CRICK'S CRACKS

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CRICK'S CRACKSAuthor(s): Jonathan FriedmanSource: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, No. 21(August 1987), pp. 80-83Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23169554 .

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Social Analysis No. 21, August 1987

CRICK'S CRACKS

Jonathan Friedman

That which follows is polemic, a 'genre' that is perhaps unwelcome in this period of

anxious reconciliation, a reflection of the insecurity that is indicative of our fragmenting

identity. But polemic has its positive qualities if done in all seriousness and concern for the

field. It is meant to provoke and to sharpen issues, to force a concerted intellectual effort

where loose impressionism at present reigns. Malcolm Crick's article, to which I address

myself, is part of a trend which, in spite of what I am about to suggest, takes up important issues and reflects a state of insecurity and unformedness that could ultimately be

generative of a more self-reflective anthropology. But the conditions in which this trend

has emerged have, perhaps for very good reasons, combined what awareness there exists

of the problematic of 'the other' with a serious lack of perspective. This is true of the great

majority of the new, primarily American, discussions of ethnographic text (Marcus &

Cushman 1982; Marcus 1980; Webster 1982, 1983; Clifford 1983; Boon 1982). Others

have taken up the same issue from a more objectivist perspective, even a global

perspective, that in understanding that the ethnographic object is a product of a larger

system (Lévi-Strauss) have concentrated on the dialectical relation between the

intellectual constitution of the other and the real transformative subsumption of formerly exterior populations into the global system, a dialectic between self-and-other-identifi

cation in a process of real social and cultural dissolution and reintegration. The anthropo

logical act is part of a larger social process and the current obsession with the 'other' is also

part of that process. My argument is that it is only by maintaining the distance required to

keep the real relation between us and them in perspective that we can avoid the narcissism

that is fast enveloping us (Friedman 1987a, b). "

'Tracing' the anthropological self" is yet another in a long list of exercises in anthro

pological self-reflection, self-indulgence and critical self-love, but emphatically not in self

analysis. The author devotes the first pages to documenting the changes in literature and

anthropology, their merging in the post-modernism, so-called, post-structuralism,

deconstructionism, etc. that has become so trendy. He then proceeds, without the faintest

interest in trying to understand what is going on, to do everything he can to doggishly

adapt his mind to the trend.

He begins with the most extraordinary whopper. Post-structuralism in France linked, for no clear reason, to such disparate figures as Foucault, Derrida, Barthes is now

associated, for the first time in print, with the quasi-cybernetic P-structuralism of Ardener.

Now perhaps it is the distinguishing feature of the post-modern period that one can say

anything at all, for the very sake of absurdity, but the Oxford-Paris connection reaches new

lows in the domain of intellectual competence. Post-structuralism as an expression of the

post-modern attitude, is decidely anti-structural and anti-structuralist, finding power wherever there is order, be it symbolic or political (they are identical). Ardener's post structuralism has nothing whatsoever to do with the above development. It is, instead, an

attempt to establish, via p-structures and world-structures, a totalistic kind of structu

ralism that puts the entirety of the life world into a 'final string' generated by the great

program in the sky. The Oxford version is simply a structuralist statement of cultural

determinism — one that, moreover, is quite dubious from Lévi-Strauss' point of view. This

attempt to build a semantic model of total material order, which has, as noted by Crick, never materialized, is just about as far as one can get from the philosophical anti-structu

ralism of the literary critics. But this homonymical fumbling is just the beginning of a

virtual landslide of conceptual confusion. Now, of course, when the author refers to

Marcus & Cushman's comments on "how little post-structuralism in general has been

looked at by anthropologists" (Crick 1985:73) they are not referring to Ardener et. al.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, maybe the careerism to which Crick refers later, but

so



Ardener is not even mentioned in their bibliography. And as this is meant to be a review

article, it ought to be clear that they do not see any relation between their own ethno

textual reflexivity and the two or three Oxfordians who use the same term. But perhaps he

is to be forgiven, since his mentor, too, seems to consider himself to be some sort of post modernist anthropologist, announcing the return from "genre to life" (Ardener 1985:62), also a total misrepresentation of what is normally understood by post-modernism.

If this paper has any interest, it lies in what it reveals about its author as representative of a more general phenomenon.

. . . in reality the world of structuralism has become unfeasible, with its

scientific confidence, its search for laws, its beliefs in system (Crick 1985:73). This is the usual symptom expressed by post-moderns, the feeling of a collapse of

ontology, the destructuring of the meaningful order of things, the freeing of the signified from the signifier, and godknowswhatelse: "This is an insecure world indeed" (ibid:73). What Crick is really refering to here is the collapse of theoretical discourse and the dis

integration of the scientific community in general. Only a more Durkheimian Mary Douglas, with her feet firmly planted in social reality seems to have noticed this (Douglas 1985). For

Crick and the others it's all a purely academic problem. While Crick hangs on, in the beginning at least, to the long umbilical cord dangling

from the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford, he is able, via his convenient

homonymy, to plunge into the essentially American navel gazing called 'ethnography-as text', post-everything anthropology'. And what is this all about? Getting into 'ourselves',

especially into our anthropological selves, as participants, as writers and as careers in the

academy. All of this 'self-absorption' is not, it is claimed, mere narcissism, since in order to

know what we are doing we have to understand the way we produce our knowledge and

our self-identity. But in order to do so we have to reflect 'objectively' on ourselves in our

social conditions, and not merely, as some (not all) of ethno-text people, wallow in our

subjective experience.1 Crick also wallows, and the substance, if such a word is appropriate, of the article is

the relation between ethnography and tourism. We are treated to a plethora of half-baked

superficialities. The person, we are told, is a "semantic construct" (Crick 1985:76), cultures "experience themselves" (ibid :76), and then a whole string of trivialities about the

similarities between tourists, other travellers and anthropologists. We are led through the

by now familiar chamber of intellectual insecurities about the possible illusions of the

ethnographic act. What, after all, is the difference between the anthropologist and the

tourist? No clear answer emerges, apparently because Crick has already removed the

difference by accepting the collapse of theory. Without theory there are no particular

questions to ask, just the OTHER to describe and to appeal to our fascination in a situation

pervaded by the Minimal Self (Lasch 1985). In other words, without an explicit program, we are driven instead by implicit ideologies and fears of inadequacy. The latter problem is

resolved by picking on modern tourism, instead of the more formidible competitors, the

missionaries, and the professional travellers of previous centuries. Now the fact is, that

from a purely ethnographic point of view, these characters tend, on the average, to be

much better in the field than we; living, after all, for years among the so-and-so, speaking the language fluently. This was not a problem for anthropologists in the past, except for a

few (no names) who, due perhaps to the rather thin nature of their own ethnography, never ceased attacking others, from missionaries and government agents to school teacher

linguists, for not being real anthropologists, while blatantly writing some very dubious and

linguistically unfounded, if totally self-assured, word games based on other people's

proverbs. Luckily there were those who did know the language. But such is only rarely the

case. Anthropologists have not been terribly concerned with the problem because anthro

pology is not just fieldwork, but a series of questions about the nature and conditions of

social and cultural existence. It is such questions that determine the way we are supposed to go about our ethnography. If we have no such questions, then some kind of glorified tourism might well be on the agenda.

Since Crick partakes of the dissolution of western identity in its anthropological form, he is, in fact, left with no theoretical direction. This is, after all, the post-modern trend of

things, the real post-structuralism that pervades literature criticism and Geertzian anthro

pology. Derrida is invoked and Fayerabend misinterpreted to these ends, and we are

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gratuitously plunged into the ludic dialogics of a very inauthentic ethnographic fantasy that tries to recapture the heroic anthropologist behind the fumbling anti-hero, lost in the

wilderness without his can-opener. Anthropology is reduced to ethnography and

ethnography is reduced to an existential version of "The King and I".

And with the gratuitous references to the careerism involved in all of this, i.e. that

anthropologists do anthropology because it's their job and their promotions, he never asks

himSELF why HE is doing it all, or why he is so unabashedly and unquestionably attracted

to this ethno-textualism. This is indicated by his conclusion which returns to an entirely irrelevant attack on functionalism by Ardener (1971) and a very un-post-modern plea for

"better description and more demanding fieldwork" (ibid: 86). So that's what anthro

pology has in store for itself, our reaction to the changing state of reality! In our fear of a

world that is no longer silent so that we are guaranteed the possibility of speaking the

other, we withdraw into our own experience of them, which then becomes the

unassailable object of our discourse. This isn't ludic, its ludicrous! The New Anthropology is AUTISTIC anthropology. And our new worship of our own experience, while claiming,

anew, to monopolize the 'reality of the other' is more AT HOME than ever. If we can't

possess them at least we can possess our experience of them. No longer any reason to be

concerned about a reality which may be no more than a figment of our imagination. Better

fieldwork, better experiences, better stories. We don't need better ways of professional

izing our alienation, we need a perspective that locates our practice in a real world that is a

lot nastier than a post-colonial bazaar.

NOTES

1. I wish to distinguish, absolutely, between the fundamental insights of Clifford (1983), and

Rabinow (1985); the interesting programmatic calls by Marcus and Fischer (1986); the important work of Crapanzano; and precisely the kind of self-indulgence that is criticized by both Clifford and

especially Rabinow, and expressed in Marcus & Cushman (1982), Dwyer (1982) and much of Geertz.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ardener, E.W.

1971 "The New Anthropology and its Critics", Man, 56: 449-467. 1973 "Some Outstanding Problems in the Analysis of Events", in E. Schwimmer (ed.) The

Yearbook of Symbolic Anthropology, vol. 1, London: C. Hurst & Co., 109-121.

1985 "Social Anthropology and the Decline of Modernism", in J. Overing (ed.) Reason and

Morality, London: Tavistock Publications, 47-70.

Boon, J. 1982 Other Tribes, Other Scribes, Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures,

History, Religion and Texts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clifford, J. 1983 "On Ethnographic Authority", Representations, 1: 118-145.

Crapanzano, V. 1980 Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan, Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Crick, M.

1985 "'Tracing' the Anthropological Self: Quizzical Reflections on Field Work, Tourism and

the Ludic", Social Analysis, 17:71-92.

Friedman, J. 1987a "Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Phallus in Blunderland", Culture and History, 9. 1987b "Beyond Otherness", Telos (in press). 1987c "Culture, identity and world process", in M. Rowlands (ed.) Domination and Resistance,

London: George Allen & Unwin.

Douglas, M. 1985 "Pascal's Great Wager", L'Homme, 93:13-30.

Hastrup, K. 1978 "The Post-structural Position of Social Anthropology", in E. Schwimmer (ed.) The

Yearbook of Symbolic Anthropology, vol. 1, London: C. Hurst & Co., 103-121.

Lasch, C.

1985 The Minimal Self, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

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Marcus, L¡. 1980 "Rhetoric and Ethnographic Genre in Anthropological Research", Current Anthropology,

21:507-510.

Marcus, G. & D. Cushman 1982 "Ethnographies as Texts", Annual Review of Anthropology, 11: 25-69.

Marcus, G. & M. Fischer

1986 Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Webster, S.

1982 "Fiction and Ethnography", Dialectical Anthropology, 7: 91-114. 1983 "Ethnography as Story-telling", Dialectical Anthropology, 8: 185-205.

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