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    Comaroffs. Ethnography and The Historical Imagination

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    Citlali Yisel Anguiano Hernández

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    t i i 1 Ethnography and the Historical Imagination {YSTIC WARRIORS GAINING GROUND IN MOZAMBIQUE WAR.” The head- line was exotic enough to make the front page of the Chicago Tribune one Sunday.! “Call itone of the mysteries of Africa,” the report began. “Inthe battle- ranged region of sorthera Motanbiqu, in femote sw hut village where the modetn world has scarcely penetrated, supernatural spi ‘magic potions are suddenly winning 2 civil war that machine guns, mortars and grenades could not.” The account went on to describe an army of several thousand men and boys, sporting red headbands and brandishing spears, Named after their leader, Naparama—who is said to have been resurrected from the dead—they display on their chests the scars of a “vaccination” against bullets. Their terrain is the battle scarred province of Zambesia, where 2 civil war, with South African support, has been raging for some fifteen years. Now heavily armed rebels fiec at the sight of the Naparama, and government troops appear equally awed. Western diplomats and analysts, the report recounts, “‘can only scratch their heads in amazement.” The piece ends in a tone of arch authority: “Much of "Naparame’s effectiveness can be explained by the predominance of super- stitious beliefs throughout Mozambique, a country where city markets always have stals selling potions, amulets and monkey hands and ostrich feet to ward off evil spirits.” ‘Faced with such evidence, anthropologists might be forgiven for doubt- ing that they have made any impact at all on Western consciousness. It is more than fifty years since Evans-Pritchard (1937) showed, in the plainest prose, that Zande magic was an affair of practical reason, that “primitive mentality” is fiction of the modern mind; more than fifty years of writing, 3 4 THEORY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY ze the curious. Yet we have not routed the reflex a an cikes “superstitious” most aptly qualify African belief: No, the steaw Fra and magic potions areas secure inthis text asin any cary nineteenth en ay tenvelers tale. There is even the whiff of a trafic in flesh (the scrnkey bunds, the ostich fs), No matter that these wayward warnors aren Tace the victims of a thoroughly modem conflict, that they wear villa clothes and ie into combat singing Christian songs. fn the popular Shagination they ace fully fledged signs of the primitive, alibis for an feolutionism that puts them—and their fascinating forays—across an irretrievable gulf from ourselves. "These sensationalized savages, thrust across our threshold one snowy Sundey, served to focus our concerns about the place of anthropology in the contemporary would, For the “report” told less of the Mozambican Soldiers than of the culture that had conjured them up as its inverted self Jimage. Despite the claim that meaning has lost its moorings in the late capitalist world, there was a banal predictability about this piece. Ie elied fon the old opposition between secular mundanity and spectral mystery, European modernism and African primitivism.? What is more, the contrast implied 2 telos, an all too familiar vision of History as an epic passage- from past to present. The eise of the West, our cosmology tells us, accompanied, paradoxically, by 2 Fall: The cost of rational advance has teen our erernal exile from the sacred garden, from its enchanted ways of Knowing and being. Only natural man, unreconstructed by che Midas rouch of modernity, may bask in its beguiling ceetainties. “The myth is as old 5 the ills But has haan ending cmos x-Enlightenment thought in general and, in particulat, on aoe tye cai orca clean of modmy for 2 denunciation of its izon cage, these “sciences” have, at lease until recently, shared the premise of disenchantment—of the movement of ‘mankind {tom religious speculation to secular reflection, from theodicy to theory, from cultare to practical reason (Sahlins 1976a; n.d.). Anthropol- “gists, of course, have hardly ignored the effects on the discipline of the Fingering legacy of evolutionism (Goody 1977; ef. Clifford 1988). None- theless, it cemains in our bones, so to speak, With profound implications foc our notions of history and our theories of mea The mystic warrios underscored our own distrust of isnchansmens our feo see modernity —in stark contrast to tradition —as divi see aeige swan coumelogy art tory” (reson 1983:40). To be sare, ws Rave never given any analyte credence 9 tis ideologically reighted opposition of to any of its aliases (simple:complex; ascrip- So on). For, deessed up as psetxlohistory, such dualisms feed off one another, carcaturing the empirical realities they purport to reveal. “Tra: in an efforr fo contextual Echnggraply and the Historical Imagination 5 ditional” communities are still frequently held, for instance, to rest upon sacred certainties; modern societies, instead, to look to history to recount for themselves orto assuage their sense of alienation and loss (cl Anderson 1983:40; Keyes, Kendall, and Hardacre n.d.). What is more, these stero- typic contrasts are readily spatialized in the chasm berween the West and the rest. Tey as they might, the Naparama will never be more than primitive rebels ratling their sabers, their “cultural weapons,” in the prehistory of an Affican dawn. As Fields (1985) has noted, their “milleniacy” kind are seldom attributed properly political motives, seldom credited with the rational, purposive actions in which history allegedly consists. [n the event, the Western eye frequently overlooks important similarities in che ways in which socictics everywhere are mack and remade. And, all too often, we anthropologists have exacerbated this. For we have our own investment in preserving zones of “tradition,” in stressing social reproduction over random change, cosmology over chaos (Asad 1973; Taussig 1987). Even as we expose our ethnographic islands to the crosscurrents of history, we remain fainthearted. We still separate local communities from global systems, the thick description of particular cultures from the thin narrative ‘of world events ‘The bulletproof soldiers remind us that lived realities defy easy dualisms, that worlds everywhere are complex fusions of what w like to call moder- nity and magicalty, rationality and ritual, history and the here and now. In fact, our studies of the Southern Tswana have long proved to us tht none of these were opposed in the first place—encept pethaps in the colonizing imagination and in ideologies, lke apartheid, that have sprung from it, If we allow that historical consciousness and representation may take very different forms from those of the West, people everywhere turn ‘out to have had history all along As it has become commonplace to point out, then, European colonizers did nor, in an act of heroism wacthy of Carlyle (1842), bring Universal Hlisory to people without it. Ironically, they brought histories in particulas, histories far less predictable than we have been inclined to think. For, despite the claims of modernization theory, Marxist dependistas,or** moves ‘of production” models, global Forces played into local formsand conditions in unexpected ways, changing known structures into strange hybrids. Our ‘own evidence shows that the incorporation of black South Africans into a world economy did not simply erode difference or spawn rationalized, homogeneous worlds. Money and coramoditis, literacy and Christendom challenged local symbols, threatening to convert them into a universal currency, But precisely because che cross, the book, and rhe coin were such saturated signs, they were variously and ingeniously redeployed to bear a host of new meanings as non-Western peoples—Tswana prophets, Napa- rama fighters, and othets—fashioned their own visions of modernity (cf 6 ‘THEORY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY Neither was (or is) this mercly 2 feature of “transi CEE communities, of those marginal to bourgeois reason and the commodity econorny Tn our essays, as we follow colonizers of different kinds from the aetropole t Alficaand back, it becomes clea thatthe culeur of capitalism foe always been shot through with its own magialties and forms of Mchantment, all of which repay analysis, Like the ninereenth-century SNangelists who accused the London poor of strange and savage customs {sce Chapter 10), Marx insisted on understanding commodities as objects Of primitive worship, as fetishes. Being social hieroglyphs rather than mere lenating objects, they describe a world of densely woven power and ireaning, enchanted DY a “superstitious” belief in their capacity to be fraiful oné multiply. Although these curious goods are more prevalent in cSpodern” societies, their spirit, as Marx himself recognized, infects the politics of value everywhere. If, as Chapter 5 demonstrates we cast our faze beyond the horizon where the so-alled first and thied worlds meet, Pencepts Tice the commodity yield useful insights into the constitution of Saltures usually regarded as noncapitalst. And so the dogma of disenchant- ment is dislodged. 7 ‘uve in che assertions of our own culture, in short, assertions thar have Jong justifed the colonial impulse, there is no great gulf between “tradi: tion” and “modernity” —or “‘postmodernity,” for that matter. Nos, 2s ‘thers before us have said, is much to be gained from typological contrasts Cerwecn worlds of gesellschaft and gemeinschaft, or between economies governed by use- and exchange-alue, But we are less concerned here 19 eererate the point than to make a methodological observation. 1f such Gistinetions do not hold up, it follows that the modes of discovery Steociated with them—ethnography For “traditional” communities, history for the “modet” world, past and present—also cannot be sharply drawn. ‘We require ethnography co know ourslves, just as we need history to know pons Western others. For ethnography serves at once to make the familiar ‘eange ard the strange familia, all the better to understand them bork. It js. as it were, the canon-fodder ofa critical anthropology. In respect of oar own society, this is especially crucial For itis arguable that many of the concepts on which we rely 10 describe modere life— Statistical models, ational choice and game theory, even logocentric event histories, case studies, and biographical narvatives—are instruments of what Bourdieu (197.971), in a different context, calls the “synoptic Illusion." They ate our own rationalizing cosmology posing as science, our ccaltare parading as historical causality. All this, as many now recognize, fails for wo things simultaneously: that we regard our own world as 2 problem, proper site for ethnographic inquiry, and that, co make good ines intertion, we develop a genuinely historicized anthropology. But how Evinggraphy and the Historical Imagination 7 csacty ate we to do 30? Contry to sone schol opin, i easy 10 alienate ourselves from our own mesningfal conten to make out own custene srnge, How do. we Wo ethnogaphies of and in the contemporary worl orde? What, ined, right be the substantive dee tions of such a “neomodern” historical anthropology? terion me in nam ne hanes ams ot reese ene foie cemeesenee ems Soe mnierreepcPtae nom Sane Seempeenormnceraerr sean deer iiemactranemrmen All thatthe historian or ettrographer can do, and al that we can expect of istomop toc egmrtnemne ean Cave ara -7) “These questions parse int into two parts, ewo complementary motifs that start cout separately and, like a classical pas de deux, merge slowly, step by step. ‘Ths at pertains to ethnography, the second to history. we have noted, the current status of ethnography ; : ethnography in the human sciences is something of a paradox. On the one hand, its authority has been, ands being seriously challenged fram both withiaanbroplogy and cts; onthe other ts being widely appropri iberaling method in fields other than our own—among them, cultural and legal studies, sociology, social history, and political science.®Are these disciplines ‘critical lag? Or, mote realistically, is a simultaneous sense of Sens and dep rt 0 ethnography? Docs its relativism bequeath it an enduring sense of its own limitation, its own irony? There does seem we te im Seb ee casa raphy “always has been... linked with epistemotogical problems.” To wit, its founding fathers, having taken to the field to subvert Western universalisms with non-Western particularities, now stand accused of hav- ing served the caus of imperaism. And genrations of journeyman = vols since bee struggled with the contradictions of a mode of. inquiry that appears, by turns, uniquely revelatory and irtedeemal ingiy iquely revelatory and irredeemably eth- ‘The ambivalence is palpable also in critiques of anthropology, which Hoth feng cara (Asal 1975, Fabian 1985 id 1989) and—because of its relentlessly bourgeois bias—of effacing 8 THEORY, ETHNOGRAFHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY difference altogether (Taussig 1987). In a recent review, for example, ‘Sangren (1988:406) acknowledges that ethnography does “to some degree, make an object of the “other” Nonetheless, he goes on to assert, i€ was ‘gialogic long before the term became popular.” Similar arguments, one might add, are to be heard in other scholarly fields that rely om participant observation: Surveying the growing literature in cultural studies, for instance, Graeme Turner (1990:178) remarks that “the democratic impulse and the inevitable effect of ethnogeaphic practice in the academy contradict cach othe” But why this enduring ambivalence? Is ethnography, as many ofits critics have implied, singularly precarious in its naive empiricism, its philosophical uunreflectiveness, its interpretive hubris? Mcthodologicaly speaking, it does have strangely anachronistic echoes, harking back to the classical credo that secing is believing.” Ln this it is reminiscent of the catly biological sciences, where clinical observation, the penetrating human gaze, was frankly celebrated (Foucault 1975; Levi-Strauss 1976:35; Pratt 1985); recall, here, that biology was the mode! chosen, in the golden age of social anthropology, for 2 “natural science of society” (Radcliff Brown 1957). “The discipline, however, never really developed an armory of objectifying, instruments, standardizing strategies, and quantifying formulas.* It fas continued to be, as Evans-Pritchaed (1950; 1961) insisted long ago, 2 humanist at, in spite ofits sometime scientific pretentions. And while ic has never been theoretically homogeneous, internal differences and disputes have seldom led to thoroughgoing revisions of its modus operandi.* Indeed, the unsympathetic critic could claim that ethnography isa relic of the era of travel writing and exploration, of adventure and astonishment;* that it remains content to offer observations of human scale and felibilty; that it still depends, disingenuously, on the facticity of first-hand experience Yer it might be argued that the greatest weakness of ethnography is also its major strength, its paradox a productive tension. For it refuses to put its trust in techniques that give more scientific methods their illusory objectivity: theic commitment to standardized, a priori units of analysis, for cxample, or their reliance on a depersonalizing gaze that separates subject from object. To be sure the term “participant observation” —an oxymoron to believers in value-free science—connotes the inseparability of knowledge from its knower. In anthropology, the observer is sel evidently his het “own instrument of observation’ (Levi-Steauss 1976:35). “This is the whole point. Even if they wanted to, ethnographers could not, ‘pace the purifying,idyll of ethnoscience, hope to remove every trace of the ‘arbitrariness with which they read meaningful signs on a cultural landscape. But it would surely be wrong to conclude that their method is especially vvalnerable, moreso than other efforts, to know human (or even nonhuman) worlds Ethnagraply and the Historical Imagination 9 In this sense, the “problem” of anthropological knowledge is only a more tangible instance of something common to all modernist cpistemal- gies, as philosophers of science have long realized (Kuhn 1962; Lakatos and Musgrave 1968; Figlio 1976), For ethnography personifies, in its methods and irs models, the inescapable dialectic of fact and value. Yee ‘most of its practitioners persist in asserting the usefulness—indeed, the creative potential—of such “imperfece” knowledge. They tend both to recognize the impossibility ofthe tcuc and the absolute and also to suspend disbelie:: Notwithstanding the realist idiom of their craft, they widely accepe that—like all other forms of understanding —echnography is histor- ically contingent and culturally configured.” They have even, at times, found the contradiction invigorating. Sill, living with insecurity is more tolerable to some than to others. “Those presently concerned with the question ot authority fauic (unenlight- ened) ethnographers for pretending 0 be good, old-fashioned realists. ‘Thus Clifford (1988:43) notes chat even if our accounts “successfully dramatize the intersubjective, give-and-take of fieldwork . . . they remain representasions of dialogue.” As if the impossibility of describing the enconntcr in al its fullness, without any mediation, condemns us to lesser cuths. Likewise, Marcus (1986:190) counterposes “realist ethnography” 0 2 new “modernist” form that, because it ‘can never gain knowledge of the realities that statistics can,” would “evoke the word without repre: senting it. If we cannot have real representation, let us have no represen: tation at all! Yer surely this merely reinscribes naive realism 2s an (unat- tainable) ideal? Why? Why should anthropologists fret atthe fact that our accounts are refractory representations, that they cannot convey an undis- torted sense of the “open-ended mystety” of social life as people experience ig? Why, instead, should ethnographers not give account of how such experiences are socially, culturally, and historically grounded or argue about the character of the worlds they evoke, with the aim of fructifying our own ways of seeing and being, of subverting our own sureties (cf. van der Veer 1990:739). Ethnography, in any case, does not speak for others, but about them. Neither imaginatively nor empirically can it ever “capture” thei reality. Unlikely as ic may seem, this was brought home to us in a Londoa School of Economics toilet in 1968. It turned out to be our first Focctaste of deconstruction; perhaps it was where postmodern anthropology all began. On an unhinged stall door, an unknown artist—perhaps an unhinged student—asked nobody in particular, “Is Raymond Firth real, for just a figment of the Tikopean imagination?” Ethnography, to extend the point, is not 2 vain attempt at literal ‘translation, in which We Cake over the mantle of an-other's being, conceived ‘of as somehow commensurate with our own. It isa historically situated mode of understanding historically situated contexts, each with its own, 10 ‘rHsoRY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY chaps radically different, kinds of subjects and subjectivities, objects 20d reels "Alsoy it has hitherto been an inescapably Western discourse: In pote pick up our cariee comment, we tel of the unfamiliar—again, the Tuadon, the parody of doxa—to conftont the limite of our own epic: "gat own visions of personhood, agency, and history, Such critiques ‘Ean eevee be full or final, of course, for they remain embedded in forms of thought and peactice not fully conscious or innocent of constraint. But ther provide one way, in ous caltar, of decoding those signs that disguise themselves as universal and natura of engaging in unsettling exchanges twith those, including scholars, who live in different world. For all this, itis impossible ever to rid ourselves entirely of the ethno- centrism that dogs our desire to know others, even though we vex ourselves spith the problem in ever more fefined ways. Thus many anthropologists fave been wary of ontologies that give precedence to individuals over contents, For these rest on manifestly Western assumptions: amnong them, that human beings can triumph over their contexts through sheer force of ‘rill, that economy, culture, and society are the aggregate product of individual ation and intention. Yet, as we shall point out again below, it fas proven extremely dificult t0 cast the bourgeois subject out of the. anthropological fold §/he has rerorned in many guises, from Malinowsk’s maximizing man to Geerts’s maker of meaning, Ironically, s/he appears auain in the writings of those who take ethnography t0 sk for fling to Tepresent the “native’s point of view.” Sangren (1988:416) arBues vigor Sutly that this is 2 legacy of American cultural anthropology oF, at least, the version oft that would sever culture from society, experiencing subjects from the conditions that produce them. Under these conditions, culeure becomes the stuf of inrecsubjective fabrication: a web f0 be woven, a text abe transcribed, And ethnography becomes “dialogical,” not in Bakhtin's thoroughly zacalized sense, but in the narrower sense of a dyadic, decon- textualized exchange between anthropologist and informant.!® We would fesist the reduction of anthropological rescarch to an exercise in “intessub- jecrivity” the communing of phenomenologically coactived actors through ‘alk alove. As Hindess (1972:24) cemarks, the rendering down of social Science to the terms of the experiencing, subject is a product of modern humanism, of a historically specific Western worldview. To treat ethnog, raphy 26 an encounter between am observer and wt other— Conversations Pih Ogotemméli (Griaule 1965) oc The Headman and I (Dumont 1978)— Fe to make anthropology into a global, ethnocentric interview. Yet itis feecsely this perspective chat warrants the call for ethnography 10 be Milalogie”-—50 that we may do justice to the cle of “the native infor ant,” the singulat subject, in the making of ur texts. ‘Generations of anthropologists have said it in a wide variety of ways: In order to construe the gestures of others, theis words and winks and more Eximegraphy and the Historical Imaginasion nL besides, we have to situate them within the systems of signs and relations, of power and meaning, that animate them, Our concer ultimately is with the interplay of such systems—often relatively open systems—with the persons and events they spawn; a process that need privilege neither the soverciga self nor stifling structures. Ethnography, we would argue, is an exercise in dialectics cather than dialogiss, although the latter is always part of the former. In addition to talk, ir entails observation of activity and interaction both formal and diffuse, of modes of control and constiiat, oF silence as well as assertion and defiance. Along the way, ethnographer also rad diverse sorts of texts: books, bodies, buildings, sometimes even cities (Holston 1989; Comaroff and Comasoff 1991; see below). But chey must always give texts contexts and assign values to the equations of power and ‘meaning they express. Nor are contexts just there. They, too, have to be ‘onsteucted analytically in light of our assumptions about the social world. “The representation of larger, impersonal systems,” in short, is not untenable in “the narrative space of ethnography” (Marcus 1986:190). Apart from all else, such systems arc implicated, whether or not we recognize them, in the sentences and scenes we grasp with our narrow- gauge gaze. But more than this: Ethnography surely extends beyond the range of the empirical eye; its inquisitive spirit calls upon us f0 ground subjective, culturally configured action in society and history—and vice versa—wherever the task may take us. That spit is present, we shall sec, jn the work of historians who insist that the human imagination itself is perforce a “collective, cial . . . phenomenon” (Le Goff 1988:5; our ‘empbasis). In this sense, one can ‘'do” ethnography in the archives, as Darnton (1985:3) implies by the phrase “history inthe ethnographic grain” (Geep. 14). One can also “du! the anthropology of national ot international forces and formations: of colonialism, evangelism, liberation struggles, social movements, dispersed diasporas, cegional “evelopment,” and the like. Such systems seem impersonal and unethnographic onl to thote who would separate the “subjective” from the “objective” world, claiming the former for anthropology while lewving the latter to global theories (Marx- ism, workd-systems, structuralism), under whose wing ethnography may find a precarious perch (8. Marcus 1986). In fact, systems appear “impersonal,” and holistic analyses stultifying, only when we exclude from them all room for human maneuver, for ambivalence and historical inde- ‘terminacy—whea we fil to acknowledge that meaning is always, to some ‘extent, arbitrary and diffuse, chat social life everywhere rests on the imperfect ability o reduce ambiguity and concentrate power. Ofcourse, lke al forms of inguicy, ethnography objectifis as it ascribes rmeaning—albeit perhaps less so than do those methodologies that explain hhuman behavior in terms of putatively universal motives. An exacting critic from a neighboring discipline recently allowed that the work of anthropol- 42 THEORY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRATHY ogy, “which combine(s]2 passion for detail with a humane aspiration, does riot suffer in comparison with its ethnoccetric competitors” (Fields 1985:279). In this respect, ethnography seems no more intrinsically “ar- rogant” than do other modes of social investigation (gare Turner 1990:178). Much of the difficulty has come from the fact that, for reasons deeply inscribed in the politics of knowledge, anthropologists have classically studied populations marginal to the centers of Western power—those who ‘were unable, until recently, to answer back. In this, a5 we will argue, our position is litde different from that of often radical social historians concetned with society's nether regions, the lives of “Mitte people” viewed from the bortom up (Cohn 1987:39). The dangers of disclosure in such situations ate real enough. Indeed, while all representations have effects, those imposed by academic brokers on communities without cultural capital are more likely to have deleterious consequences. Ar the very least, we have co confront the complexities of our relations to our subjects, texts, and audiences—especally because the impact of our work is never fully foreseeable. This not only demands a serious regard, once again, for contexts, our own as much as those We study. fc also calls for a careful consideration of the real implicacions of what we do, a consideration thyé rust go far beyond the now routine tecognition that our writings are potenti inseeuments of “ochering,” But ethnography also has pésitive political possibilities, We ought not be too quick, for instance, to disregard the challenge that cultural relativism poses to bourgoois consciousness. Why elee che specist opprabciut heaped ‘upon us by shrill absolutists,essayists of the closed mind like Alan Bloom? ‘The fate of the Naparama may tell us that we arc less influential than we often suppose. Nevertheless, our work does eeverbecate in aad beyond che academy, although its legitimacy and impact vary with the way in which ‘we choose to phrase our questions. Aa important moment of choice is now ‘upon us. JFwe rake our task ro be an exercise in intersubjective ecanslation, in speaking for others and their point of view, our hubris will cause us no end of dificulties, moral and philosophical. And if we see it to lie in the formal analysis of social systems or cultura) stnycures, statistically or logically conceived, we evade the issue of representation and experience altogether. But if, after an older European tradition, we sek to understand the making of collective worlds—the dialectics, in space and time, of societies and selves, persons and placcs, orders and events—then we open ourselves to conventions of criticism widely shared by the nonpositivist human sciences. Then, too, we may trafic in analytic constructions, notin unverifiable subjectivities, and can acknowledge the effects of history tpon ‘our discourses. Then we may focus on interpreting social phenomena, not ‘on the endless quest for textual means to exorcise the fac that our accounts Etinegratiy and the Historical Imagination 13 ace not realist transparencies. Then, finally, we will be on epistemological curt tha, i oly provisionally, we comprehend and conteel ‘The second motif, recall, is the question of history. Or, more precisely, of historical anthropology. Peer ett In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it became common to te it became com temper the anthropological turn toward history-as-panacea by posing the problem: ‘What history? Which anthropology?” We ourselves raised the issue, arguing thar any sbvantve elanship between dics is determined mr by he iis matutofhosedicipies i any sac hing cau by pa ‘Hertel consideration. woul seem eves for mae hat ee anal ames diferent sgifeance for stu een han des or er Manns oestrone wae at shel ‘ey shuld be mor ito, or hist “eres sop ye ‘ebitined bu fe aertion teas acu wut fet Tretia specication, in our view here aught Bene “reaihip” See iy an hops loo non eg with A theory of sory which not alos teeny sy. or ue italy theo ata Seer But there was more fo she mater than ths, For the spa of intention between the wo dines was (nevtaly, i now scons) pervaded pg particular Geist—a politics of perspective, s0 to speak. Cleatly, the kind of hitris that wore Wo Bnd a sympthec cae smengsntnpslopit ese ually 0B he Choi of Courts nd Kage Neer here ey tebe to be eventefull political nartatives, however fascinating, of embassies im empires, strife between states, or trade between chieftains; nor laterday gantave acount pase wos tac by ape to syncon soilgy sought 0 te “peel hatte” in “rns sod anon Bound to be much more attractive, save in some steuctucalistand Marxist circles, were richly textuted accounts of things similar to what we ourselves study-—analyzed, broadly speaking, in similar ways, Ifthe description was suitably thick, the subject matter obviously semote, so much the beter How could we not be appealed to by, say, Carlo Ginzburg's (1983) tale of sixteenth-century witchcraft and agrarian cults in Europe, or his account (1980) of the cosmos of a contemporary mille. Such studies in Phistine des mentaivs!6 ace not just chronicles of the quotidian, of “little people” and theie ondinay practices; nor—like cheig even more everyday English equivalents—are they metely studies of “the experience of living men and women” (Thompson (1978a] 1979:21; ef. Thomas 1971; Hill 1972). As 2 THEORY, ETANOGRATHY, HISTORIOGRATHY ogy, “whch combine(] 2 pssion for detail witha humane aspcation does Oey oe in. comparison with its ethnocentric competitors” (Fide ToRE-276). In this fespect ethnography seems a0 more intrinsically “a: roan” than do other mades of soca investigation (pace Turner 1990078) MEE of the dificulty has come from the fact chat for reasons deeply wiibed in the politics of knowledge, anthropologists have clasicaly iMtalied populations marginal tothe centers of Western power—those who sear anable, until recently, to answer back. In this, as we will argues Our osidon is tile diferent from that of often radical socal historians eoriaemed with society’s nether regions, the lives of “litle people” viewed Feet tte botom up (Cokin 1987:39), The dangers of disclosure in such vetreions are real enough. Indeed, while all representations have effects, Shove imposed by academic brokers on cémmoniies without cultural Capital are more likely to have deleterious consequences, At che very Kasi sare co confront the complexities of our relations to our subjects, ses, we nalcnces especially because the impact of our work is never Fully eesceable, This not only demands + serious regatdy ones again, for ements, our avin as auch as those we study. It alto calls for a careful sete on ofthe real implications of what we do, a consideration that saave go far beyond the row routine recognition that our writings are powntial instruments of “othering.” ur ethnography also has’ postive politcal possiblities. We ough not tbe too quick, for instance, co disregard the challenge that cultural relativism) Poses Boorgeois conscionsese, Why else the special opprobrium heaped pon us by shill abuolists, essayist othe closed mind lke Alan Bloom? eevtate-of the Naparama may tell us chat we arc less influential than we Gften suppose. Nevertheless, our work dors severberate in aad beyond the Stade, although its legitimacy and impact vary with the way in which aethovse to phrase our questions. An important moment of choice is now was Ifwe take our task to be an exercise in intersubjective translation, se speaking for others and their point of view, out hubris will cause os 59 ie of diffcultis, moral and philosophical. And if we see it to lie ie the fonmal analysis of social systems or cultural structures, statistically or Toisally conceived, we evade the isfue of representation and experience Mlogether Buti afer an older European tradition, we seek to understand the making of collective worlds—the dialectics, in space and time, of Socievies and selves, persons and places, orders 2nd events—then we open Scrselves to conventions of criticism widely shared by the aonpositivist human sciences, Thea, too, we may trafic in analytic constructions, not in tunvetifable subjectvities, and can acknowledge the effects of history upon tour discourses, Then we may Focus On interpteting social phenomena, A0t othe endless quest for textual means to cxorcise the fact that our accounts Exinggraphy and the Historical Imaginasion 1B are not elt ranspaeacies, Then aly, we wl be one Utne if ly provisionally, we comprehend an conuel ‘The second motif, real, is the question of histor is The secon steal i the ue sf history. Or, more precisely, of In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it became common to temper the anthropological turn toward history-as-panavea by posing the problem: “What history? Which anthropology?” We ourselv oa pology? ‘ourselves raised the issue, any substantive celtionship between dpe i sy sta cwcen dpe is determined nt by the ina of tn digi yh hg Ba oy et rt eminem inn un asimes diferent significance for rota fecal than i = eee ‘structuralists. .. . Hence to asserc that cnopol shoeld be “more” hori, or istry “ee” ntvepoogial ta ‘Rime burs the Seton ous vats wit Fare et ain ew He Eh eon wen itary ad artcopslagy, sin here shoul be no dvisn ta egin with. A theory of society which is pot also a theory of history, oF ean is hardly a cheory at all.!! Pet But there was more to the han this. For c the matter than this, For the space of imersection beeen the two dsipins was (neviably It now seems) pervaded by 2 : st —a politics of perspective, 50 to speak. Clearly, the kind of stories that were to find a sympathetic ear among anthropologists were unlikely to be the Chronicles of Courts and Kings. Neither were they liable to be eventfall political narratives, however fascinating, of embassies among empires, strife between states, or trade between chieftains; nor larcerday quantitative accounts of past worlds that, by appeal to synchronic se sought to write “general histories” in “numbers and anonym- Bound to be much more atractive, save Sc a ive, save in some steucturalist and Marxist seudy analyzed, broadly speaking in sma was the dexcripion was sway thks the subject mater obvouly smote, so mc the bee rence appealed toby. sy Caro Ginsburg (1988) a of tury witcheraft and agrarian cults in Europe, or his account {2980) ofthe cosmos of contemporary miles Such studies in Phir fe metal ace not ust chronicles othe quotidian, of “ie people” alc oniny pres no Ihe th ven mate ery Ergin quivaenss—ate they merely studies of “the experience of living men and ten” (Thompson [1978a) 1979.21 ck Thomas 1971; HilN 1972) As “4 THEORY, ETHNOGRATHY, HISTORIOGRATHY eovon (19853) notes, they als0 “{tteat] our own civilization in the same en Us ee pain the words, mote o¢ Ks ofthe English novelist LP. Hatley is gtorians "the past i another country where things are done diffe, thay. finwhich even the best interpreters sill erin Biased strange Trecvee ts Raphael Samel (1989:23) who probably comes closest co etn apie. Arguing forthe Kind of history that might best be taught in rtiahachools, he sys, Wryly: “Ifone were not, like the historians of hig poli, mesmerized by the glamour of power, one might sugges that aan were more iicresting to study than politicians and, at least for Jounger children, mor appealing.” Perhaps for anthropologists 28 wel Jur ane intention here is not t© jest at the expense of politicians or Historians. Ie is to make a profound methodological point. As Samuel iNew, the move from cavazy charge ro hay wain and borse-gin, from sporting pris to the rex of Black Beaty lays bare the cultural cexture Pin age “Chere la vache!” says Evans-Pritchaed of the world of Nacr—advceoferedonthe same conviction: shan te caer of eye Sr valued things, we grasp the constitution of complex social fields. Rood of va llow this objec lesson in Chapter 8, exsnding the concept Bt commodity fetishism to explore how cattle give analytical acess t6 a Shangiag Southern Tswana univers. In fact in making his case against ‘tory a the biography of biganen, Samuel voices he same concer a we did abou #2 anthropology “from the ative’ point of view”: thai tends «faces on individual intention and action a the expense of more complex Real processes Take, for example, the Battle of Trafalgar, which looms ieege in standard British cextbooks, not least because of Nelson's heroic den, This event, claims Samuel, was far less imgortant 10 the making o Sr epoch than, sa, the Macried Women’s Property Act of 1882. A product ‘af deswn-out socal struggle, the act had critical consequences for marriage, Simi, and gender in late nineteenth century England—in other words, forthe construction of modern British society #0 cowr. Yet it barely rates 2 footnote in any major work. *eetara introns ike Le Roy Ladue, Ginburg, aenton, and Sam give us comfort in the fice of ess friendly iterlocators partly because they eeu us that our methods (“suspiciously Like literature” to the hard foul Sciences [Darnton 1985:6) are more rigorous and revealing than they appa Dut most fundamentally, they se vrtuein—indeed, make no apologies for—disinterring and disseminating the lives of insignificant cOthers” For many of them, fa from an act of domination or appropria- tion, this is the fst step in a subvetsve historical sociology, 2 history wwrtten against the hegemony of high bourgeoises, the power of parlis Tents, and the might of monarchies. Theie work, moreover, beats more than pasting similarity to colonial hisroriography in the so~alledsubaltern Ethnography and she Historical Imagination 1s mode. This is not merely because the later concerns itself with “faceless masses,” people who have left few documentary traces of Promethean careers. Subaltern historiography also challenges the very citegories through which colonial pasts have been made. In s0 doing, it resonates with the cdemoctatizing impulse of our own craft, of which we have already spoken: the well-intentioned —some would say selF.satisfied—view that ethnogra- phy celebrates the narratives, the consciousness, and the cultural riches of non-Western populations, especially those threatened with ethnocide. In anthropology, as we have noted, the liberal urge to speak for others has had its comeuppance. Social history may seein less valeerable to counterattack: [ts subjects, often well dead and buried, can neither answer back nor be affected any longer by the politics of knowledge. This, however, is much t00 simple. Nor only do scholars work increasingly on history-in- the-making (cf. Bundy 1987), but also anyone who writes of times past rust recognize that there will be people who stand to suffer from the way in which social memory is fixed (cf. Ashforth 1991). In addition, there are those, both revisionist and radical, who champion the cause of historical populations. Thus Rosaldo (1986) contends that, for all his efforts to capture the Kie-world of the peasants of Montailloa from within, Le Roy Ladutie (1979) derives his narrative primarily from the standpoint of a ‘contemporary inquisitor; Rosaldo, in fact, likens his perspective to that of a colonial anthropologist. Spivak (1988) goes yet further: She questions whether the subaltern can speak at all, cven through the texts of a radicalized history. Ie appears that in representing the point of view of “natives,” living or dead, cultural historians are on no firmer epistemotog- jcal ground than are ethnographers—and no less embroiled in the politics of the present (Croce [1921] 1959:46f). This calls to mind Jacques Derrida’s critique of Foucault's history of madness and, as significantly, Ginzburg’s rejoinder. Both are instructive for anthropologists—especially for those drawn by deconstruction, those troubled by the tyranny of a totalizing social science. They are also salient in light of our own analysis (Chapter 6) of the historical consciousness ‘borne, in apartheid South Africa, by an alleged “madman.” Its impossible, says Dectida (1978:34) in dismissing Foucault's History (1967), to ana Ayze dementia save in ‘the restrained and restraining language” of Western reason. Yet this is the very language that constituted fee in the frst place— the very means ofits repression. I follows, therefore, that there is no point in the discursive structure of Western rationalism from whieh an interro- gation of abnormality may proceed. Derrida (1978:35-36) adds: “AN out European languages, the language of everything that has participated, from near or far, in the adventure of Western reason [are implicated in the objectification of madness). . .. Novhing within this language, and no one among those who speak it, can escape... . [T]he revolution against season 16 THEORY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY can only be made within it... and] always has the limited scope of» «2 Giemurbrnee.” For all his determination to write a history of insanity peryeen subject and object, the surveyor and the surveilled—on which colonizing power /knowledge is based. So Giarburg (1980:xvii), however, Dertida’s critique is both facile and ihilistic, or, against all the forces of repression in the world, it allows Tite by way of legitimate reaction: inaction, ironic indifference silence (ct ‘Sud 1978)" Even wors, it misses the fact that “the only discourse that constitutes a radical alternative to the lies of constituted society is repre: Senved by [the] vietims of social exclusion.” Extrancousness, irationality, Stsurdity,ruprure, contradiction in the fae of dominant cultures, ro tafe the point further, are all mierors of distortion, angles from which are texpoued te logic of oppressive signs and reigning hegemonies. Despite his Tartion within the discourses of Western reason, concludes Ginzburg, Foucault fid succeed in using the history of madness, the politics of sanity, qo unmask the coerciveness of convention and (selF)discipline We sheuld ot draw false comfort from this. It is one thing to acknow!- edge the posiblity that rupture, absurdity oF resistance may disclose See disable —the world from which it emanates, but quite another (0 creure that it docs. More immediately, though, there is relevance for us ia She methodological implications of Ginzburg’s argument, in the Kind of history te which iis dedicated, The ater, by definition, must be grounded Jn the singulas. Itean make no pretense of represcatativeness, of dsintering w ypical seventeentivcentury European villager or nineteenth-century fiebep merchant. For all the cultural historian can ever “see” are the “fspetsed fragments of an epoch—just as the ethnographer only “sees” ftogments of a cultural fekl, However, the point of recovering these fragments be they individuals or events—is to “connect [them] fo a0 hiorically determinate environment and society” (1980:xxiv).'¢They may vem to ue largely by chance and say in some measure be uninteligibe Sut to recognize and respect that unintelligibilty, which we have perforce todo, “does not mean succumbing to a foolish fascination for the exotic nd incomprehensible.” It is, rather, to undertake redeeming them. For ‘Nedcemed [they are] thus iberared” (1960:xxi). Liberated, thar i, in the sense of being restored to a world of meaningful interconnections. ‘Ginzburg’ insistence on the redemptive connection between fragments and toulities brings together two critical points about cultural history in general and, in particular, its subaltern variants. The fist echoes Sarmuc’s Ethnography and the Historical Imagination Vv (198923) obscevation that “‘History from below’... without some larger framework ... becomes a eulvdesac and loses its subversive porentil.” Improperiy contextualized, the stories of ordinary people past stand in ange of emainig jst hat stores, To become Something mor, thse patil, “hidden histories” have tobe stuared inthe wider worlds of powcr and meaning that gave them life. But those workds were also home ro other dramatis personae, other text, other sigiffing practices. And here is the second point: there is no bass to assume thatthe histories ofthe repressed in themselves, hold special key to revelation; as we show in Part Three, th acon ofthe dois alo id wil insights imo the contexts and processes of which they were part. The corollary: There Rotriographic flan that maybe restored sto gts once ad or al mmerly by ceplcing bourgeois chronicles with subaltera ‘accounts—by “repping and aling” exturs past (Foe 19893), Hoy, Amonio Gra emis i ade in he ogee he ie if wor that coexist im given times and places—between the ndentious ln- guages” that, for Bakhtin (1981:263; Holquist 1981:xix), pay against one another and against the “woalty” (posted, razed) that gives them meaning. For historiography, a5 for ethnography itis the relations between fragments and fcid that pose the greatest analytic challenge. ‘Hor, then, do we connect parts t0 “totals”? How do we redeern the fragments? How do we make intelligible the idiosynceati at, lives, and rect oo Ho ope a te i sr decmine cvconmens? ei ete chat call hry, al rilliane achievements, runs out of answers for us. Not that this should be 2 surprise, Just as we wete turning to history for guidance, atthe moment ‘when our early paradigmatic foundations were crumbling, any historians began to cepay the compliment. ust as we were inclined tose history 38 ‘good”—as if time might cure everything —they seemed to see thnog- raphy asa panacea, This should have warned us that they were in as much shear bla we were cures In fact, much historiography stil proceeds a if tse istoriog rocceds as ifits empirical bases were selfevien theory” were an aetation onl of os of sophie ben (Thompson 1978 Johnson 1978) Colingwood (1735:15) might ave asserted, long ago, that the “points between which the historical imagination spins ts web... must be achieved by cial thinking.” But there has been relatively litle efor ro intercogate the constructs through which the silences and spaces between events are illed, through which Alsjointed stories are cast into master naratives. In practic, of course, the Sr chite miatateapeasorconlsaaxitdblycated $0, 09s the fabrication of events, as wear reminded by cl debates over Phir évenemenielle (see below). As this suggests, the cultural historian isno less prone than the cultural anthcopologist ro read with an ethnocen: 8 THEORY, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY tric eye. In the absence of principled theory, ethnographers of the archive and the field alike tend to become hermeneuts by default, finding in interpretive anthropology a confirmation of their own phenomenological individualism. OF those who did turn to systematic approaches—especially to some form of structuralism or materialism—many have been attracted, in che wake of recent crises, by the less deterministic visions of a Gramsci cr a Foucault, orto such “counternarratives” as feminism, psychoanalysis, and subalternism, They have drawn, in other words, oa an increasingly global legacy of social thought, to which we anthropologists have equal access, What, in sum, are the lessons 0 be taken from this excursion into history? Clearly it is cultural historians, more than any other social cists, who vitdace our encteavor as ethnographer. This they do by asserting the possibility of a subversive historical anthropology, one that focuses primarily on little people and their worlds. Like cultural studies, with which—at feast, in Britain—ie has had a cich conversation (see Turner 1990:68F; Johnson 1979), cultural history has been especially adept at revealing that all social felds are domains of contest; that “culture” is often a matter of argument, 2 confrontation of signs and practices along the fault lines of power; that it is possible fo recover from fragments, discord, and even from silences, the raw material with which 10 write imaginative sociologies of the,past and the prescnt. But eventually we must part company. Given the reluctance of historians to reflect on matters of theory, thei tendency to look to empiricel solutions for analytic prabieas, ‘we must find our own way through the maze of conundrums that les along. the road 10 a principled historieal anthropology. So, with allthis in mind, toward what kind of historical anthropology do Wwe strive? And how, cractly, does ectmography fit into it? ie follows, from the way in which we call the question, that we do not Gnd a ready answer in the methods and models spawned by the recent rapprochement of history and anthropology—or by its intellectual precursors, which go back much futther than we often realize (see, €g., Cohn 1980, 1981; J. L. Comaroff 1984; Rosalde 1986). Nor, as our brief excursion into Pistoie des meniaitts indicates, is one to be Found by surveying existing historiog: raphics and choosing the most congenial candidate. Recall Thompson's (19785:324) admonitory metaphor—a little shopworn now, bur still yah ‘uable—that ideas, ways of knowing, ate not like objects in a supermarket, perishables casually bought or brushed aside, cast out or consumed, Eth a lisorical Imaginati iraghy and she Higorical Imagination 9 Let us begin co answer the question inthe negative voice—by disposi that ig ofthe kins of histo aatheopology iat we ek Sete oid. The method in our malice, to invoke the memory af Edeoand Lew (2961:2), wit reveal ittelf as we proceed: Some ground clearings necessary wear to cut fresh pathways through ol hikes : any years ago, Nadel (1942:72) drew the attention of anchopologiss between “ideological” and “objective” history. The fist recalls Malinong, 2s Gs, 1948920 deeiton of mh: eis he pase aol by people © aecount—authoritatvely, authentically audibly —for the sonterapors, shape of hie word By contra, Yatua chron te veer, sionate observers, are scripted “in accordance .. with universal atters of onnerion an sequence.” Nede did nox go onto point out that “idcoog, ical” history rarely exists (or ever cxisted) in the singular He wrote ahs all long before culture was seen co be a fluid, often contested, sed on patil imegrted monic of rreatves, images and paces (ec teeny before we even perccived that, in a single Altican society, there may be trative (gendered, gencratont, even sated) histories and word ‘The distinction between ideological and objective history may no longer 9 unquestioned inthe musings of metahisorians But trem, dec, entrenched in Western popular discourse and, implicitly in much hstccher anthropology. How often are we not at pains to show that the cheawicle, ot kings, conqucrors and colonizers—we follow Croce’ ((1921] 198931) usage here”—are distortions, pure ideology in servitude to power, the corolty beng that ou version ie mote abjenting, more factual’ Te same is true ofthe pastas perceived, from the bottom up, By the ai snd the diefarchises the mate andthe mussel een eo explain avay thei fallute to actin their own interest, ot to act oe lly Secking to show that they pectrce misrecognie the *eaP” gps ae structures that sustain thee subordination? In so doing, iis all #00 easy to cross an invisible boundary, che naw familar-tine that marks out the limits of authority, ethoogeaphic and historical alike. For its one ching te assume that no human actor can ever “know” his or her world inti totality; one thing to situate che natives points of view- ‘note, now the plural thee appropriate context. That, as we have stiggested, isenttely legitimate, Bu itis quite another ching to rrogate to ourselves an valuing cnmrcpaer, sephora prcmeon ee ene of an ae gone by socal knowledge is never value or pices. And there are no “universal criteria of connexion a nce” Kelly's (1984) feminist critique of orthodex seireabrenh usin European history. Universal historiography, a8 we shoul all be aware by now selfs myth—ore, a conceit. Indeed the most srikng chine, Bo 20 qiioRy, ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY hous the very ea—the Western idea of universalism, that isis how my ae ieal anthropology thee sustains a fxed dichotomy between ret and the objective is Bound ro run into al the old problems otha air esa Tina and. provsionality. In short, it invites the justifa aa er finont recently by posoestinm but alo by many befor cata toad fom the ety Mars to late phenomenntogy. 13 distin oe rnecreen he ideological ant the objective i © appest in Mtoe vt ology at ath we would argu irs primarily af cull iis © aannrrr itself tobe interrogated wherever ic surics, Who doet seer and in what manner? Are there other forms of Nistor a eee etss in the same contexts? Are th expressed or suppressed? BY

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