art/anthropology: practices of difference and translation
TRANSCRIPT
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 24 NO 3, JuNe 2008 27
A number of open meetings were held on each of these themes, and an interactive web-site was set up to disseminate announcements and summaries of these preparatory encoun-ters, as well as relevant papers and commen-taries (http://assisesethno.org/).
The December Assises were held at Paris’s two premier anthropology museums, them-selves the focus in recent years of heated polemic around competing visions of the disci-pline : the well-established Musée de l’Homme hosted the event on Wednesday and Thursday, and the self-consciously 21st-century Musée du Quai Branly took over on Friday and Saturday. A half-day plenary session was devoted to each of the four topics. Sessions began with brief summary presentations of the earlier preparatory discussions by the leaders in charge, followed by commentary from one of the foreign anthropologists invited – in an interestingly ethnographic move – as outside observers (Ali Amahan [Morocco], John Bowen [USA], Mamadou Diawara [Germany/Mali] and myself). Lively discussion from the floor was the main focus of the sessions, with about 300-400 people in attendance at each. A fifth session on the associational structure of the discipline ended, after passionate debate, in a nearly unanimous vote to establish a liaison committee mandated to explore possibilities for a single professional association, via main-tenance of the Assises website and organiza-tion of a founding congress to be held within a year. A final session on Saturday, co-organized with the European Association for Social Anthropology (EASA) and timed to coincide with EASA’s annual Executive Committee meeting, focused on anthropologists and Europe (with commentary by Gustavo Ribeiro [Brazil]). Each day’s proceedings ended with a convivial reception.
Much of the discussion was concerned with the current institutional difficulties of French anthropology, particularly the problems posed by an almost exclusive focus on academic/research training and very large numbers of doctoral students, combined with tiny numbers of university or basic research positions. For some participants, the development of training tracks geared to non-academic careers would offer an effective way to respond to student and general societal interest in anthropology, while also providing for the discipline’s future in France. Some attention was also paid to new challenges to maintaining international standing, such as that of the increasing domi-nance of English as a scholarly language, a development of particular significance for a discipline which (unlike other social sci-ences or some other national traditions of anthropology) is largely organized around international geographic specialities shared by multinational networks of peers.
Although somewhat less attention was paid to substantive matters, the last day’s discussion drew attention to understandings of ‘otherness’ as key to the problem definition, theory, and methods defining the discipline – a charac-teristic considered in this context as unam-biguously positive. Interesting parallels were drawn between the radical otherness on which
classical anthropology has generally rested, and (sometimes) more subtle forms of other-ness found closer to home. It was generally agreed that anthropology’s tools for thinking about the diversity of human experience largely account for public fascination with the discipline, and certainly justify its importance for the 21st century.
A note on the continued pertinence of an old anthropological saw about the relevance of perspective: I found it interesting – and not entirely disagreeable – that American anthro-pology was repeatedly evoked as a large, pow-erful and coherent foil to its French sister. This image stands in almost comical contrast to the view from within the American academy, where we are apt to see ourselves as an excep-tionally small, beleaguered and increasingly incoherent discipline. Then at the EASA ses-sion ending the Assises, it was French anthro-pology that was portrayed by colleagues from ‘Europe’s margins’ – Portugal and Poland – as almost overwhelmingly large, powerful and coherent.
Some of the organizers were disappointed that relatively few senior names attended the Assises, but I found the turnout impressive in terms of both numbers and enthusiasm. Over-representation of students and junior colleagues arguably bodes well for the future, and quite a few senior anthropologists pub-licly indicated their support by registering for the meetings, even if they were not physically present. The presence of many col-leagues from the provinces (including Tours, Lyons, Bordeaux, Aix and Nice) was a useful reminder that anthropology in France is not an exclusively Parisian – or strictly academic – profession, even if a disproportionate number of university departments and research groups are located in the capital. Most striking was the active desire of those attending to move beyond old quarrels in order to defend and promote the discipline, not only in response to current institutional difficulties, but also out of a larger sense that anthropological thinking carries an inherent value that merits more effective communication, both within the pro-fession and with the general public. As I see it, this well-organized, well-attended and lively meeting suggests a promising future for a reinvigorated French anthropology scene, one that will doubtless never be very harmonious but where contention and debate may be seen as signs of vigour rather than self-immolation. And certainly the issues raised, though taking a distinctive French flavour here, are broadly shared within our discipline and merit careful reflection elsewhere as well. l
Susan Carol RogersNew York University
Condominas, G. et al. 1980. Review of Anthropology in France: Present and future. Current Anthropology 21: 479-489.
1. By most accounts, there are about 400 professional anthropologists employed in France, with about half holding full-time research positions (particularly at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]) and the other half in university posts. The latter are roughly evenly divided between anthropology appointments and positions in other departments.
2. A 1977 meeting of French anthropologists, which ultimately resuled in the creation of AFA, provides the only obvious precedent. As an American doctoral student resident in France at the time, I remember being struck that the keynote speaker was a foreign non-anthropologist (Laurence Wylie), a choice I supposed to be connected to the highly personalized rancour that seemed to characterize the proceedings. At the 2007 Assises, this event was referred to most notably in invited remarks during the opening session by Simone Dreyfus-Gamelon, a co-organizer of the 1977 meeting (Condominas et al. 1980).
3. There are a large number of such groups: some of the better-established may be accessed via the French Ministry of Culture: http://www.culture.fr/fr/sections/themes/etudes_recherches/sous_themes/ethnologie/ERethnoAss. However, in the absence of an umbrella organization for French anthropology, there is no systematic co-ordination and it is difficult to have a general overview of who, where, or what they are.
ART/ANTHROPOlOGy: PRACTICES OF DIFFERENCE AND TRANSlATIONMuseum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, 31 October-1 November 2007
The aim of this symposium was to explore collaboration across the disciplines of art and anthropology, and to develop a framework for a future research ‘laboratory’ on contemporary art and anthropology in Oslo. In some ways it was a continuation, albeit on a smaller scale, of the dialogue between artists and anthropolo-gists initiated at the ‘Fieldworks’ conference at Tate Modern, which convenor Arnd Schneider co-organized in 2003.
About 30 anthropologists, artists, art critics/historians and museum curators gathered at the Museum of Cultural History. Surrounded by ethnographic collections, the participants were reminded of their shared problematic of how the ‘other’ has been, and can be, represented. Schneider opened the event by pointing out how the work of anthropologist Alfred Gell, on the one hand, and the art critic Nicholas Bourriaud, on the other, revealed a conver-gence in thinking: both disciplines investigate how material objects can be experienced as subjects engaged in social relationships. For participants practising anthropology and art the issue was less a matter of seeking to contrast art and anthropology than of finding common ground.
Thought-provoking projects were presented, and initial discussion inevitably led to debates over completed works. One important issue raised was the degree of openness in presen-tations and representations of research. We are used to experiencing art works that are often experimental, unstable and uncertain in their intentions and final form. Such open-ness is a valued quality in art. Anthropology, on the other hand, seeks stable textual forms, structured by academic demands of a defined beginning and end, and a search for a conclu-sion. The academic scholar cannot leave out theoretical concepts and uses these analytically in his/her work, while this is comparatively new and far from essential in art.
This sparked the question of whether anthro-pologists might experiment by decreasing their usual emphasis on ethnographic context. Chris Wright presented the film Kranky Klaus, by Cameron Jamie, to interrogate this idea.
28 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 24 NO 3, JuNe 2008
Taking as subject the rituals surrounding St Nicholas Day in an Austrian village, with a minimum of context, it engaged viewers by conveying the experiences of the participants in the film. Wright held that anthropologists can usefully deploy films such as these not only to excite emotions but as a means to represent reflective knowledge visually. Thus films and analytical explanations can sup-plement each other. Amiria Salmond offered a visual and textual presentation on how the Pasifika Styles exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge conveyed similar concerns: contemporary art-ists had been invited to reinterpret old objects stored at the museum and its curators stepped back to let the artists and their works speak for themselves.
The discussions following these presenta-tions made space for new thoughts on how highly contextualized and stable works can be combined with the performative and the unstable. In her presentation of collaborative projects, Amanda Ravetz pointed out how artists often make things happen, while anthro-pologists tend to observe action. Per Gunnar Tverbakk, by contrast, argued that the nature of funding might sometimes lead to artists pro-ducing speculative works lacking in respect for the represented.
The presentation by Sissel Tolaas was par-ticularly interesting. Originally trained as a chemist, her work on the importance of smells in cultural relationships was recently featured at the Sensorium exhibition at MIT. She uses nano-technique to collect and represent smells, and ethnographic fieldwork to collect people’s experiences of smells. Her aim is to make us aware of how we camouflage ourselves with expensive smells because we have learned that our bodies smell bad and perfume smells good. Further, she tries to develop a nuanced terminology beyond our ordinary definition of smells as good or bad. This dichotomy between order (good smells) and disorder (bad smells) goes back to a primordial interest in ordering the senses common to both art-ists and anthropologists in the way they deal with their own sensory experiences. A closely related project reflecting on the anthropology of the senses was presented by Christian Sørhaug. Sørhaug had recently returned from his fieldwork among the Warao in Venezuela, where he had taken an interest in local cul-tural categories of smell and hearing, and was struggling to represent this knowledge, for example in writing or in a future museum exhibition.
George E. Marcus contended that anthro-pology today is about mediation of experi-ences and about intervention more than it is about description and ethnographic fieldwork. The design of research practice as an aesthetic method is at issue. Since sites are constituted through social imagination, fieldwork is no longer about specific places. Anthropology’s move away from sites and bounded cultures, and the movement among artists towards site-specificity as a practice, have brought the disciplines closer to each other. Although this process might appear paradoxical, there is a
meeting point in the interest in ethnography and emphasis on social engagement.
The most delicate issue throughout the symposium appeared to be ethical concerns about the various methodological approaches. Anthropologists had a tendency to argue that artists did not share the ethical principles that they felt ought to guide ethnographic field-work, partly because of their shorter period of engagement in the field, but also because of previous stereotypical representations of marginalized groups. Artists responded by questioning contemporary anthropological par-ticipation in military interventions.
The symposium generated tentative ideas for collaboration, and we look forward to follow-up in the form of future joint research projects. l
Anna Laine University of Gothenburg, Sweden
ONTOlOGy – jUST ANOTHER WORD FOR CUlTURE? The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, Manchester, 9 February 2008
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory’s debate, on the motion ‘Ontology is just another word for culture’, was held on 9 February in Manchester. Although the Group has not convened a debate since 1999, the event drew a large audience from a broad range of institutions and backgrounds. Speaking for the motion were Michael Carrithers (Durham) and Matei Candea (Cambridge), and against Karen Sykes (Manchester) and Martin Holbraad (University College London). The format of the event was in the style of a parliamentary debate, aiming to stimulate discussion by promoting a direct clash of views.
Michael Carrithers, opening for the proposi-tion, expressed a concern, echoed by all of the other speakers, that the motion was ‘puzzling’. Proposing a definition of ontology as ‘the per-fect objectification of language’, where words correspond directly to reality and knowledge of ‘what is’ is possible, he went on to make the case that claims to the ontological quality of certain representations of the world were part of a broader series of rhetorical strategies within a ‘cultural project’. Using examples as diverse as the politics of 1968 and ethnog-raphy from Sri Lanka, he illustrated the ways in which people deployed ideas – including ideas about what exists – to manage social life, arguing that in this sense ontology was merely a rhetorical hardening of elements of cultural rhetoric.
Replying for the opposition, Karen Sykes made the case that ontology should be held separate from culture, as the questions that culture seeks to answer. Using the example of the malanggan sculptures from New Ireland, which are displayed at funerals only to be burnt, she suggested that the role of culture was to model or respond creatively to onto-logical problems that it cannot exhaust. Thus,
the burning of the sculpture, leaving behind beautiful memories, evokes the quality of a life lived and lost. Ontology therefore exists as a different, perhaps inaccessible, order of phe-nomena to culture.
Matei Candea, seconding the motion, restricted himself to comments on the theo-retical deployment of the terms of the debate. He argued that both ontology and culture as concepts attempt to deal with alterity, which he identified as the central problematic of anthro-pology. He suggested that culture, through the debates around representation in the 1970s and 1980s, had suffered ‘hyperinflation’ – entering general circulation as a term involved in iden-tity politics and self-representations in all areas of social life. Ontology, he suggested, was an attempt to capture the theoretical ground of alterity, once covered by culture, while trying to avoid the problems of representation. As such, ontology is another word, used in place of culture, to deal with alterity.
Martin Holbraad, speaking last against the motion, generally agreed with Candea’s assessment of the role of the terms ‘culture’ and ‘ontology’, but insisted that culture was not, as Candea suggested, an accidental casu-alty of debates around representation, but was in fact fundamentally concerned with repre-sentation. He charged that to describe others’ ideas as culture was to relegate them to repre-sentations of a prior reality to which Western science claims privileged access. In opposi-tion to this model of knowledge, he proposed the study of ontologies as a way of accepting others’ ability to inhabit wholly separate reali-ties, and to compel the re-conceptualization of social science, through ethnography, on their terms.
Each of the speakers presented a lively case, and the debate sparked a brisk discus-sion. Dick Werbner opened proceedings by observing that despite the adversarial format of the event, the debate was consensual rather than polarized. He suggested that this was because the motion referred to essentially similar anthropological strategies, focusing on ideas and knowledge. Other questioners, notably Peter Gow, urged the speakers to pay attention to social and political processes underlying what people say about the world they live in. Nina Glick-Schiller forced the issue by asking the speakers to attend to the issue of power and hegemony in knowledge about, and action in, the world.
In reply, both Michael Carrithers, for the motion, and Martin Holbraad, speaking against it, emphasized that ethnography was the ‘bottom line’ in assessing the role of social relations in others’ world views, and appealed to the authority of ethnography in defending their positions. However, while Carrithers wel-comed talk of social and political relations as an integral component in the rhetorical deploy-ment of cultural resources, Holbraad stuck to his strict multiple-ontologies model to deny the possibility of asking generally phrased questions of power of others’ worlds.
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