-ritual orgies for fecundity rts, sometime for the new year
151-“Exprc of a radically desacralized nature is a recent discovery; moreover, it is an experc accessible only to a minority in omd societies, esp to scientists. For others, nature still exhibits a charm, a mystery, a majesty in which it is possible to decipher traces of ancient relus values” and nonrelus man can completely resist “the charms of nature”—(152) the feeling of relus exprc
162-4 a w. intellectual, when it comes to rels of “Greece, India, China” etc—“To know some (163) part of their sacred lits, to become familiar w/ some oriental or classical mythologies and theologies does not the suffice for a comprehension of the mental universe of homo religiousus…to gain a braoder relus perspective, it is more useful to become familiar w/ the folk culture of Eurpn ppls; in their beliefs and customs, their attitude toward life and death, many archaic relus stus r still recognizable. Studying the rural societies of Eurp provides some (164) basis for understanding the relus world of neolithic cultures. In many cases the customs and beliefs of Eurpn peasants rep a more archaic state of culture than that document in the mythology of classic Greece” [cites l. Schmidt 52] Even tho they have been xn for long time they have kept “pre-xn relus heritage, which was of immemorial antiquity”—from “prehistoric times”
169-The diff “homologies” (relus allegories, eg intestines r a labyrinth) in diff cultures, so must remember “that relus man lives in an open world and that, in addition, hist existence is open tot eh world. This means that relus man is accessible to an infinite series of exprcs that could b termed cosmic”
173-and by comparing himself to nature, “man cosmicizes himself”, (174) and he can even give something he made, human or cosmic metaphor---done “consciously” (173)
*175-but says “Obviously all these exprcs r inaccessible to nonrelus man”
199-uses buddhims, rebirth to nirvana likended to cosmos
*201-says discussion of rel is a “vast subject” concerning historians of rels, ethnologists, socs, poll and soc historians, psychs, and philosophers” to know the situ assumed by relus man, to understand his universe, is , in sum, to advance our gen knowledge of man”
202-“Whenever the historical contxt in which he is placed, homo religiousalways believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred , which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real” and believes all man has sacred origin
-says “nonrelus man refuses transcendence, (203) accepts the realitivty of ‘reality,’ and may even come to doubt the meaning of existence”
-says great cultures have all had nonrelus ppl; even possible in archaic societies—but in omd w. he has “dvlpd fully”—“he accepts no model for humanity outside the human condistion…only [man] makes himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will become himself only when he is totally demyticized…until he has killed the last god”
204-Tho they “still behave relusly, even tho they r not aware of the fact” (in superstitions and rituals (205) or, novels—like myths), (206) “mythical structure of communisms of its eschatological content”, (207) secular mvmnts, war intitiations
209-“…the majority of men ‘w/out re’ still hold to pseudo rels and degenerated mythologies”, says these r fed by the “unconscious”, bu/c nonrelus man is descendend from relus
*210-“b/c “even the most elementary rel is, above all, an ontology. In other words, in so far as the unconscious is the result of countless existential exprcs, it cannot but resemble the various relus universes”
*211-“The unconscious activity of mod man caselessly present him w/ innumerable symbols, and ea of them has a particular message to transmit, a particular mission to accomplish, in order to ensure or to re-est. the equilibrium of the psyche. AS we have seen, the symbol not only makes the world ‘open’ but also helps relus man to attain the universal. For it is thru symbols that man finds his way out of his particular situ and ‘opens himself’ to the gen and the universal. Symbols awaken indv exprc and transmute it into a spiritual act, into metaphysical comprehension of the world…(212) [for premodern man] by understanding the symbol, he succeeds in living the universal. It is the relus visitor of the world, and the concomintant ideology, that enable him to make this indv exprc bear fruit, to ‘open’ it to the universal…[these images] still quite frequently [appear] in the imaginary universes of mod nonrelus man; it is a cipher of his deeper life…But as long as the symbol of the tree does not awaken his total consciousness and ‘open’ it to the universe, it cannot b said to have completely fulfilled its funct [psychic equilibrium]…it has not yet raised him to spirituality—that is, it has not succeeded in revealing one of the structures of the real to him”
216-“science of rel”—looks at “common elements of the diff rels and seeking to deduce the laws fo their evo, and esply to discover and define the origin and first form of rel”, starts w/ 19th ce
-says m. muller gave it both names: “science of” and “comparative study of” in chips 1867, tho term was used earlier, “but not in the strict sense by muller” which is how we use it now
219-interest in rel goes back to 5th ce bc Greece; travel accounts and polemics agains trad rel; Herodotus had several good descriptions; (220) and even had hypotheses about their origins and relations to grk myths
220-parmenides (6th ce bc)a nd Empedocles (5th ce)thot gods were “personifications of nat forces”, plato (429-347) talked on rels, arist (384-322) first theory of relus degeneration of humanity, Theophrastus (372-287) succeeded arist as head fo the lyceum “may be considered the first grk historian of rels”
-after the conquests of alex the great (356-323), grks learned about others; (221) epicurus (341-270) said gods exist but they have nothing to do w/ man—he was “esply popular in the latin world “ in the first ce bc, due largely to Lucretius (c98-c53)
221-but “stoics…deeply influencd the whol of late antiquity by dvlping the method of allegorical interp…Arccording to the stoics, myths reveal either philosophic views on the basic nature of things or ethical doctrines…and all rels express the same fundamental truth”’ (222) it “gained wide acceptance, and it was frequently employed later”
222-idea that gods were deified kinds or heroes goes boack to herodotus’ time (484-425) but euhemerus (c330-260) made it pop, later historian Polybius (c200-c124) and geographer Strabo (c60-ad 25) worked for historical elements in myths
-romans Cicero (106-43) and varro (116-27?) wrote a lot describing rels; (223) seneca (2-66) had a stoic thesis, Julius ceasar (104-44bc) and tacitus (55-120) gave info on gauls and germans
224-xns criticized other rels,a dn pagans responded, often using allegorical method
225-“Intresrest in foreign rels was awakedned in the w. during the mid ages by the threatening presence of islam”, 1141 peter the venerable had Koran translated by Robert de retines, and schools to study Arabic est. 1250
-muslims, al-biruni (973-1048), ibn hazm (994-1064) looked at other rels; averros (ibn-rushd, 1126-1198) used allegorical method, influenced W. (226), like arist
226-jews: saadia (892-942), Maimonides (1135-1204) looked at others, tho not syncrestic
-1244 innocent IV sent monks to learn about Mongols; 1274 venetian marco polo worte on orientls, Buddha
227-rennaissance had fashion for neo-platonic allegorical interp: marsilio ficino (1433-1499), hermes trismegistus; 1520 jean boem wrote frist gen history of rels
228-j. f. lafitau 1724 first compared rels of new world to those of antiquity; then so did Charles de brosses, 1757 rejected idea that rel degenerated, said, like hume, some men were superior, the lowers only had “fetishism”
229-w/ more info on indo-eurpn origins, muller (1823-1900) helped study enter “into its own”, “found genesis of myths in nat phena”, (230) and ppl simply changed word name to mean divinity (nomen to numen)
230-w. mannhardt (1831-1880) made muller lose popularity, said “lower mythologies” were diff than “nat” ones, repeated by frazer in the golden bough; e b tylor 1871 primitive culture said animism—everyone believed everything has a soul; then 1900 r. r. marett and k. t. preuss and others said their was a pre-animism experc of an impersonal force (mana), a. lang (1844-1912) said foundation was idea of supreme beings
231-w. Schmidt (1868-1954) said there was fund monotheism; durk (1858-1917) said rel came from totemism (like mac Lennan 1869) tho grazer showed its not universal
*-said “sociological hypothese had no lasting influence on hsitorico-relus studies”
232-phenomology by van der leeuw (1890-1950?)
-says now “historians of rels r divided btwn 2 divergent but complementary orientations”: one for “the characterisc structures of relus phena” (“seek to understand the essence of rel”), other on “historical contxt” (“communicate its history”)
8-says otto’s the sacred 17 got “extraordinary interest” b/c it “was certainly due to the author’s new and original pt. of view”—instead of ideas, otto studied exprcs
-otto show that “living God” was not for philosophers, only for believers—not an idea, it was a power (9), “manifested in the divine wrath”—gives feeling of terror (mysterium tremmendum), “majesty”
9-otto calls all these exprcs as numinous (latin, numen=god) divine power—it is “wholly other” not even cosmic (10)—man feels “his profound nothingness”
10-“lang naively expresses the tremendum [and other such exprcs]…by terms borrowed from the world fo nature or from man’s secular mental life”
-says hes a little diff, present the “sacred in all it’s complexity, and not only in so far as it is irrational”, “the sacred…is the opposite of the profane”
11-hierophany—it “the act of manifestation of the sacred” (cf eliade 58 patterns… for etymology of word); says all rels, even primitive, have them
-says “The mod Occidental” doesn’t like to accept that the sacred can b, for others, “manifested in stones or trees”’ and then thot (12) object becomes both sacred and profane
12-“The man of the archaic societies lends to live as much as possible in the sacred or in close proximity to consecrated objects…b/c, for primitieves as for the man of all premod societies, the sacred is equivalent to a power, and, in the last analysis, to reality. The sacred is saturated w/ being”
13-dichotomy “often expressed as an opposition btwn real and unreal or peudoreal…Thus, it is easy to understand that relus man deeply desres…to participate in reality…”
-it’s a feeling that is not exprecd by all, esp by these men w/out rel b/c of desacralization—whih he says emerged in a particular historical situation, but he won’t discuss it
14-Plans to show the relus and nonrelus man have diff meaning for the “city or house, nature, or work”’ for nonrelus, physiological acts r just that, for relus, they have more many
-these r also the “2 modes of being in the world” (sacred and profane)
15-he says to prove this, he will give examples from other cultures (eg of their sacred space) B/c “Nothing can take the place of the example, the concrete fact” [this is problematic]
*16-tho admits that in doing this, “there is always the reist of falling back into the errors of the 19th ce and, particularly, of believeing w/ Tylor or Frazer that the reaction of the human mind to natural phenoma is uniform” and admits “that man’s reaction to nature r often conditioned by his culture and hence, finally, by history” but he says he’s showing commonalities and says its “valid if our object is to describe the poetic phenon [which hes comparing it to] as such, if we propose to show the essential diffc btwn poetic lang and the utilitarian lang of everyday life” [this is problematic b/c it doesn’t justify it at all—and just says its valid in “literary history”]
17-says hes not going to dwell on variations of relus exprc, he says one can c similarity btwn nomads and sedentary—they live in a sacralized world an mod societies don’t
*”…and we shall immediately b aware of all that separates him from them”—this is his justification
18-and will not pt. out the “historico-cultural contexts”
22-says for relus ppl, man must b created from a center, and that is the sacred space, pt. of orientation (23), no homogenous
23-a profane/desacralized life is never pure/completely desacralized, so no true orientation is possible, its all relative, homogenous
24-tho even nonrelus man has special placesw of his “private universe”—(birth, first love, etc)
26-sacred spaces have theophanies—(27)”places of passage btwn heaven and earth” (both ways)—tho sometimes this (not a hierophany) is necessary, just a sacred sign
28-says reuls man’s desire to live in sacred “is in fact equivalentto his desire to take up his abode in objective reality”
29-and ritual doesn’t make sacred space, “it reproduces the work of the gods”
-says “tradl societies” made the whole cosmic world sacred, (32) and their rituals recreate the sacred universe being formed, says that’s even what conquestadors were doing when planted cross [problematic b/c they could have been doing it for diff reasons, maybe poll]
32-says “nomadic Australians whose ecoy is still at the stage of gathering and small-game hunting”
35-pts out several various examples of this, of spaces that show axis mundi [maybe, but relying on evory theory, he expands it too far, not for every “rel”]
42-“From all that has been said, it follows that the true world is always in the middle, the Center…”
48-says dragon is chaos to this [limited view of dragon as only evil]
50-in comparing diffc btwn relus and nonrelus ideas of dwelling—cites Le Courbusier saying “the house is ‘a machine to live in’”—utility; but says it’s not all his province to write about the history of desacralization of dwellings, and admits (51) that “certain tradl images, certain vestiges of the behavior of archaic man still persist, in the condition of ‘survivals,’ even in the most highly industrialized societies. But for the moment our concern is to describe, in its pure state, relus behavior…”
51-“The process [sacralization] is an integral part of the gigantic transformation of the world undertaken by the industrial societies, a transformation made possible by the desacralization of the cosmos accomplished by scientific thot and above all by the sensational discoveries of physics and chemistry”
52-“whatever the structure of a tradl society—be it a society of hunters, herdsmen, or cultivators, or already at the stage of urban civilization…”
53-“…in all tradl cultures, the habitation possesses a sacred aspect by the simple fact that it reflects the world” [may be true]
-says india is a “a highly evolved culture”
55-there r 2 kinds of cosmology—1)a god destroys chaos and 2)a giant is slain (purusha in india, ymir in germny, p’an-ku in china) and his body parts become diff parts of the world’s things
-these r reacted in diff kind of ritual
62-“At least the most important mythological constructions and ritual scenarios…r based on the exprc of sacred space. For in the course of history, relus man has given differeing valorizations to the same fundamental experc”, says not to dwell on diffcs but unity (63) [its problem is when its used to predict or to say smthing other than man responded to nature similarly]; (65) these things reflect mens’ “relus nostalgia”—“ the desire to live in a pure holy cosmos, as it was in the beginning…”
68-sacred time: “a primordial mythical time made present”
-“Every relus festival, any liturgical time, reps the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, ‘in the beginning’”
69-it does not “pass”, no duration, indefinite, (70) “circular, reversible and recoverable”—it distinguishes time from nonrelus man’s time
71-admits nonrelus man has some “heterogeneity” of time (eg celebrations, music, etc), “But in comparison w/ relus man…The latter exprecs intervals of time that r ‘sacred,’ that have no part in the temporal duration that precedes and follows them, that have a wholly diff structure and *origin…inaccessible to a nonrelus man”
75-proof—“the term world [in No Amer Indian langs]…is also used in the sense of year”
80-rels annually reinact the time creation myth in ritual and by participating in this, man was also born anew—“illud tempus” where world first came into existence
88-“It can b said of sacred time that it is always the same”
90-tho this does not mean “primitive man” refuse progress (“hence a refusal of creative freedom”), he accepts it but sees its divine origin
93-relus man assumes responsibility for recreating time in ritual, “But it is a diff kind of responsibility from those that, to us moderns, appear to b the only genuine and valid responsibilities. It is a responsibility on the cosmic plane in contradistinction to the moral, social, or historical responsibilities that r alone regarded as valid in mod civilizations”—relus looks infantile-like
95-says “myth becomes apodictic truth”, ontology (96) and since nonrelus man doesn’t have this his actions lose meaning (only keep subjective meaning); (99) says relus men follow myths, (100) that he is only truly a man when he is imitating gods in his life
105-for relus, all life has meaning
107-the eternal sense of tiem become lost “in certain more highly evolbed societies, [in which] the intellectual elites progressively detach themselves from patterns of tradl rel” and becomes terrifying [circular time]…repeating itself to infinity” (in hindu, grks), (110) tho Judaism is innovative saying it will have an end b/c (111) of god’s “personal interventions in history”
111-“Xnty goes even further in valorizing historical time. Since God was incarnated, that is, since he took on a historically conditioned human existence, history acquires the possibility of being sanctified”, the events of X took place in history, not at the origin of time (tho it is seen as a rebirth later),; (112) Hegel applies it to “universal history in its totality…Thus the whole of history becomes a theopany; everything that has happened in history had to happen as it did, b/c the universal spirit so willed it”—opens up philosophy
116-“For relus man, nature is never only ‘nat’; it is always fraught w/ relus value”, (118) “that nature always expresses smthing which transcends it”
118-“Transcendence [for any man] is revealed by simple awareness of infinite height [of the sky]”
121-looking to understand “the relus history of humanity as a while”
*126-in the evo of rel, man first worshipped cosmos, then, being more concerned w/ day to day living (agriculture, fertility) stopped giving that god as much attn and focused on lower gods, only going to highest in emergencies
135-“primitive” ideas of water: flood—catalclysm; water is a slayer, and rich in germs and creativity; birth—(135) inherited from old rels to Judaism
144-“Woman, then, is mystically held to b one w/ the earth, child bearing is seen as a variant, on the human scale, of telluric fertility”, (145-6) that’s why marriage is often seen as a “cosmic hierogamy”—man (heaven), woman earth—(hindu 146, grk)
147-ritual orgies for fecundity rts, sometime for the new year
151-“Exprc of a radically desacralized nature is a recent discovery; moreover, it is an experc accessible only to a minority in omd societies, esp to scientists. For others, nature still exhibits a charm, a mystery, a majesty in which it is possible to decipher traces of ancient relus values” and nonrelus man can completely resist “the charms of nature”—(152) the feeling of relus exprc
162-4 a w. intellectual, when it comes to rels of “Greece, India, China” etc—“To know some (163) part of their sacred lits, to become familiar w/ some oriental or classical mythologies and theologies does not the suffice for a comprehension of the mental universe of homo religiousus…to gain a braoder relus perspective, it is more useful to become familiar w/ the folk culture of Eurpn ppls; in their beliefs and customs, their attitude toward life and death, many archaic relus stus r still recognizable. Studying the rural societies of Eurp provides some (164) basis for understanding the relus world of neolithic cultures. In many cases the customs and beliefs of Eurpn peasants rep a more archaic state of culture than that document in the mythology of classic Greece” [cites l. Schmidt 52] Even tho they have been xn for long time they have kept “pre-xn relus heritage, which was of immemorial antiquity”—from “prehistoric times”
169-The diff “homologies” (relus allegories, eg intestines r a labyrinth) in diff cultures, so must remember “that relus man lives in an open world and that, in addition, hist existence is open tot eh world. This means that relus man is accessible to an infinite series of exprcs that could b termed cosmic”
173-and by comparing himself to nature, “man cosmicizes himself”, (174) and he can even give something he made, human or cosmic metaphor---done “consciously” (173)
*175-but says “Obviously all these exprcs r inaccessible to nonrelus man”
199-uses buddhims, rebirth to nirvana likended to cosmos
*201-says discussion of rel is a “vast subject” concerning historians of rels, ethnologists, socs, poll and soc historians, psychs, and philosophers” to know the situ assumed by relus man, to understand his universe, is , in sum, to advance our gen knowledge of man”
202-“Whenever the historical contxt in which he is placed, homo religiousalways believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred , which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real” and believes all man has sacred origin
-says “nonrelus man refuses transcendence, (203) accepts the realitivty of ‘reality,’ and may even come to doubt the meaning of existence”
-says great cultures have all had nonrelus ppl; even possible in archaic societies—but in omd w. he has “dvlpd fully”—“he accepts no model for humanity outside the human condistion…only [man] makes himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will become himself only when he is totally demyticized…until he has killed the last god”
204-Tho they “still behave relusly, even tho they r not aware of the fact” (in superstitions and rituals (205) or, novels—like myths), (206) “mythical structure of communisms of its eschatological content”, (207) secular mvmnts, war intitiations
209-“…the majority of men ‘w/out re’ still hold to pseudo rels and degenerated mythologies”, says these r fed by the “unconscious”, bu/c nonrelus man is descendend from relus
*210-“b/c “even the most elementary rel is, above all, an ontology. In other words, in so far as the unconscious is the result of countless existential exprcs, it cannot but resemble the various relus universes”
*211-“The unconscious activity of mod man caselessly present him w/ innumerable symbols, and ea of them has a particular message to transmit, a particular mission to accomplish, in order to ensure or to re-est. the equilibrium of the psyche. AS we have seen, the symbol not only makes the world ‘open’ but also helps relus man to attain the universal. For it is thru symbols that man finds his way out of his particular situ and ‘opens himself’ to the gen and the universal. Symbols awaken indv exprc and transmute it into a spiritual act, into metaphysical comprehension of the world…(212) [for premodern man] by understanding the symbol, he succeeds in living the universal. It is the relus visitor of the world, and the concomintant ideology, that enable him to make this indv exprc bear fruit, to ‘open’ it to the universal…[these images] still quite frequently [appear] in the imaginary universes of mod nonrelus man; it is a cipher of his deeper life…But as long as the symbol of the tree does not awaken his total consciousness and ‘open’ it to the universe, it cannot b said to have completely fulfilled its funct [psychic equilibrium]…it has not yet raised him to spirituality—that is, it has not succeeded in revealing one of the structures of the real to him”
216-“science of rel”—looks at “common elements of the diff rels and seeking to deduce the laws fo their evo, and esply to discover and define the origin and first form of rel”, starts w/ 19th ce
-says m. muller gave it both names: “science of” and “comparative study of” in chips 1867, tho term was used earlier, “but not in the strict sense by muller” which is how we use it now
219-interest in rel goes back to 5th ce bc Greece; travel accounts and polemics agains trad rel; Herodotus had several good descriptions; (220) and even had hypotheses about their origins and relations to grk myths
220-parmenides (6th ce bc)a nd Empedocles (5th ce)thot gods were “personifications of nat forces”, plato (429-347) talked on rels, arist (384-322) first theory of relus degeneration of humanity, Theophrastus (372-287) succeeded arist as head fo the lyceum “may be considered the first grk historian of rels”
-after the conquests of alex the great (356-323), grks learned about others; (221) epicurus (341-270) said gods exist but they have nothing to do w/ man—he was “esply popular in the latin world “ in the first ce bc, due largely to Lucretius (c98-c53)
221-but “stoics…deeply influencd the whol of late antiquity by dvlping the method of allegorical interp…Arccording to the stoics, myths reveal either philosophic views on the basic nature of things or ethical doctrines…and all rels express the same fundamental truth”’ (222) it “gained wide acceptance, and it was frequently employed later”
222-idea that gods were deified kinds or heroes goes boack to herodotus’ time (484-425) but euhemerus (c330-260) made it pop, later historian Polybius (c200-c124) and geographer Strabo (c60-ad 25) worked for historical elements in myths
-romans Cicero (106-43) and varro (116-27?) wrote a lot describing rels; (223) seneca (2-66) had a stoic thesis, Julius ceasar (104-44bc) and tacitus (55-120) gave info on gauls and germans
224-xns criticized other rels,a dn pagans responded, often using allegorical method
225-“Intresrest in foreign rels was awakedned in the w. during the mid ages by the threatening presence of islam”, 1141 peter the venerable had Koran translated by Robert de retines, and schools to study Arabic est. 1250
-muslims, al-biruni (973-1048), ibn hazm (994-1064) looked at other rels; averros (ibn-rushd, 1126-1198) used allegorical method, influenced W. (226), like arist
226-jews: saadia (892-942), Maimonides (1135-1204) looked at others, tho not syncrestic
-1244 innocent IV sent monks to learn about Mongols; 1274 venetian marco polo worte on orientls, Buddha
227-rennaissance had fashion for neo-platonic allegorical interp: marsilio ficino (1433-1499), hermes trismegistus; 1520 jean boem wrote frist gen history of rels
228-j. f. lafitau 1724 first compared rels of new world to those of antiquity; then so did Charles de brosses, 1757 rejected idea that rel degenerated, said, like hume, some men were superior, the lowers only had “fetishism”
229-w/ more info on indo-eurpn origins, muller (1823-1900) helped study enter “into its own”, “found genesis of myths in nat phena”, (230) and ppl simply changed word name to mean divinity (nomen to numen)
230-w. mannhardt (1831-1880) made muller lose popularity, said “lower mythologies” were diff than “nat” ones, repeated by frazer in the golden bough; e b tylor 1871 primitive culture said animism—everyone believed everything has a soul; then 1900 r. r. marett and k. t. preuss and others said their was a pre-animism experc of an impersonal force (mana), a. lang (1844-1912) said foundation was idea of supreme beings
231-w. Schmidt (1868-1954) said there was fund monotheism; durk (1858-1917) said rel came from totemism (like mac Lennan 1869) tho grazer showed its not universal
*-said “sociological hypothese had no lasting influence on hsitorico-relus studies”
232-phenomology by van der leeuw (1890-1950?)
-says now “historians of rels r divided btwn 2 divergent but complementary orientations”: one for “the characterisc structures of relus phena” (“seek to understand the essence of rel”), other on “historical contxt” (“communicate its history”)
Monday, September 8, 2008
Theory, pols, and the Arab World 1990
Theory, pols, and the Arab World 1990
“Studies of Anglo- American Poll Ecoy: Democracy, Orientalism and the Left” by Peter Gran 228-254
228-Most English and amern (and stuff translated to English) academic research on ME “Often does not differ appreciably from Orientalism”
-even Marxist wrk has ortlsm
-says ortsm is “a logical and natural aspect of the dominant culture of democracy”
229-he follow’s gramsci’s “enlgish road” to say “democracy is a structure of ruler and ruled, not simply a mode of production w/ autonomous ecoc behavior”
-Gramsci says “bourgeois democracy [is] a structure in which the ruling class grants citizenship to the wrking class as a strategy to blunt radical culture and render it more dpndnt on the hegemonic culture than it is in poll systems in which the peasantry is a major element. Peasants r far more distant fromt eh dominant culture than r citizens. Democracies depend on racism to maintain the loyalty of the worker of the dominant race to the state; racism spawns guilt feelings and rtnlztn s of its persistence. One common rtlztn is the ‘chosen ppl’ ideology, which is central to ortlsm. A ‘chosen ppl’ ideology separates the dominant race from the ordinary moral crutiny of behavior imposed on the rest of humanity”
-Ortlsm is so deep rooted that it has persisted after critiques
-when Marxism dvlpd it was supportive of ortlsm (cf said and turner)
-but since capitalism has been shown to b viable w/out ortlsm, ortlsm shoud b seen as an element of “hegemonic cultures”
230-“no Marxist sociolinguistics or class analysis of lang exist in ME studies”—everyone assumes there’s just formal and colloquial Arabic, not power play
231-engl and us poll ecomists have had very little opinion on “ortlsm formulation of the islmc past”
-they simply accept capitalism entered ME b/c of cheap goods—while studies of other W. countries r more complex
-they treat ME’s long history of slavery as simply pre-capitalism instittn
232-says they fail to show class conflict has had a major affect
-says why Marxist critique (poll ecoy) is so similar to positivist is cuz of 2 areas of reasons: 1)its “sacred geo graphy” 2) the def of a democracy’s poll ecoy
1)—democracies emerged out of jew/xn trad, and since democracies entail an oppressed underclass worker, and jews and xns r the “chosen ppl”, then others will b subsumed
238-exemplified in Peace Corps and Wrld Bank
-says Israel gets support b/c it’s the only democracy in ME, and so. Af. Gets support b/c its white
-amer/xn/jew emphasis on heritage over history ensures that not many ppl look at the various factors for social change in ME
235-and have neglected to look @ peasant struggles against pre mod arab feudalism
-and islam is seen as a “fixed orthodox creed”
2)-diff phases of democracy in w. create diff poll ecoy scholarship: the last 2—early 20th ce collectivism (welfare, new deal ear, labour party) and 80s liberalism (Reagan and thatcher)
-collectivism “emphasized dvlpmnt thru govtl initiative”—new deal—1970 (date of beginning of new intl ecoc order (236))
236-emphasized agriculture production and end of malnutrition and poverty, championed industrialization as the sol, brit labour party critique colonization
-poll ecoy failed in us b/c of left not controlling a major poll party and mccarthyism purghed leftists, in brt, there was still a “genuine” racial caste system
237-in liberal phase, dependency theory is dominant thot in poll ecoy which emphasizes that states r trapped in world market
-left intellectuals now, unlike collectivist era, do not hold govt jobs and write as journalists (Chomsky, said, merip group)
238-says geertz’s symbolic anthogy became the norm and its emphasis on symbols downplays historical events (pejoratively calls him, gellner and others neo-durkheimians), Geertz
became a reluctant participant in neo lib discourse (criticizing state power) b/c of lack of power
-says now neo-anarchists (derrida and de man eg) opposed the left
239-b/c they oppose totalizing theory, supposedly this rejects poll ecoy and the arabs own paradigms
-says they “produce hegemonic culture for the w…on the grounds that n. afn culture is not ‘scripturalist’”
“The scholarly POV: Pols, Perspective, Paradigm” by Hisham Sharabi 1-51
27-Jabiri (a Moroccan), in his Arabic lang book the contemp arab discourse 82 says u can use w. writers concepts w/out having to “subordinate his analysis tot eh external perspective of the w. scholarship”, and w/out using their biases—“for what is the value of any concept if it is used only as an ornament?”—critiquer of ortslm, tho used ideas from kant, freud and marx
“Studies of Anglo- American Poll Ecoy: Democracy, Orientalism and the Left” by Peter Gran 228-254
228-Most English and amern (and stuff translated to English) academic research on ME “Often does not differ appreciably from Orientalism”
-even Marxist wrk has ortlsm
-says ortsm is “a logical and natural aspect of the dominant culture of democracy”
229-he follow’s gramsci’s “enlgish road” to say “democracy is a structure of ruler and ruled, not simply a mode of production w/ autonomous ecoc behavior”
-Gramsci says “bourgeois democracy [is] a structure in which the ruling class grants citizenship to the wrking class as a strategy to blunt radical culture and render it more dpndnt on the hegemonic culture than it is in poll systems in which the peasantry is a major element. Peasants r far more distant fromt eh dominant culture than r citizens. Democracies depend on racism to maintain the loyalty of the worker of the dominant race to the state; racism spawns guilt feelings and rtnlztn s of its persistence. One common rtlztn is the ‘chosen ppl’ ideology, which is central to ortlsm. A ‘chosen ppl’ ideology separates the dominant race from the ordinary moral crutiny of behavior imposed on the rest of humanity”
-Ortlsm is so deep rooted that it has persisted after critiques
-when Marxism dvlpd it was supportive of ortlsm (cf said and turner)
-but since capitalism has been shown to b viable w/out ortlsm, ortlsm shoud b seen as an element of “hegemonic cultures”
230-“no Marxist sociolinguistics or class analysis of lang exist in ME studies”—everyone assumes there’s just formal and colloquial Arabic, not power play
231-engl and us poll ecomists have had very little opinion on “ortlsm formulation of the islmc past”
-they simply accept capitalism entered ME b/c of cheap goods—while studies of other W. countries r more complex
-they treat ME’s long history of slavery as simply pre-capitalism instittn
232-says they fail to show class conflict has had a major affect
-says why Marxist critique (poll ecoy) is so similar to positivist is cuz of 2 areas of reasons: 1)its “sacred geo graphy” 2) the def of a democracy’s poll ecoy
1)—democracies emerged out of jew/xn trad, and since democracies entail an oppressed underclass worker, and jews and xns r the “chosen ppl”, then others will b subsumed
238-exemplified in Peace Corps and Wrld Bank
-says Israel gets support b/c it’s the only democracy in ME, and so. Af. Gets support b/c its white
-amer/xn/jew emphasis on heritage over history ensures that not many ppl look at the various factors for social change in ME
235-and have neglected to look @ peasant struggles against pre mod arab feudalism
-and islam is seen as a “fixed orthodox creed”
2)-diff phases of democracy in w. create diff poll ecoy scholarship: the last 2—early 20th ce collectivism (welfare, new deal ear, labour party) and 80s liberalism (Reagan and thatcher)
-collectivism “emphasized dvlpmnt thru govtl initiative”—new deal—1970 (date of beginning of new intl ecoc order (236))
236-emphasized agriculture production and end of malnutrition and poverty, championed industrialization as the sol, brit labour party critique colonization
-poll ecoy failed in us b/c of left not controlling a major poll party and mccarthyism purghed leftists, in brt, there was still a “genuine” racial caste system
237-in liberal phase, dependency theory is dominant thot in poll ecoy which emphasizes that states r trapped in world market
-left intellectuals now, unlike collectivist era, do not hold govt jobs and write as journalists (Chomsky, said, merip group)
238-says geertz’s symbolic anthogy became the norm and its emphasis on symbols downplays historical events (pejoratively calls him, gellner and others neo-durkheimians), Geertz
became a reluctant participant in neo lib discourse (criticizing state power) b/c of lack of power
-says now neo-anarchists (derrida and de man eg) opposed the left
239-b/c they oppose totalizing theory, supposedly this rejects poll ecoy and the arabs own paradigms
-says they “produce hegemonic culture for the w…on the grounds that n. afn culture is not ‘scripturalist’”
“The scholarly POV: Pols, Perspective, Paradigm” by Hisham Sharabi 1-51
27-Jabiri (a Moroccan), in his Arabic lang book the contemp arab discourse 82 says u can use w. writers concepts w/out having to “subordinate his analysis tot eh external perspective of the w. scholarship”, and w/out using their biases—“for what is the value of any concept if it is used only as an ornament?”—critiquer of ortslm, tho used ideas from kant, freud and marx
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi
The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi. Original 57, this ed 65, afterword 91
“The Amercn ed is dedicated to the Amern Negro, also colonized”
Preface (’65)
Viii-memmi is Tunisian; xii—“privilege is at the heart of the colonial relationship—and privilege is undoubtably ecoc…the ecoc aspect of colonialism is fundamental”—book was originally criticized “for not having constructed my portraits entirely around ecoc structure”
-“However, colonial privilege is not solely ecoc”, the colonized’s “daily humiliation…his objective subjugation, r not merely ecoc. Even the poorer colonizer thot himself to b—and actually was—superiro to the colonized. This too was part of colonial privilege”
xiii-says he himself was a colonizer too. Not muslim (xiv) , jews idfied more w. colonizers in attitudes and customs even tho they were native to Tunisia. “His priveleges were laughable, but they were enough to make him proud and to make him hope that he was not part of the mass of Moslems which constituted the base of the pyramid”; they took up arms w/ Fr. In Algiers; said he like the “colonizer[s] of good will” but they were powerless
xv-and he couldn’t just take the myths of the colonized either, like that Eurpns r fundamentally bad
xvi-“…I was a sort of half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone b/c I belonged completely to no one”
xvii-“Oppression is the greatest calamity of humanity. It diverts and pollutes the best energies of man—of oppressed and oppressor alike”
“introduction” by Sartre
xxi—pts out “northerner” only knows about blacks and slavery thru “southerner’s” /colonizer’s words
xxiii-the ecoy of colony: sell cheap, buy high. Cheap labor—so must have competition, so need high birth rate—so standard of living falls, malnutrition (xxiv)
xxvi-colonizers have absolved themselves of any wrongdoing by idfying more and more w/ colonialist system—it dehumanizes them
xxvii-colonial system must stay or it will b reuin for ecoc system—if they assimilate or r all killed, prices will rise
-there is a contradiction in the system, colonizer treats colonized like a dog, but to give him orders he must first think of him as a man
Book
3-the common idea of the colonizer is of the “righteous pioneer”, “laboring selflessly for mankind, attending the sick, and spreading culture to the nonliterate”
-tho now all historians know the ecoc motives of colonizing—so other missions r “no longer tenable”
4-avg ppl went to colonies b/c better pay, cheaper, rapid careers, cheaper production costs—even if he says its for adventure
5-and they don’t go back cuz it would cut their standard of living in half
10-there is no such thing as a eurpn living in a colony who is equal (and sees himself as =) to colonized, all colonizers have more privilege, tho some r exploited too (the “small colonizer”)
12-law is more lenient for him, less red tape from govt help, job test will b in his lang, better treatment in school, their ideas r more respected—even by colonized
13-colony follows his rel, holidays, flag, fashion—(14) have “less insecurity against total misery and illness”
16-“the recentlty assimilated place themselves in a considerably superior position to the avg colonizer. They push a colonial mentality to excess, display proud disdain for the colonized and continually show off their borrowed rank, which often belies a vulgar brutality and avidity. Still too impressed by their priveleges, they avor them and defend them w/ fear and harshness; and when colonization is imperiled, they provide it w/ its most dynamic defenders, its shock troops, and sometimes its instigators”
-“The representatives of the authorities, cadres, plicemen, etc., recruited from among the colonized, form a category fo the colonized which attempts to excape from its poll and social condition. But in so doing, by choosing to place themselves in the colonizer’s service to protect his interests exlusivley, they end up by adopting his ideology, even w/ regard to their own values and their own lives”
19-some colonizers refuse their position so they r not colonialists
20-tho, if he stays, he still “benefits from tehse priveleges which he half-heartedly denounces”
21-in colonies, romanticism is looked at as a serious danger—seen as traitor; (22) say only legit option is to adopt and b adopted by colonized, but says this is so rare it’s theoretical
24-but in that rare case, b/c he is still alien to the colonized’s culture, he thinks they r backward, that they’ll catch up if they had freedom
26-“to live w/out anguish; one must live in detachment from oneself and the world…It is not difficult to do this as it only reqs spontaneaous actions and mental attitudes. It would b as absurd to demand that the colonizer b attuned to the life of the colonized, as it would b to ask left-wing intellectuals to ape laborers. These intellectuals, having insisted on dressing sloppily, wearing shirts for days on end, and wlking in hobnailed shoes, soon realized the stupidigy of their pose, and in this case the lang, cuisine and basic customs were the same”
27-and “excessive romanticizing of the diffcs must b avoided”
30-the colonizer leftist has diff poll views than colonized, he condemns terrorism, explains it as just fringe groups or crazies—says violence done to him still doesn’t justify terrorism
32-says this is a constructed myth (that terrorists r extreme aberrations)
-he also ?s their ture, esp if their liberty is for a nondemocratic state, (33) he rtlzes it saying they will b democratic in future after all is settled
34-there’s event eh chance that they would reject leftism in their new govt
35-these hesitations make him suspect in the eyes of the colonized and the left wind at home
39-faced w/ these contradictions, his view “collapses”. This is an “impossible historical situation”; implacable—he can never b a colonized person
43-he must either leave or live a life in silence and compromise
46-the colonialist (whether native or immigrant) “justifies everything”, “pretends to have seen nothing of poverty and injustice which r rt. Under his nose”
47-their prestige gives even previously modest ones “such inordinate self-confidence that it makes them dizzy” and defend the system aggressively
48-says usu the best leave, only mediocre men remain
49-they have no knowledge of history and r bad politicians and technocrats
51-and b/c they rely on this rigged system for their status, they perpetuate it
-this situ does not give them peace of mind so they go to preat lengths to deter it: (52) falsify history, rewrite laws, exaggerating merits and colonized’s demerits
53-so the more down trodden the colonized is, the more this confirms and establishes his triumph—like Nero over Britannicus (the “Nero complex”)
-he therefore desires to eliminate the colonized, (54) but that would mean eliminating himself
55-and by his media (newspaper) colonized come to believe it too
56-ppl back in home country know its wrong, but kinda envy him
57-says deep down tho the colonizer scarcely believes his own innocence
59-uses ostentation to make others believe it, (60) and romanticizes homeland too, (62) tho when there’s talk of poll changes he wants succession, conservative polly
63-colonialism is a form of fascism—oppression
65-justifies to criticism by speaking of harsh conditions he endures
-he is diff from home country ppl and doesn not feel a part of them
68-he characterizes landscape as bad and refuses to b a citizen, as in one of the avg ppl
69- and b/c he’s only there temporarily, he does not make long term city planning invsetsments, and making it like home would b contradictory anyways
70-he “likes neither theory nor theorists. He who knows that he is in a bad ideological or ethical position genlly boasts of being a man of action, one who draws his lessons from exprc”—he can’t debate—so his racism is not doctrinal
72-coloniaists never really promoted relus conversion and churches even supported colonieng, tho now they r attacking it
-they had given churches “land, subsidies and adequate place for it role in the colony” for its support
74-racism penetrates psychiatry and he even says colonized has a bad “spirit” (75)
75-and seals it by saying it’s nat law
76-w/ his walth, he could even be generous—making him feel “paternalistic”, calls oppressive roles “gifts”, not “duties”—if he said duties, that would mean colonized had rts
79-stereotypes of the colonized: very common is laziness, it exalts the colonizer and humbles the colonized, implying that “employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his unreasonable wages”
81-“one can wonder if their ourput is mediocre, whether malnutrition, low wages, a closed future, a ridiculous conception of a role in society, does not make the colonized uninterested in his work” But this is directed at all colonized, even pros who work same hours as colonialists
-so since it’s not objective, it must b inherent in colonized
-same things for other seterotypes: weak, (82) which then reqs protection; wicked, thievish, evil, sadistic—legitmizes policing; irresponsible; ineptitude for science, progress; likes being poor; ingratitude
83-thigns even contradict ea other so all bases r covered (eg he has few desires but is gluttonous)
85-colonized is depersonalized and enver characterized as indv, but as a group
88-there is a partial truth here, the adherence of colonized to coloniztn—but only as a result, not a cause of coloniztn
92-the colonized, having been removed from history, forgot how toparticipate in it
99-b/c adolescents know a revolt wont work, they go back to tradl ways, centered on fam (100) missionaries say this is common to nonXn resl
101-colonization rarely cause excessive relus zeal—all these b/c having a complete social life is impossible
102-b/c he has no history, “he draws less and less form his past”
104-buildings and streets r renamed by colonizer
105-he is only tot eurpn history so (106) “school creates a permanent duality in him”—tho very few actually got the chance to go to school
109-and sice colonized r illiterate (and tradl scholars are ridiculed), writrs must write in eupn langs—keeping history lost
115-and instittnl insufficiencies keep the artisans from dvlpng their crafts
120-the colonial system is unstable and the colonized will one day overthrow it in 2 ways: 1) wanting to b white (seen as superiror), assimilate, (121) idealizing it, mixed marriages, (123) but this can never b full b/c it rejects him—(127) but assimilation and colonization r contradictory so 2)revolt, (129) tho colonized uses colonizer’s “techniques of thot and his methods of combat”
132-so the colonized becomes proud of his diffcs, even, after rejecting rel for secularity, takes it up again for the group solidarity, (133) tho he is weary that other colonized will use rel for other reasons
134-goes back to old lang, but most importantly he uses “words of love and tenderness, anger and indignation, words which the potter uses when talking to his pots, and the shoe maker to his soles”, eduation comes later
136-these colonized leaders have to imitate colonizer—that’s why they often have mixed marriages
-he is also faced w/ constradiction that to define self as diff, to take up colonizer’s dichotomy, is to take up negative stereotypes too (saying we don’t use technology, etc)
-and realizes that rejecting colonizer’s instittns and uses less dvlpd, funded colonized instittns
139-and he is self conscious of these contrasts and seeing them as criticizable, acts out violently to b heard, hostilely if ?d
140-he almost never succeeds in corresponding w/ himself; (141) he will only do so after revolt, after colonization
145-says no one before has shown the “pattern and genesis of ea role”—that’s what this is, not a remedy for the situ
151-says for complete liberation, he must end deficiencies of group
152-implies that he must have universal values and free coice—those free him, tho he may express it in ntlsm
-must not b only in rel, tho he can still have it
-“he must cease defining himself thru the cats of the colonizers”
-“cultural and technical acquirements belong to all ppls. Science is neither w. nor e., any more than it is bourgeois or proletarian. Tehre r only two ways of pouring concrete—the rt way and the wrong way”
-“I believe neither in metaphysical essence nor psychological essence”, (153) “one can describe the colonized at present…If he ceases to b colonized—he will become smthing else…But perhaps at that time ther will b fewer diffcs btwn an Algerian and a Marsillais than btwn an Algerian and a Lebanese. Having reconquered all his dimenstions, the former colonized will have become a man like any other. There will b the ups and downs of all men to b sure, but at least he will b a whole and free man”
“The Amercn ed is dedicated to the Amern Negro, also colonized”
Preface (’65)
Viii-memmi is Tunisian; xii—“privilege is at the heart of the colonial relationship—and privilege is undoubtably ecoc…the ecoc aspect of colonialism is fundamental”—book was originally criticized “for not having constructed my portraits entirely around ecoc structure”
-“However, colonial privilege is not solely ecoc”, the colonized’s “daily humiliation…his objective subjugation, r not merely ecoc. Even the poorer colonizer thot himself to b—and actually was—superiro to the colonized. This too was part of colonial privilege”
xiii-says he himself was a colonizer too. Not muslim (xiv) , jews idfied more w. colonizers in attitudes and customs even tho they were native to Tunisia. “His priveleges were laughable, but they were enough to make him proud and to make him hope that he was not part of the mass of Moslems which constituted the base of the pyramid”; they took up arms w/ Fr. In Algiers; said he like the “colonizer[s] of good will” but they were powerless
xv-and he couldn’t just take the myths of the colonized either, like that Eurpns r fundamentally bad
xvi-“…I was a sort of half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone b/c I belonged completely to no one”
xvii-“Oppression is the greatest calamity of humanity. It diverts and pollutes the best energies of man—of oppressed and oppressor alike”
“introduction” by Sartre
xxi—pts out “northerner” only knows about blacks and slavery thru “southerner’s” /colonizer’s words
xxiii-the ecoy of colony: sell cheap, buy high. Cheap labor—so must have competition, so need high birth rate—so standard of living falls, malnutrition (xxiv)
xxvi-colonizers have absolved themselves of any wrongdoing by idfying more and more w/ colonialist system—it dehumanizes them
xxvii-colonial system must stay or it will b reuin for ecoc system—if they assimilate or r all killed, prices will rise
-there is a contradiction in the system, colonizer treats colonized like a dog, but to give him orders he must first think of him as a man
Book
3-the common idea of the colonizer is of the “righteous pioneer”, “laboring selflessly for mankind, attending the sick, and spreading culture to the nonliterate”
-tho now all historians know the ecoc motives of colonizing—so other missions r “no longer tenable”
4-avg ppl went to colonies b/c better pay, cheaper, rapid careers, cheaper production costs—even if he says its for adventure
5-and they don’t go back cuz it would cut their standard of living in half
10-there is no such thing as a eurpn living in a colony who is equal (and sees himself as =) to colonized, all colonizers have more privilege, tho some r exploited too (the “small colonizer”)
12-law is more lenient for him, less red tape from govt help, job test will b in his lang, better treatment in school, their ideas r more respected—even by colonized
13-colony follows his rel, holidays, flag, fashion—(14) have “less insecurity against total misery and illness”
16-“the recentlty assimilated place themselves in a considerably superior position to the avg colonizer. They push a colonial mentality to excess, display proud disdain for the colonized and continually show off their borrowed rank, which often belies a vulgar brutality and avidity. Still too impressed by their priveleges, they avor them and defend them w/ fear and harshness; and when colonization is imperiled, they provide it w/ its most dynamic defenders, its shock troops, and sometimes its instigators”
-“The representatives of the authorities, cadres, plicemen, etc., recruited from among the colonized, form a category fo the colonized which attempts to excape from its poll and social condition. But in so doing, by choosing to place themselves in the colonizer’s service to protect his interests exlusivley, they end up by adopting his ideology, even w/ regard to their own values and their own lives”
19-some colonizers refuse their position so they r not colonialists
20-tho, if he stays, he still “benefits from tehse priveleges which he half-heartedly denounces”
21-in colonies, romanticism is looked at as a serious danger—seen as traitor; (22) say only legit option is to adopt and b adopted by colonized, but says this is so rare it’s theoretical
24-but in that rare case, b/c he is still alien to the colonized’s culture, he thinks they r backward, that they’ll catch up if they had freedom
26-“to live w/out anguish; one must live in detachment from oneself and the world…It is not difficult to do this as it only reqs spontaneaous actions and mental attitudes. It would b as absurd to demand that the colonizer b attuned to the life of the colonized, as it would b to ask left-wing intellectuals to ape laborers. These intellectuals, having insisted on dressing sloppily, wearing shirts for days on end, and wlking in hobnailed shoes, soon realized the stupidigy of their pose, and in this case the lang, cuisine and basic customs were the same”
27-and “excessive romanticizing of the diffcs must b avoided”
30-the colonizer leftist has diff poll views than colonized, he condemns terrorism, explains it as just fringe groups or crazies—says violence done to him still doesn’t justify terrorism
32-says this is a constructed myth (that terrorists r extreme aberrations)
-he also ?s their ture, esp if their liberty is for a nondemocratic state, (33) he rtlzes it saying they will b democratic in future after all is settled
34-there’s event eh chance that they would reject leftism in their new govt
35-these hesitations make him suspect in the eyes of the colonized and the left wind at home
39-faced w/ these contradictions, his view “collapses”. This is an “impossible historical situation”; implacable—he can never b a colonized person
43-he must either leave or live a life in silence and compromise
46-the colonialist (whether native or immigrant) “justifies everything”, “pretends to have seen nothing of poverty and injustice which r rt. Under his nose”
47-their prestige gives even previously modest ones “such inordinate self-confidence that it makes them dizzy” and defend the system aggressively
48-says usu the best leave, only mediocre men remain
49-they have no knowledge of history and r bad politicians and technocrats
51-and b/c they rely on this rigged system for their status, they perpetuate it
-this situ does not give them peace of mind so they go to preat lengths to deter it: (52) falsify history, rewrite laws, exaggerating merits and colonized’s demerits
53-so the more down trodden the colonized is, the more this confirms and establishes his triumph—like Nero over Britannicus (the “Nero complex”)
-he therefore desires to eliminate the colonized, (54) but that would mean eliminating himself
55-and by his media (newspaper) colonized come to believe it too
56-ppl back in home country know its wrong, but kinda envy him
57-says deep down tho the colonizer scarcely believes his own innocence
59-uses ostentation to make others believe it, (60) and romanticizes homeland too, (62) tho when there’s talk of poll changes he wants succession, conservative polly
63-colonialism is a form of fascism—oppression
65-justifies to criticism by speaking of harsh conditions he endures
-he is diff from home country ppl and doesn not feel a part of them
68-he characterizes landscape as bad and refuses to b a citizen, as in one of the avg ppl
69- and b/c he’s only there temporarily, he does not make long term city planning invsetsments, and making it like home would b contradictory anyways
70-he “likes neither theory nor theorists. He who knows that he is in a bad ideological or ethical position genlly boasts of being a man of action, one who draws his lessons from exprc”—he can’t debate—so his racism is not doctrinal
72-coloniaists never really promoted relus conversion and churches even supported colonieng, tho now they r attacking it
-they had given churches “land, subsidies and adequate place for it role in the colony” for its support
74-racism penetrates psychiatry and he even says colonized has a bad “spirit” (75)
75-and seals it by saying it’s nat law
76-w/ his walth, he could even be generous—making him feel “paternalistic”, calls oppressive roles “gifts”, not “duties”—if he said duties, that would mean colonized had rts
79-stereotypes of the colonized: very common is laziness, it exalts the colonizer and humbles the colonized, implying that “employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his unreasonable wages”
81-“one can wonder if their ourput is mediocre, whether malnutrition, low wages, a closed future, a ridiculous conception of a role in society, does not make the colonized uninterested in his work” But this is directed at all colonized, even pros who work same hours as colonialists
-so since it’s not objective, it must b inherent in colonized
-same things for other seterotypes: weak, (82) which then reqs protection; wicked, thievish, evil, sadistic—legitmizes policing; irresponsible; ineptitude for science, progress; likes being poor; ingratitude
83-thigns even contradict ea other so all bases r covered (eg he has few desires but is gluttonous)
85-colonized is depersonalized and enver characterized as indv, but as a group
88-there is a partial truth here, the adherence of colonized to coloniztn—but only as a result, not a cause of coloniztn
92-the colonized, having been removed from history, forgot how toparticipate in it
99-b/c adolescents know a revolt wont work, they go back to tradl ways, centered on fam (100) missionaries say this is common to nonXn resl
101-colonization rarely cause excessive relus zeal—all these b/c having a complete social life is impossible
102-b/c he has no history, “he draws less and less form his past”
104-buildings and streets r renamed by colonizer
105-he is only tot eurpn history so (106) “school creates a permanent duality in him”—tho very few actually got the chance to go to school
109-and sice colonized r illiterate (and tradl scholars are ridiculed), writrs must write in eupn langs—keeping history lost
115-and instittnl insufficiencies keep the artisans from dvlpng their crafts
120-the colonial system is unstable and the colonized will one day overthrow it in 2 ways: 1) wanting to b white (seen as superiror), assimilate, (121) idealizing it, mixed marriages, (123) but this can never b full b/c it rejects him—(127) but assimilation and colonization r contradictory so 2)revolt, (129) tho colonized uses colonizer’s “techniques of thot and his methods of combat”
132-so the colonized becomes proud of his diffcs, even, after rejecting rel for secularity, takes it up again for the group solidarity, (133) tho he is weary that other colonized will use rel for other reasons
134-goes back to old lang, but most importantly he uses “words of love and tenderness, anger and indignation, words which the potter uses when talking to his pots, and the shoe maker to his soles”, eduation comes later
136-these colonized leaders have to imitate colonizer—that’s why they often have mixed marriages
-he is also faced w/ constradiction that to define self as diff, to take up colonizer’s dichotomy, is to take up negative stereotypes too (saying we don’t use technology, etc)
-and realizes that rejecting colonizer’s instittns and uses less dvlpd, funded colonized instittns
139-and he is self conscious of these contrasts and seeing them as criticizable, acts out violently to b heard, hostilely if ?d
140-he almost never succeeds in corresponding w/ himself; (141) he will only do so after revolt, after colonization
145-says no one before has shown the “pattern and genesis of ea role”—that’s what this is, not a remedy for the situ
151-says for complete liberation, he must end deficiencies of group
152-implies that he must have universal values and free coice—those free him, tho he may express it in ntlsm
-must not b only in rel, tho he can still have it
-“he must cease defining himself thru the cats of the colonizers”
-“cultural and technical acquirements belong to all ppls. Science is neither w. nor e., any more than it is bourgeois or proletarian. Tehre r only two ways of pouring concrete—the rt way and the wrong way”
-“I believe neither in metaphysical essence nor psychological essence”, (153) “one can describe the colonized at present…If he ceases to b colonized—he will become smthing else…But perhaps at that time ther will b fewer diffcs btwn an Algerian and a Marsillais than btwn an Algerian and a Lebanese. Having reconquered all his dimenstions, the former colonized will have become a man like any other. There will b the ups and downs of all men to b sure, but at least he will b a whole and free man”
Friday, September 5, 2008
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
“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
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