On  anthropological  Optimism:    

ROGER  SANSI  

“  Have anthropologists abandoned grand theories, or has comparative anthropology

made theoretical advances? Should anthropologists resume earlier explorations of

‘human nature’?” These are some of the questions we have been asked to address

today. When I heard the question about human nature, I immediately thought of the

president of Spain, Zapatero, who defined himself as an “anthropological  optimist”  .  

This  meant,  according  to  the  press,  a  secular  version  of  Christian  notions  of  good  

will:    the  belief  that  people  are  “naturally”  good,  and  that  they  will,  in  the  end,  

agree  on  the  best  possible  solutions  to  their  common  problems,  thinking  about  

their  common  good.  Back  then,  Zapatero  was  extremely  popular,  his  laws  on  gay  

marriage  and  abortion  had  made  him  an  icon  of  the  secular  left  in  a  country  that  

was  run  by  fundamentalist  Catholics  for  probably  to  long.    His  “anthropological  

optimism”  back  then  sounded  like  a  good  response  to  the  grim  metaphysical  

pessimism  of  the  Catholic  right.    But  lately,  the  optimism  of  Zapatero  has  been  

seen  as  the  key  to  his  failure.  It  is  said  that  His  optimism  was  his  blindness,  his  

blissful  ignorance  of  the  economic  crisis  that  was  underway.    I  will  come  back  to  

the  crisis  later,  unfortunately,  but  next  I  would  like  to  talk  a  bit  more  about  

anthropological  optimism.    

 

Optimism  has  been  out  of  fashion  in  Anthropology  for  many  many  decades.    

Pessimism,  or  the  view  that  man  is  a  wolf  to  man,  that  human  nature  leads  

humans  to  fight  each  other  for  power,  more  than  collaborate  for  the  common  

good,  has  been  for  a  long  time  sinonymous  with  realism,  an  intelligent  and  deep  

understanding  of  the  bleak  human  condition,  just  like  cynicism  seems  to  be  a  

sign  of  intelligence  amongst  middle  class  intellectuals.  Only  after  I  started  

graduate  school  did  I  realize  that  anthropological  pessimism  was  not  the  only  

game  in  town.  My  professor  Marshall  Sahlins  was  an  acerbic  enemy  of  

pessimism,  against  which  he  wrote  one  of  his  best  papers,  the  “Sadness  of  

sweetness”,  on  the  Native  Anthropology  of  Western  Cosmology”.  It  was  quite  

funny  to  see  that  Sahlins  is,  himself,  the  very  incarnation  of  the  critical,  cynical  

middle-­‐class  Western  intellectual,  heir  to  the  whole  tradition  he  was  questioning.    

That  still  didn’t  make  his  criticism  less  relevant,  and  pertinent  for  me,  having  

been  raised  reading  critical  thinkers  with  a  quite  gloomy  view  on  the  human  

condition,  from  Hobbes  to  Weber,  Bourdieu  or  Foucault.    

  But  still,  Sahlins  was  criticizing  critical  theory,  and  in  that  double  move,  

perhaps,  it  was  difficult  to  identify  what  was  his  main  proposition;  there  were  

two  main  options,  a  weak  and  a  strong  one.  The  weak  option  was  that  there  are  

other  possible  human  natures;  pessimism  would  not  be  the  only  possible  option;  

perhaps  we  could  also  think  of  an  anthropological  optimism.  Rousseau  was  one  

of  the  only  thinkers  of  the  enlightenment  that  Sahlins  saved  from  much  critique.  

But  of  course  there  was  also  a  strong  reading  of  what  Sahlins  was  saying,  and  

this  was  that  there  is  no  such  a  thing  as  human  nature,  at  all.  Human  nature  is  

what  he  called  culture,  following  the  American  anthropological  tradition.  

At this point I would like to come back to the questions formulated for today.

To ask if anthropology has abandoned grand theory, is not the same as saying that it

has abandoned (and perhaps should recover) a notion of “human nature”. Perhaps it is

exactly the opposite: one could say that grand theory in recent years precisely started

by questioning the concept of human nature, or further, of ‘nature’ in general. At

least, that is what is seemed to me, when I was a student, about fifteen years ago, and

Sahlins invited Bruno Latour and Phillipe Descola to teach at Chicago for a term,

because he though that they were the “next big thing”. And the next big thing

included precisely a radical criticism of the concept of nature itself. And yet, this

encounter didn’t result in a common project- there was from the beginning, a very

clear difference between Sahlins and Latour, which Descola tried to mediate without

much success. For Sahlins, we could do without nature, we only needed culture. For

Latour it didn’t make any sense to renounce to nature if we maintained its

symmetrical opposite, culture.

But still, there was certainly a commonality, which I would argue, was based

on the fact that both were critical of critical thought, itself. Latour in his work often

pokes fun on the gestures of iconoclasm of pessimists, their grandiloquent, self-

righteous asceticism, their suspicion of images, objects, that he frames in terms of an

exclusionary elitism, a “puritanism”, that denies agency to most things in the world,

except for the bourgeois subject himself, singly endowed with reason. His main object

of scorn was Bourdieu, who was certainly a good example of that. As opposed to this

bourgeois pessimism, Latour presented himself as a well-humoured optimist – giving

a chance to most things in the world to have their say; his project was a humorous

vindication of the dignity of non-humans, and their right to enter what he called the

parliament of things, in a new cosmopolitics that had to go well beyond the narrow

politics of human intentions, which were the nutshell of anthropological pessimism .

Some people define Latour as a “Catholic philosopher”. I guess it could be, if we see

him in the line of Saint Frances’ defence of the soul of humble beings, bringing the

brother wolf to the town of Gubbio, making pacts with the dogs… As opposed to the

pessimists, who see humans as wolves, or better, humans as wolves to humans,

optimists like Saint Francis and Latour would see wolves as humans! Or at least as

social beings.

But is Latour an anthropological optimist, in the line of Rousseau? Well,

perhaps more than an anthropological optimist, he is a post-anthropological optimist.

Post- anthropological in the sense that he extends his optimism well beyond

humanity, breaking the separation between culture and nature- actually going well

beyond nature. It is not just humans who can become agents, collaborating in the

construction of a common world, but also many other kinds of beings. One book were

I think Latour explains this point brilliantly, is “On the modern cult of the factish

gods” which was only recently translated to English. In the back cover of the book, no

less than Eduardo Viveiros de Castro says that “Bruno  Latour’s  science  is  joyous  

and  generous,  not  a  warmongering,  invidious  one.”  You  may  know  the  argument  

of  the  book  well,  but  I  will  summarise  it  quickly  because  it’s  quite  important  for  

what  I  want  to  say  next.  In  this  book,  Latour  goes  back  to  the  classical  theory  of  

fetishism  in  the  eighteenth  century,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect  example  

of  the  pessimistic  side  of  the  enlightenment.  European  colonizers  and  slave-­‐

mongers  accused  Africans  of  confusing  nature  with  culture,  cause  and  

consequence,  people  and  things.  the  product  with  the  producer.  Latour  argues  

that  it  was  the  construction  of  this  African  counterexample  what  actually  helped  

the  Enlightenment  objectify  these  distinctions,  essentially  the  distinction  

between  nature  and  culture,  “fact”  and  “fetish”.  According  to  the  European  slave-­‐

mongers,  Africans  worshiped  the  things  they  made  with  their  own  hands.  And  

they  called  these  gods  “fetishes”,  from  the  Portuguese  world  feitico,  which  means  

“spell”,  but  also  “artifice”,  something  made  up  (“coisa  feita”).  That  wouldn’t  be  

such  a  surprise  for  a  cynical,  Western,  free-­‐thinking  slave  monger  who  woulnd’t  

necessarily  believe  in  God,  or  religion:  all  religions,  it  was  argued  by  the  

European  theory  of  fetishism,  were  made  by  men,  since  gods  don’t  really  exist  in  

“nature”-­‐  they  are  not  facts.  But  still,  all  religions  would  hide  the  construction  of  

the  gods:  priests  would  maintain  the  masses  in  the  ignorance  of  this  

construction.  In  these  terms  religions  would  be  mechanisms  of  social  power,  

using  fetishes  as  puppets  trough  which  they  could  control  the  ignorant  masses.  

This  in  the  long  run,  became  a  general  theory  of  society  as  opposed  to  nature.  

Nature  would  be  based  on  facts,  given  things  that  happen  in  the  world,  

responding  to  natural  laws,  independently  from  the  intentions  of  humans.  

Society  on  the  other  hand,  would  not  be  based  on  facts,  but  on  fetishes,  made  up  

things  that  happened  only  within  humans,  responding  to  human  intentions-­‐  their  

will  to  power.  Fetishes,  as  opposed  to  facts,  would  not  exist  autonomously  from  

humans,  they  would  be  just  intermediary  entities  used  to  veil  the  agency  of  

humans.    This  is  an  extremely  powerful  theory,  that  has  survived  for  three  

hundred  years:  Bourdieu’s  use  of  the  term  fetish  in  his  writings  on  art  is  quite  

consistent  with  these  notions.    

So  after  all,  the  so-­‐called  African  fetishes  inspired  the  foundations  of  a  big  

deal  of  modern  European  social  theory.  Still,  what  was  shocking  for  Europeans  

about  Africans  was  not  so  much  they  believed  in  fetishes,  since  this  was  the  very  

essence  of  social  life,  everywhere.  What  was  shocking  is  that  they  didn’t  hide  

their  fetishism!  They  acknowledged  that  their  made  their  fetishes  with  their  own  

hands,  they  recognized  they  were  artifacts.  And  still,  they  held  them  as  

autonomous  entities  with  their  own  agency!  In  other  terms,  they  didn’t  really  

make  a  distinction  between  facts  and  fetishes;  but  they  thought  they  were  the  

same  thing.  Latour  called  this  hybrid  of  fact  and  fetish  the  factish,  which  is  a  quite  

stupid  term.  In  line  with  his  humour,  Latour  proposed  to  reverse  social  theory  

from  this  point:  what  if  the  Africans  right?  What  if  it  doesn’t  make  sense  to  

distinguish  between  fact  and  fetish,  things  given  and  things  made,  natural  

reproduction  and  human  production,  nature  and  culture?  If  what  is  

counterintuitive,  strange,  irrational  are  all  these  distinctions,  and  not  the  

confusion  between  these  distinctions?  Starting  from  here,  Latour’s  program  for  a  

social  science  is  not  to  revealing  the  hidden  truth  of  the  artifice  of  social  life  

dissect  fact  from  fetish,  looking  for  the  dark  secrets  of  human  nature,  but  to  

follow  the  factish,  as  it  were  see  how  things  are  made  into  autonomous  entities,  

with  their  own  agency.    

More than ten years after I heard Latour in Chicago for the first time, I think it is quite

clear that his “grand theory” has been extremely influential, together with the work of

other authors that have been defined under, yet another terrible name, Actor-Network-

theory. In the field of anthropology proper, many anthropologists thave been

developing similar ideas independently – people like Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern,

Eduardo Viveiros de Casto- and have been very influential. In the wider field of the

social sciences, theories of radical “performativity”, “affect”, and non-

representational theory are often in dialogue with these anthropological theories.

These are unquestionably some of the “grand theories” of today, theories many

engage with, or feel obliged to engage with- the obligation is unquestionably, a

marker of their influence. So to go back to the first question, no, anthropologists have

not renounced to grand theory, and perhaps if we follow these grand theories, we

don’t need to go back to explorations of human nature. Now once this question has

been answered in a rush, you will be sorry to hear that all what I have said until now

was actually just a preamble to the second question I wanted ot address today.  “ what

should be anthropologists’ relation to political action”? This is also, I am afraid, a

very general question. Just to make it clear, I am saying this as a self-criticism,

because I was part of the group that came up with these questions. But I guess we

should put these questions in the context they were written, in late 2010. A bunch of

us back then were so outraged and concerned with the current situation of the

university system in the UK that we thought that any available forums had to be taken

to discuss it. So the question was not so much what should anthropologists relation to

political action be, but what action we had to take in response to the current situation

of cuts and radical reform of the university system. Since we started organising this

day, the situation has not improved, so in that sense this pretence is still fully justified.

Still I acknowledge there have been several public forums in which our current

commitment has been discussed – see for example, Richard Fardon’s article in

Anthropology today- and our professional associations ASA, JRAI have responded

with more or less energy to the Government’s policies. And we will come back to

these issues later, at the roundtable discussion.

What I would like to address by now is a more specific, perhaps irrelevant

question. Taking for granted that anthropology as a social science is, by definition,

political, since the social is at its core, are the current “grand theories” the best

framework we have to address our current situation? Is Actor-Network theory and its

nearby theoretical formations are a good tool to build knowledge upon, and therefore

respond to, what is happening with this country right now?

One of the things that I found striking about Latour’s work in the nineties was

that he didn’t talk much about economics when, it seemed to me, economics was

precisely at the core of his arguments, since economics is precisely the central hybrid

of modernity: a social science that was treating the social as natural. Only later did I

come to know that close associates to Latour like Michel Callon were precisely

commited to the task of developing an actor-network approach to economics. It could

be argued that hidden hand of the economy is the most powerful factish produced in

the last few hundred years, more powerful that any god, machine, or microbe. Read

the newspapers this week and you will be able to see the powerful hidden hand

looming over several countries, a fist of insurmontable power, a truth that we cannot

deny, the inevitable truth that asks for inevitable sacrifices. Of course Marx, said long

time ago, that this hidden hand was a fetish, an ideological construction. And as social

scientists, our task would be to analyse and reveal the hidden truth of these fetishes,

building a criticism that would open the way to their final demise. The position of

Actor-Network theorists like Latour and Callon would be different, going beyond the

criticism of the fetish, he would try to understand the economy not as a fetish, an

ideological construction, but as a factish, an autonomous entity with its own agency.

Of course someone well read in Marx could say that actually Marx wasn’t saying that,

but what I am doing here is more reporting a debate that is probably well known by

most of you. I don’t want to misrepresent Marx, God forbid.

What I am more interested in pointing out, on the other hand, is to what extent the

current situation is in fact, questioning the autonomy and the agency of these

factishes. The hidden hand of the economy seems to reign supreme in the dark skies

of Europe. But does it really? The social instability, the massive protests, the backlash

against this “Hidden hand’ – or “the markets” – and the extreme authoritarian reaction

that we are seeing around us, the radicalisation ad absurdum of neoliberalism, seem to

indicate that autonomous construction seems to be crumbling down, even in places

like the UK where neoliberalism seems to have been so unquestionably hegemonic. In

that sense, the foundations of the economic “factish” seem quite unstable, and its

increasing violence appears of a sign of weakness. More and more authorised voices

talk about “belief” or better, “disbelief” in regards to the authorised interlocutors,

priests and oracles of the factish- people like international rating agencies, world

bank, IMF, etc…More and more, what up to now was seen as a well-greased,

unstoppable machine, appears as a still horrifying, but increasingly inconsistent

puppet in rags, unable to hide the contradictory and caothic ensamble of interests,

passions, and very human intentions behind it; the wolves appear as wolves, not as

priests, even less as scientists. The economy appears as a pure fetish, an artifice of

power, not an autonomous, optimistic agent that makes its own reality.

I personally came to this realisation while talking to students about the current

situation. When I had to explain what was happening with the university, I didn’t

really need too many tools besides a classical Marxist analysis, complemented with a

foucauldian approach to governamentality. Do I really need a theory of performativity

or affect to explain to students how neoliberalism at the university and the public

sector in general has been implemented through a growingly authoritarian

bureacratisation? Do I need to invoke “the parliament of things” to explain how we

are under constant scrutiny under an infinite variety of auditing devices, or can I do as

well with the panopticon? When Higher  Education  Authority  controls  have  been  

defined  by  many  as  Stalinist,  is there anything left to say about the agency of little

things, really?

And yet I also realised that by mapping to the overwhelming structures under

which we, inside the university system, are barely breathing, I was inevitably

transmitting to students a pessimism that could have negative effects on a student

movement that had just started with an explosion of energy and creativity that I

personally would have not expected beforehand. I realised that a clear explicit and

totally critical discourse could actually end up paralising any attempt of political

action, by showing the long “overdetermined” tentacles of power. Thankfully, many

of our students were smarter than us, or at least than me, and they had already thought

about alternatives to our paralysing pessimism. A group of students organised what

they called the University of Strategic Optimism, partially mimicking the self-help,

managerial, personal development planning, 3D lingo that is invading our campuses,

but also partially as a parody of Gayatri Spivak’s infamous concept, “strategic

essentialism”. Like strategic essentialism, of course, nobody at the Universty of

Strategic Optimism is really, really an optimist, like Spivak, God forbid, is not an

essentialist! We are all pessimistic, cynical intellectuals, who don’t believe in

essences. And yet, strategically optimistic, they act as if they thought that it is actually

possible to do something about the situation. These actions can be, apparently,

superficial, childish and naïve- even a bit idiotic, in a humorous way. Many can

probably say, I have been there, I have done that. The situationists did it before. 1968

and all that stuff. Quite true. And yet, to do certain things at a certain moment, even if

they have been done before, can have quite unattended effects, like Latour and others

have said- the outcome of certain events is unpredictable, something more and

something else that the sum of its constitutive elements. For example, the kids from

the University of Strategic Optimism made their inaugural lecture at a bank. A small,

perhaps childish action of detournement, in which they were questioning how the

money that should be spent in universities and other public services has been spent

instead in saving a moribund financial system, a dying fetish in which nobody really

believes anymore. And yet, this small, silly action had an interesting repercussion: an

activist group called UK uncut, partially inspired by this action, started to programme

occupations of banks, transforming them in temporary nurseries, schools, etc. UK

uncut as all of you know grew exponentially in a very short period of time, and these

actions started to spread throughout the country and beyond. I don’t know what will

be the outcome of all these movements, but so far, what I have seen is that this year

has been the more active and creative period since I arrived to the UK a few years

ago. A different university, and a different anthropology, will inevitably come out of

this process. So perhaps we to learn from our students and try to act as if we were

strategically optimistic! Pessimism, otherwise, is a given.