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DIALOGUE AND FICTION IN ETHNOGRAPHY Author(s): Steven Webster
Source: Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 2 (SEPTEMBER 1982),
pp. 91-114Published by: SpringerStable URL:
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91
DIALOGUE AND FICTION IN ETHNOGRAPHY
Steven Webster
My first aim in this essay is to try to close the gap which
still exists between ethnography and hermeneutics. Anthropologists
who have
heard out the occasionally pretentious claims of hermeneutic
philosophers may suggest that this all seems a needlessly elaborate
extrapola? tion of what ethnographers have always done in the
field. In response to this disciplinary provincialism, I will try
to clarify why an
epistemology of hermeneutics is nevertheless needed in
ethnography now. With the possible exception of history, no other
form of social in?
quiry has really come to terms with this philo? sophical
tradition. It is doubly ironic that theoretical natural science,
after centuries of
setting a fatally misleading ideal for the under?
standing of society, may be discovering its own hermeneutics
before the social sciences
do. Sociology, in this hermeneutic "matura?
tion", is far ahead of the other social sciences
but seems to have again been subtly co-opted
by the positivist tradition it seeks to transcend.
Social anthropology, on the other hand, may be the natural home
of this new epistemology.
Here, understanding has always ?
professional?
ly, so to speak ? had to confront its own para?
doxes and prejudices, has had always to pro? ceed with a certain
irreducible hesitation. Let me begin by epistemologically
interpeting conventional ethnographic hesitancy, opening up the way
we think about what we do, and the way we write about what we have
done.
I
I hope to trace a continuity between two situations of classical
ethnography and their recent analogues which poses a dilemma of
a
peculiar kind, perhaps an epistemological im?
passe whose time has come in anthropology. As Ruby [ 1 ] has
pointed out, Malinowski
began his Argonauts... with an invocation
which the much later revelations of his Diary...
imply he himself was unable to live up to:
... every student of the less exact sciences will do his
best to bring home to the reader all the conditions in which the
experiment or the observations are made.
In Ethnography, where a candid account of such data
is perhaps even more necessary, it has unfortunately in
the past not always been supplied with sufficient generos?
ity, and many writers do not ply the searchlight of
methodic sincerity, as they move among their facts but
produce them before us out of complete obscurity [2].
Although refreshing, the ethnographic de?
scription of his observations stopped far short
of the candor he seemed to demand. Profound
personal struggles, disaffection and cynicism about his hosts,
guilty self-indulgence on the
margins of European society, are only a few of the implications.
The diary was meant to
keep his personal reflections separate from
his ethnography, and privately to discipline himself to
objectivity (cf. Firth's introduction), yet how can this aim be
reconciled with his demand for sincerity and an accounting of the
genesis of objective facts? Yet an integration of such intimate
reflections into ethnographic work would still seem irrelevant to
us as well as to him. Contemporary ethnography can
Steven Webster is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the
University of Auckland, New Zealand
03044092/82/0000-0000/$02.75 ? 1982 Elsevier Scientific
Publishing Company
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92
countenance neither the view that these are a part of the field
"experiment" which Malinowski recommended on the model of the
natural sciences, nor the naive positivist assumption that they are
simply inconsequen? tial. This is the dilemma we have inherited
(most directly) from Malinowski. Geertz fixes on the irony of
Malinowski's
diary to expose the futility of the romantic em
pathic ideal of ethnography [3]. But he ne?
glects to pursue in this context another sort of
irony he himself had defined in 1968: despite the bitterness and
disappointment of one case he recounts,
Such an end to anthropologist-informant relationships is
hardly typical: usually the sense of being members, how? ever
temporarily, insecurely and incompletely, of a single moral
community can be maintained even in the face of
the wider social realities which press in at almost every moment
to deny it. It is this fiction
- fiction not false?
hood - that lies at the heart of successful anthropological
field research; and, because it is never completely convinc?
ing for any of the participants, it renders such research,
considered as a form of conduct, continuously ironic. To
recognize the moral tension, the ethical ambiguity, im?
plicit in the encounter of anthropologist and informant, and to
still be able to dissipate it through one's actions and one's
attitudes, is what encounter demands of both
parties if it is to be authentic, if it is actually to happen.
And to discover that is to discover also something very
complicated and not altogether clear about the nature of
sincerity and insincerity, genuineness and hypocrisy, honesty
and self-deception [4].
In his earlier insight Geertz had focused upon what he called
the anthropological irony, a
peculiar species of good faith between ethno?
grapher and informant which verged on bad faith, and thereby
constituted, strangely enough, what he suggested was the basis of
authenticity in ethnography. Geertz reasoned that there was always
some form of reciprocal pretence between anthropologist and host
re?
flecting their situational agreement to wel? come one another
into their respective cul?
tures regardless of the few realistic grounds for such
participation. At least in the new states, this reciprocity of
"touching faith" takes the form of an honorary cultural membership
for
the anthropologist and a sanguine hope of Western advantages to
be gained by his hosts, objective, deterrent conditions aside. The
impossibility of such unspoken promises is both the tragedy of
cultural difference domination and the ground of its understand?
ing. Malinowski's recurrent disaffection from his hosts and longing
to be elsewhere suggests another form of the same inevitable
anthro? pological irony. The authenticity of his ethno? graphy was
sufficient unto the times, but Geertz's halting intuition regarding
his own fieldwork some 45 years later suggests that authentic
ethnography can no longer in good positivist faith efface the diary
from the ac? count.
Perhaps not unlike Malinowski in his ethno? graphic amnesia,
Geertz [5] spared us further discomfort and changed the subject
from the epistemology of a profound, if uniquely dis? trusting,
intimacy between ethnographer and informant, to the epistemology of
how the ethnographer understands. An epistemological context which
mystifies the native and over?
looks the ethnographer himself seems to sup? plant the earlier
insight where both were all too transparent to one another, and
authen?
ticity somehow unproblematic. As the article
reveals, Geertz, like Malinowski, had slipped back into a false
consciousness of how one
does ethnographic research. On the other
hand, while Malinowski had invoked the reifi cation of
"functionalism" to assure the ob?
jectivity for which he strove, Geertz does at?
tempt to recover a sense of the arbitrary
variety of interpretive analogues which consti? tute
ethnographic reality, thereby foreclosing on any such simple
objectification. Neverthe? less, these analogues are now
comfortably
"experience-distant" from himself and his own presumably still
"experience-near" con? course with his hosts. In this excavation
of
ethnographic epistemology he reveals the inter? pretive strata
of our understanding, but stops short of the ground of authenticity
he had exposed several years earlier. He has not, so
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93
far as I know, dug so deeply again. Only a few years earlier,
Kenneth Read had
made mirror-sharp the situations which Geertz
briefly reflects upon in less universal terms [6]. Makis and the
Gahuku Gama were his hosts, striving both for a share of Read's
culture and humane acceptance of his hesitant intrusion, while Read
struggled with the futility of him? self being a Gahuku Gama, the
pathos of a future which he could see more clearly than they, and
the distractions of a private world of nature and humanity whose
graces seemed too
delicate to share except in the pages of his book. The
counterpoint is also between Malinowski and Read, both of whom felt
their radically different forms of alienation and reverie must be
kept apart from their ethnographies. But Geertz did suggest an
epistemological basis from which the continuity of all three ethno?
graphic introspections becomes apparent, and
perhaps no longer legitimately segregated from the ethnography
to which it gives rise.
Another ethnographic and epistemological situation which I will
interpret as convergent with the ironies of Malinowski and Geertz
is Evans-Pritchard's ambivalent attitude toward Zande witchcraft,
oracles, and magic [7]. Geertz's 1968 introspection broached the
relationship of ethnography and fiction, so I will exploit the
fortuitous appearance of the same word in Evans-Pritchard's
ethnography: "There is an established fiction that the Avongara
[the Zande nobility] are not witches..." [8]. The enduring
brilliance of this
ethnography is his demonstration that witches, oracles, and
magic do exist just as the Azande think they do, while never for
very long allow?
ing us to lose sight of the fact that they don't really exist at
all, or (to put it in terms of the Azande's own response) at least
they don't exist in England. Writing when ethnography still often
had to convince its readers that other cultures were human,
Evans-Pritchard walked a fine line between conscientious under?
standing of the way Azande themselves saw these phenomena and a
frank incredulity
-
apparently not hidden from the Azande them? selves - that the
whole thing could be taken so seriously. I am fascinated by a
professional? ism which seems to have left no stone un?
turned, an ethnographic candor which reveals
sufficient respect for his hosts to confront them without
patronising indulgence, and sufficient respect for his readers to
bare his own innermost epistemological prejudices and ambivalences.
Writing fully in the same posi? tivist preconception as Malinowski,
he never?
theless achieved the sincerity of which Malinowski was incapable
because he could not fully efface his diary from his
ethnography.
The innocently paradoxical comment about the Zande "fiction"
which I quoted above leapt out at me from Evans-Pritchard's pages
as the quintessence of the epistemological dilemma his candor had
left bare: due to a certain fiction the nobility are not witches,
but due to a radically different sort of fiction many other Azande
are witches (in daily, ordinary, and taken-for-granted fact)... and
due to yet again a radically different sort of fiction
Evans-Pritchard was unable to con?
vince himself, except for certain "lapses" in his everyday
practical experience of Zande life and language, of the truth of
Zande fiction. Toward the end of this essay I will suggest that the
fictions by which we constitute ethno? graphy are not essentially
different from those by which the subject constitutes his
world; analysis of the two processes is neces?
sarily integral. The subsequent ethnographic tradition of
explaining witches seems to have circumvented Evans-Pritchard's
problem by means comparable to what Malinowski, and later Geertz,
adopted to abstract themselves from the way things had been in the
field. Rather than struggle with the shifting distinction between
the truth and fiction of witches in an intercultural epistemology,
most of us have managed to cre? ate the unintended illusion that
this central issue becomes irrelevant when witches can be viewed as
projections of anxieties, indicators of
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94
social strains, or symbolic expressions of evil. While
ethnographers, and social anthropologists in general, continued to
explain witchcraft as
though Evans-Pritchard (influenced by Levy Bruhl and Pareto) had
unequivocally vanquished the witches themselves, philosophers of
social science have taken the issue up where Evans
Pritchard left it. Perhaps because ethnography since then
has
been little help in this regard, the philosophers continue to
veer, much like Evans-Pritchard did himself, between enchantment
and denial.
Winch [9] concludes that Zande witches "exist" in whatever terms
the Azande them?
selves use, and that if we wish to understand them we can only
accede to their terms of
reference;Gellner [10] no more thoughtful? ly than
Evans-Pritchard in his dogmatic mo?
ments, scoffs at the whole absurd illusion, in? cluding Winch's.
Lukes [11] wants to have it both ways by urging both relativistic
and uni versalistic criteria of rationality, but the Zande
nevertheless fail on the latter grounds. Jarvie
[12] and Giddens [13] accept forms of rela? tivistic
understanding like Winch's but avoid the solipsistic implications
of Winch's argu?
ment by pointing out that different cultures are either
historically or logically mediated by common meanings. Jarvie
implies that differ? ences in cultural conception of reality get
worked out historically in a survival of the fittest (and truest)
mode. Giddens lucidly sug? gests, on the other hand, that different
cultural realities are "frames of meaning" which are
already in the process of mediation (insofar as they are aware
of each other). He refrains from drawing conclusions about whether
in particu? lar cases this mediation reflects the triumph of
rationality or, for instance, coercion or
delusion. This hermeneutic form of relativism, in which the
historical situation is the one suf? ficient absolute, certainly
helps us understand
why both the Azande and Evans-Pritchard were right about
witches, and that while British indirect rule was making progress
in overcoming the Zande preconception, Zande
rationalism was making progress in overcoming Evans-Pritchard's
assumptions.
We can further understand the relativity of truth and fiction in
this instance by comparing it with the more recent but equally
significant ethnographic dilemma posed by Castaneda's account of
don Juan, the Yaqui brujo or shaman. This comparison reveals the
ironic
disparity between the relationship of Evans Pritchard and
Castaneda to their respective audiences almost two generations
apart. Evans-Pritchard had sought to convince a
sceptical readership of the practical rationality of the Azande
beliefs (while convincing him? self that their beliefs were
nevertheless a fic? tion); Castaneda sought to convince an en?
thusiastic counter-culture devoted to perceiv? ing "other
realities" of the practical irrational? ity of his experiences with
don Juan (while convincing himself that these experiences were
nevertheless true). Some anthropologists appreciated his
epistemological effort, while others pursued the issue of
ethnographic veracity with a seriousness that perhaps better than
any other circumstance reveals to us the
ephemeral nature of ethnographic commit? ment. The ironic
reversal between Witchcraft, Oracles... and its sequel forty years
later not
only demonstrates the shifting relationship between the
ethnographer, his subject, and his audience: the tension between
the former as
palpably true ethnography and don Juan as
convincing fiction also places the tenuous dis? tinction
inescapably before us.
I have traced a continuity between a perspec? tive implicit in
Malinowski's ethnography (and in Geertz's and Read's), and again
between
Evans-Pritchard's ethnography and Castaneda's,
suggesting that these continuities converge as exemplars of an
epistemological dilemma for contemporary social anthropology. I
have also
suggested that anthropologists have avoided
confronting this recurrent dilemma, Malinowski and
Evans-Pritchard in their particular ways
-
and Geertz, Read, and Castaneda (or his de?
tractors) in their's. Now I must make the im
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95
plicit accusation clearer, and marshall behind it more than a
few tenuous ethnographic re
interpretations. To recapitulate: Malinowski experienced a
profound alienation in the midst of his hosts
that often betrays disdain for them, erotic
distractions, and doubts about himself that would not be
unfamiliar to most ethnographers. He set many high standards for
full field re?
porting, yet apparently assumed that the con? ditions of
research were separable from his scientific purpose. Geertz
suggests that at least
in research in the communities of the new states a tenuous trust
must be built upon im?
possible ideals of reciprocal cultural mobility, and concluded
that this irony is nevertheless
integral to anthropological understanding. Read's own lyrically
ethnographic diary, published as a supplement which ironically may
itself only be supplemented by his conventional ethnography,
suggests a media?
tion which extends to all ethnography. Al?
though Malinowski and Read may be obverse sides of a personal
predicament, I think they also represent obverse sides of Geertz's
episte?
mological predicament. Geertz's ambiguously sincere
reciprocation of "touching faith"
between ethnographer and hosts is implicit in both Malinowski's
and Read's accounts, as is their disaffection from their hosts
implicit in Geertz's regression from a more penetrating
epistemology. Although the gap between cul?
tures may be theoretically bridgable, few field researchers
would presume to have overcome
it, and most would have to admit to an im?
penetrable alienation between themselves and
their hosts, balanced more or less by the ac?
complishment of some degree of understanding.
I don't think my own efforts with recalcitrant and suspicious
Quechua has coloured my con?
clusions, because my personal experience among
Maori has been utterly to the contrary yet can?
not rise beyond a similar sense of estranged in?
timacy. Whether this residual sense of mutual alienation arises
from a wider context of politi?
cal, economic, or ideological domination by
the anthropologist's culture, or a narrower
cultural context of such domination of the
anthropologist by his hosts, it seems likely that the
transcendance of such disparity is ne?
cessarily a fiction. The convergence between this peculiarly
ir?
reducible epistemological difficulty and that which I have
outlined through Evans-Pritchard and Castaneda further extends
Geertz's notion
of anthropological irony. Evans-Pritchard ex?
perienced a profound ambivalence between
the practical and discursive rationality of Zande beliefs and
his own conviction that they constituted no more than an
elaborately ratio?
nalized fiction, however real to the Azande.
The cultural basis of his own conviction may not have been so
clear to Evans-Pritchard who,
after all, confronted a professional audience no less dubious of
primitive rationality than the population at large. Castaneda's
converse
labour decades later, to convince an enthusias?
tically credulous readership of the practical im?
possibility of believing in a sorcerer's world for very long,
however palpably true it might be, puts this dilemma in fuller
perspective. However convinced Castaneda and his audience
may be of the truth of don Juan's world, its fiction is apparent
insofar as they must come back to the straight world of California;
how? ever convinced Evans-Pritchard and his
audience may remain of the fiction in the
Azande's world, its truth is apparent insofar
as they remain there, insistently reabsorbed
in Zande common sense. This version of the
anthropological irony seems to adumbrate a
more radical ontological polarity between an?
thropologist and hosts which underlies the
merely ethical tensions revealed by Malinowski, Read, and
Geertz. However, both forms of
polarity are existential in the sense that they necessarily
constitute the fieldwork experience, not merely regulate its
boundaries. That is to
say, the experience of such existential gaps is itself the
ground of the anthropological under?
standing which is indubitably accomplished, and jointly built
upon, by strangers living to
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96
gether. The gap is the foundation of under?
standing, not its subversion. As Geertz dimly saw in 1968, the
ethnography which is to re? flect this accomplishment must in some
sense both perpetrate a fiction and claim truth.
This peculiarly productive epistemological dilemma must not be
confused with those generic to the positivist tradition of social
science. Such spurious dilemmas arise from the
illusory assumption that the understanding subject and the
object understood are primor? dial realities each condemned to
ineffable sub? jectivity in an objective world which stands apart.
Descartes' cogito ergo sum gave rise to a positivism which split
the unity of concrete experience into subjectivity {cogito, or the
isolated consciousness) and objectivity {res, or substance), two
polar forms of alienation
which appeared to leave no option between an arrant subjectivism
and a scientistic objec? tivism. The epistemological perspective I
am
urging, here deduced from ethnographic im?
passes, instead suggests that both subjectifica tions and
objectifications are extrapolations from the ground of mutual
understanding upon which any encounter necessarily begins insofar
as human beings recognize one an?
other as such. This accomplishment, however
ephemeral its inception, is necessarily the
primordial reality and unequivocal basis of an authentic
understanding, which is neither a subjectified understanding on the
one hand nor an objectified understood on the other. This latter
subjective-objective split is the mystification which now misleads
us, obscur?
ing the middle ground from which understand? ing dialectically
arises.
But, the polarity of subject and object is now very real, as
derived from Descartes and
now assumed in the standard Western European worldview.
Understanding must be a dialectic, that is to say, a dialogue
between subject and
object. Although the dilemma may only be historical rather than
ontological, it is no less
inescapable. Interpretation of this spontaneous dialectic of
understanding can only waiver be
tween "truth" which reflects the alienation of
subject and object and "fiction" which regains their existential
mediation. This is, in most
general terms, the dilemma which Geertz called the
anthropological irony. I hope to clarify the philosophical bases
and implications of this epistemological problem, and head off some
of the ways it may be subverted by the positivist perspective which
takes subjectivity and objectivity as given.
Geertz, again as though his explicit episte? mological enquiry
in 1974 were a regression from the clarity of his merely moral
enquiry of 1968, in the later essay raised the mislead? ing issue
of the inaccessibility of the "native's point of view". With
Malinowski's disaffection as a demonstration, he suggests that an
anthro?
pologist's understanding is instead derived from the native's
own "experience-near con?
cepts", mediated by "experience-distant con?
cepts" which the anthropologist brings to bear on the problem
from whatever sources are in?
tuitively comparable, including ideas from other cultures as
well as his own. I do not take issue with Geertz's hermeneutic
method here, but rather with its truncation. Although he suspects
that no clear line can be drawn be?
tween the native's innermost point of view and his
experience-near concepts, Geertz never?
theless leaves the impression that the former would be the ideal
basis of knowledge were it not in principle as inaccessible as the
romantic ideal of empathy is futile in anthropological
understanding. The frustrated understanding can only hope to
approximate this ideal know? ledge "without recourse to pretensions
of
more-than-normal capacities for ego-efface ment and
fellow-feeling..."; furthermore, "... whatever accurate or
half-accurate sense
one gets of what one's informants are really like comes not from
the experience of that ac? ceptance as such, which is part of one's
own
biography, not of theirs, but from the ability to construe their
modes of expression..." [ 14].
In 1968 Geertz had concluded that a certain "moral tension" or
"ethical ambiguity" be
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97
tween anthropologist and his informants "lies at the heart of
successful anthropological re?
search"; its recognition and dissipation "is what encounter
demands of both parties if it is to be authentic" [15]. But in 1974
he has reverted to ego-effacement on the one hand, and an
approximation to fellow-feeling on the other; he has abstracted his
biography from theirs, and furthermore mystified the native's
biography by extrapolating an ephemeral sub? jectivity that
obscures the authenticity once transparent in dialogue and
compromise.
Similarly, Geertz's own "experience-near con?
cepts", ethical and epistemological, disappear in this explicit
methodology of understanding. The native's point of view is
objectified at one alienated end of a truncated symmetry be? tween
its own experience-near concepts and
Geertz's experience-distant analogues, the
native speaking now into a void from which Geertz has absented
himself. A more recent version of Geertz's view of hermeneutics
still reflects a similarly one-dimensional account
of anthropological understanding [16]. It seems to me that the
ineffability of the
native's "innermost" point of view is a
chimera created by this reciprocal alienation from the practical
dialogue in which under? standing necessarily arises. The dialectic
be?
tween subject and object has implicitly been transformed by
abstraction into two alienated
subjectivities, one of which is unapproachable and the the other
of which is gone entirely. This background of subjectification
implicitly invokes an objectified foreground which
Geertz presents as a methodology, itself ab? stracted from any
particular situation. The
dialectic of understanding is saved from Des? cartes' fateful
dichotomization of knowledge only by Geertz's proposal of an
unrestrainedly arbitrary and pancultural assortment of "ex?
perience-distant concepts". Although these too are presented
abstractly, they nevertheless restore authenticity by suggesting a
dialogue between Geertz and some others, somewhere. This is one way
that the dialogue in which
understanding necessarily arises can be retained in its
subsequent ethnography, that is, if a reifi cation of subject and
object do not obscure its dialectic.
II
Having rejected Dilthey's futile ideal of em? pathy, Geertz
accepts from him the model of hermeneutic understanding as tacking
between part and whole or particular and general [17]. Dilthey had
distinguished social science from natural sicence methodology,
emphasizing that the former, by virtue of itself being social, has
direct access to its subject matter, whereas the latter can only
impute meaning indirectly to its subject matter. He also emphasized
the dialectical or reflexive nature of interpretation which
achieves understanding of its object by relating it as partial
meaning within a whole context of meaning [ 18]. But as Gadamer has
argued [ 19], Dilthey's inconsistency was to abstract the
hermeneutic circle from the histor? ical and existential context of
the interpreter, just as Geertz has done in re-segregating his own
from the native's biography. Beguiled by the positivist ideal of
natural scientific know? ledge, Dilthey elevated empathy to
intuitive certitude by transcending the historical con? text of the
interpreter and objectifying what is interpreted; similarly, Geertz
pursues the
objectivist chimera by abstracting not only from any recognition
of his own point of view, but also: from any immediate
understanding of the native's point of view. This leaves us with
what Gadamer calls, in criticism of Dilthey, a "purely formal
methodology" unanchored in real life confrontation between subject
and object, despite the phenomenological ideal ofDilthey's
Lebensphilosophie. Gadamer further suggests that it is just this
abstract con? cept of understanding, derived from Enlighten? ment
Cartesianism and its positivist apotheosis in Comte and Mill, which
rendered Dilthey's method vulnerable to idealism and relativism
[20]. Ironically, then, with both the inter
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preter's and the native's points of view gone
from Geertz's hermerieutic circle, in a still more rigourous
approximation to objectivist knowledge it too is liable to inherit
the wind, the very subjectivism it abjures. Gadamer, following
Heidegger's reincorporation of the
interpreter into the hermeneutic circle of historical
understanding, argues that the truth of understanding is neither
objective nor subjective, but arises in an intersubjective dialogue
between two different points of view:
True historical thinking must take account of its own
historicality. Only then will it not chase the phantom of an
historical object which is the object of progressive research, but
learn to see in the object the counterpart of itself and hence
understand both. The true historical
object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the
other, a relationship in which exist both the
reality of history and the reality of historical understand
ing[21].
Elsewhere he characterises this "counterpart" or dialectic of
understanding as "affinity", a concept drawn from Heidegger:
Every "new" position of understanding which replaces another
continues to need the "former" because it can?
not itself be explained so long as it knows neither in what
nor by what it is opposed... We see that there are
dialectical
relations between... on the one hand, the prejudice
organically a part of my particular system of convictions
or opinions, that is the implicit prejudice, and on the
other hand, a new element which denounces it, that is, a foreign
element which provokes my system or one of
its elements [22].
This is "true conversation" or dialogue. How?
ever, for understanding to abstract itself from its own
historical context, in the pretense of
objective understanding, instead fails to put its own implicit
prejudices at risk, and subverts in this evasive or patronising
indulgence the truth claim of that which it seeks to under? stand
[23]. Consequently, all knowledge is necessarily "an effective
unity which can only be analyzed as a network of reciprocal
actions"
[24]. What appears, from the perspective of
positivism, to be a potential conservative or
ethnocentric bias retained in the subjectivity of the
interpreter, is from the perspective of hermeneutics a necessary
participation in the
reformulation of knowledge on its only ob?
jective basis, intersubjective dialogue. Only in this latter way
can we discriminate "the
really critical question of hermeneutics, namely of
distinguishing the true prejudices, by which we understand, from
the false ones
by which we misunderstand" [25]. Gadamer dismisses the
imputation to his approach of uncritical acceptance of tradition
and socio?
political conservatism, pointing out that the
bourgeois historical consciousness , which
through relativisation of the old embraces
everything new, also courts the hegemony of the old through the
relativisation of the new [26]. The roots of Gadamer's dialectic in
Plato are clear: Socrates fought the nihilistic and hence
potentially demagogic scepticism of the Sophists with the new art
of philosophy, whereby a perpetual dialectic of theses and
countertheses can only adumbrate an ephem? eral truth ("what
something is") but never loses sight of it. Although he represented
tradi? tion against the new ideas of the day, the dialectical
method borne of this "affinity" between philosophy and "its shadow,
sophism" insured that "mere talk, nothing but talk, can, however
untrustworthy it may be, still bring out understanding between
human beings
?
which is to say that it can still make human
beings human" [27]. This comment about "nothing but talk"
brings me to a final consideration regarding Gadamer's
philosophy of hermeneutics which I hope will head off, or rather,
co-opt, a
Marxian critique. Gadamer has been charged
by his critical theorist colleague Habermas with proposing a
hermeneutics which by re?
maining merely linguistic is impotent to
penetrate the false consciousness which ob?
scures the contradictions of capitalist society [28]. But I
consider Gadamer's rejection of the "purely formal methodology" of
Diltheyian hermeneutics and its implicit idealism an ade
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quate guard against this impotence. Rather than the "artifice of
hyperbolic
doubt" idealized in the scientific method since Descartes,
Gadamer insists that (unlike Dilthey) we must remain consistent
with Dil they's philosophy of practical life:
Always and everywhere, life leads to reflection on that
which confronts it, reflection leads to doubt, and life can
only resist doubt in the pursuit of valid knowledge [29].
"There is a decisive difference between the cer?
titude grasped in the heart of life and scientific
certitude," and a decisive difference between
methodic doubt and the sort of doubt which assails us, so to
say, without reason, without purpose, spontaneous
ly [30]. ... in the end all understandings are reducible to a
com?
mon level of a *I know how to go about it', that is, a self
understanding in relation to something else [31].
I interpret this emphasis on practice in Gadamer's
dialectic as no less "materialistic" than Marx's
own assertion of the inextricability of thought and practice.
Indeed, Gadamer's critique of
Dilthey here reads like Marx's own critique of the later
Hegelian idealism, and like Marx's
critique it pursues the dialectic of labour and alienation which
Hegel himself originated. Like Marx on Hegel, Adorno criticized
Heidegger's hermeneutic existentialsm for transcending the
irreducible dialectic of subject and object in a subjectivism of
Being which pretends to be immune to the determination of
objective
history [32]. Although Gadamer credits
Heidegger for the central insights of his new
hermeneutics, I think he has nevertheless
distanced himself from the idealism implicit in the latter's
scheme, liable to stultify the dialectic inherent in practical
understanding. As Habermas charges, Gadamer's confidence
in the "spontaneous" doubt of ordinary re?
flective life and "the certitude grasped in the heart of life"
appears to be naively liable to the false consciousness of
systematically dis? torted communication. On the other hand,
this apparent naivety may be viewed as a re assertion of the
irrespressible critical capacity of the common man in practice,
regardless of the subversions of mass culture and total
administration, an adherence to the original spirit of Marxism
until recently neglected in the pessimism of critical theory [33].
This
optimism does not evade the problem; on the
contrary, in the concept of "true prejudice" it identifies the
problem without abstracting from its inherent dialectic.
Now the epistemological dilemma I have characterised through the
ethnographic reflec? tions of Malinowski, Geertz, Read, Evans
Pritchard, and Castaneda is cultural; what
bearing does Gadamer's concern with the inter?
pretation of history have on this? Gadamer
argues that the "temporal distance" between
the interpreter and his problematic object, often an historical
text, constitutes rather than deters true understanding:
... temporal distance is not something that must be over?
come. This was, rather, the naive assumption of histori
cism, namely that we must set ourselves within the spirit of the
age, and think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own,
and hence advance toward historical ob?
jectivity. In fact the important thing is to recognize the
distance in time as a positive and productive possibility of
understanding. It is not a yawning abyss, but is filled
with the continuity of custom and tradition... [34].
How far can this intra-cultural and temporal
problem be extended to the inter-cultural
and synchronic problems of social anthropol?
ogy? Gadamer himself shifts easily between the problematic
interpretation of historical text, personal letter, another person,
and a generic
"other", and does not hesitate to assert the
universality of hermeneutics on the basis of communicative
process and the model of the
dialogue [35]. Sufficient "temporal distance" is required to
separate the observer from sub?
jective or unreflexive involvement in the ob? ject of
interpretation, but mere dialogue may satisfy this minimum
requirement.
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What a thing has to say, its intrinsic content, first
appears
only after it is divorced from the fleeting circumstances
of its actuality [36].
Ricoeur has more explictly taken herme?
neutics from the traditional concern with
problematic written texts well into the socio?
logical camp with a consideration of corre?
spondingly "fixed" meaningful action [37]. More recently, he has
extended this perspective into discourse and dialogue insofar as
"the smallest gap... inserts itself between saying and what is
said" [38]. He suggests that the
applicability of hermeneutics to action and to history itself,
as well as to texts, rests in their common narrative or "story"
structure, a new point of departure which I will take up in the
last section of this paper. Also like
Gadamer, Ricoeur emphasises the bilateral
character of understanding: whereas for
Gadamer the knower and the known reconsti?
tute one another in an "affinity", for Ricoeur the knower must
both "appropriate" his ob?
ject and himself be opened by its "disclosure" of the world
[39], and thus experience both a "belonging" to its meaning and a
"distancia
tion" which objectifies it [40]. Devereux, apparently
independently, argues
for the epistemological "complementarity" of
the ethnographer and his ethnographic subjects
[41 ]. His approach is psychoanalytic, but his conclusions are
suggestively parallel with con?
temporary hermeneutics, and likewise extended
generally to the social sciences. His discussions,
derived from reflections throughout his long career of
ethnographic fieldwork, focus on an
interdependant relationship of transference and
countertransference between ethnographer and his hosts. While his
subjects impose upon him role expectations arising from the
specific social and cultural situation and their general anxieties,
the ethnographer unconsciously countertransfers reciprocal
preconceptions of
similar origin. Most generally, this process
masquerades in social science as a methodology
of objectivity, effacing ethnographer and ob
jectifying his subjects, merely repressing the
spontaneous understanding of the interaction itself. Devereux
argues that awareness of what
is methodologically repressed is the authentic basis of
objectivity, a bridge rather than a bar? rier to it. Whether or not
one accepts the
psychoanalytic perspective, Devereux's notion
of the "complementarity" of ethnographic under?
standing clearly converges with the notion of
dialogue I have developed here, and especially with Gadamer's
conclusion that interpretation must "learn to see in the object the
counter?
part of itself and hence understand both"
[42]. George Marcus has recently suggested an enrichment of
Tongan ethnography through appreciation of Tongans' adaptation to
the
preconceptions and expectations of the ethno?
grapher, on whom they have compiled, so to
speak, their own ethnography [43]. Tongan ethnography, as a
dialogue, must change in
just the same sense that Tonga itself changes.
Finally, inviting the extension of herme neutics fully into the
problem of cross-cultural
understanding, Giddens addresses Evans
Pritchard's problem of Zande witches [44]. He asserts, as I have
argued above, an episte?
mological congruence between historical
distance and cultural difference [45]. He sug?
gests that cultural realities as disparate as those
of Zande witches and English scepticism about them are
nevertheless already mediated as
"frames of meaning" integral to practical situ?
ations [46]. Although these confrontations may have a
superficial resemblance to mutual
contradiction or incommensurability, inviting either scientific
arrogance or solipsistic relativ?
ism, these are illusory abstractions from the bedrock of
specific practical situations, such as
resolving a particular witchcraft accusation
with the poison oracle or implementing in a
particular Zande province Indirect rule which tolerates no such
thing. From the point of
view of actual practice, such situations are
worked out and understandable in the same
sense that metaphors, irony, or other apparent?
ly self-contradictory statements are meaning
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ful in concrete context rather than nonesensical on some
spurious logical grounds. These "miniature" semantic situations
apply "macro
scopically" to "the understanding of alien be?
lief systems" [47]. Giddens' approach to
understanding not only emphasises its dialogi cal nature but
also, like Gadamer's emphasis on practical rather than abstract
points of
view, reminds us of the objective context of social action and
power inequality in which
meaning typically occurs.
I think this synoptic review of contemporary hermeneutic theory
suggests a problematic epistemological continuity between "temporal
distance" as constitutive of historical under?
standing, and "cultural distance" as constitu?
tive of anthropological understanding. If Giddens' insight is
right, these forms of social scientific understanding are
homologous to certain semantic processes in their practical use. I
would further suggest that anthropologi? cal understanding is
prototypic, because its social basis is insistent and immediate and
least liable to an unreflexive assumption of
understanding. Whether or not these claims are accepted, it is
at least clear that the model of the dialogue is necessarily the
common denominator of social scientific understanding. Consistency
with this epistemological basis re?
quires that both anthropological self-awareness and ethnographic
account reflect the dialectic
by which this understanding is constituted.
At least in the case of anthropological under?
standing, raising the concept of "cultural dis?
tance" to the level of a basic epistemological
principle appears especially paradoxical. The
hermeneutic insistence on the reintegration of
the interpreter in the object of knowledge ap? pears to collide
with cultural relativism and invite or legitimize ethnocentrism,
the obverse
apodictics of twentieth century anthropologi? cal theory.
However, I think this apparent contradiction can be resolved in
just the same
way as Gadamer has defended himself against the charge of
traditionalism or conservatism.
This reconsideration of basic tenets of the
discipline has the added advantage of integrat? ing them in the
reflexive critique which moti? vates the new approach. Gadamer's
relativisa
tion of historical understanding is intended as a sword which
cuts both ways: by reaffirming the logically necessary priority of
the inter?
preter's historicity in an apprehension of
truth, he also gives us the ground always to
suspect its motives, to discriminate, as he says, its false from
its true prejudices. The latter, in
turn, can only be provisionally tolerated as
implicit or invisible, subject to subsequent controversion by
openness to the truth claim of another point of view. While the
conviction of "true prejudice" is the only basis upon which
understanding can be built, the move? ment of understanding in the
changing circum?
stances of history also convicts true prejudice of falsehood or
illusion. This dialectical ap? proach to understanding puts the
anthropologi? cal apodictics on less dogmatic grounds: if cultural
relativism is treated objectivistically its logical conclusion is
just another form of
ethnocentrism; this happens in much the same
way that Dilthey's romanticist hermeneutics forgets itself in an
apotheosis of empathy as
positivist history. On the other hand, ethno? centrism must
underlie the profession of social
anthropology insofar as we can only translate
one culture into another. To put it another
way, escape from ethnocentrism is our busi?
ness, but a definitive escape puts us out of
business altogether. Meanwhile, ethnocentrism, like true
prejudice, is the only basis upon
which we understand at all, and, when unavoid?
able, discriminate good from bad cultural prac? tices (our own
or others!). Similar to Gadamer's
fragile "true prejudice", Ricoeur suggests that the dialectic of
understanding seeks a "second
naivete" once criticism has purged the first [48]. These
paradoxes do not expose anthro?
pology as a charade any more than Gadamer's
hermeneutics is a reactionary subterfuge; they only reassert the
inescapably historical and dialectical nature of understanding, and
redis?
cover certitude as a dialogue. From this perspec
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102
tive, positivist objectivism or scientism becomes the ultimate
ethnocentrism, at least in the pre? sent conjuncture of our
historical self-under?
standing.
Ill
I have extended "the anthropological irony" from Geertz himself
to several other examples of ethnography in extremis, arguing with
Gadamer that this apparent difficulty is really the vindication of
ethnographic truth. Geertz also sensed this at one time,
furthermore point?
ing out how uncomfortably close this irony is to hypocrisy, bad
faith, self-deception, false consciousness. I think these are the
other side of the coin of understanding, namely, mis?
understanding of varying degrees of culpability, and not
separable from its dialectic except through a positivist
sleight-of-hand. Karl
Popper, in his maturity, similarly suggests that all forms of
distinctively human knowledge arose originally in lies or
"story-telling" [49]. Now, embedded in the long history of
know?
ledge, we are in no better position than we ever were to
discriminate between the story which is built truthfully on the
epistemological foundation of anthropological irony from that
which is falsehood or false-consciousness. This
discrimination must be made, but cannot be
made in abstraction from particular instances
of interpretation. In any case, if the positivist vision of an
undialectical truth is now revealed
as chimerical, we can no longer draw the line
between truth and fiction so simplistically. Geertz's comments
on the anthropological
irony also broach the issue of fiction, and give me the
opportunity to take it up where he has left off. For Geertz in 1968
the "touching faith" between anthropologist and informant
suggests a "... fiction ? fiction not falsehood
?
that lies at the heart of successful anthropolog? ical field
research" [50]. A few years later he
goes further, extending this perception of
understanding to ethnography itself, and draw?
ing comparisons with Madame Bovary and
painting, making the point that all are neces?
sarily multi-layered interpretations which can? not easily be
discriminated from their referen? tial reality [51 ]. He
nevertheless asserts a dis? tinction between this fictio
? "something
made" - and falsehood or unfactuality, and
suggests that the intention to depict reality, and other
conditions of this depiction, serve to distinguish it more or less
from the fiction of a novel. Although not really "verifiable", the
fictions of ethnography are "appraisable, not merely aesthetically,
but as better or worse than other accounts; and although co?
herence or thickness of description is a crite? rion of such
appraisal, correspondence to
action and events is indispensible:
If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of
what happens, then to divorce it from what happens - from what, in
this time or that place, specific people say, what they do, what is
done to them, from the whole
vast business of the world - is to divorce it from its ap?
plications and render it vacant [52].
This is one of the crucial points at which Geertz opts at the
last minute for a vestigial positivism that threatens to
reincorporate and paralyze his hermeneutics. There is no doubt
that the basic difference between ethnography and fiction is
that the former intends, and is taken to intend, truth. Realistic
fiction, on the
other hand, encourages a suspension of doubt, or signals its
status in some even more subtle
way. But this distinction, far from being ob?
vious, instead seems to be the focus of the
thickest description of all, a broad semantic no-man's land.
"Correspondence" or pure factual reference to "what happens..." is
cer?
tainly a necessary illusion for ethnography to
maintain, but at the same time it must not in? vite us to
hypostatize the facts and lose sight of the irreducible ambiguity
of circumstance Geertz is elsewhere at pains to make clear.
Such covert factualisation of the world is, in social science,
the correlative of the magical abstraction of the scientist from
the under?
standing presented. The tricks through which
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103
ethnography claims truth are no less complex than those through
which the novel claims fiction. Now, this difference must be exam?
ined rather than taken for granted.
If we are to take up, perhaps more seriously than Geertz does
himself, his suggestion that both ethnographic fieldwork and
ethnography are sorts of fiction, where shall we go? My own
direction was initially dictated, I should confess, by a spurious
hope to marry ethno?
graphy and the art of the novel. But this vanity was already
being met halfway by forms of
literary criticism which concern themselves with the relation
between fiction, realism, and
reality. This particular form of hermeneutics has come to be
called narrative theory; I will survey the positions of some of its
contributors, following these particular implications of the
general rapproachment of hermeneutics and
ethnography. My own conclusion, which I should at this point
forecast, is that narrative
theory can make clearer to us the dialogue im?
plicit in both fieldwork and ethnography, and
help overcome the dogma which obscures the dialectic of fiction
and truth inherent in both.
Soon after Geertz extended Ricoeur's model of textual
interpretation to the Balinese cock?
fight [53], Ricoeur extended it even more
generally to social action and historiography [54]. Ricoeur drew
attention to narrative as the common epistemological basis of the
text, social action, and history. Whereas action
"fixes" discourse in a way comparable to the
text, history "fixes" action and itself becomes a text. All are
"stories" in the sense of narra?
tive, whether truth or fiction, whose meaning has become free
from the original conditions
of their production and remains open to new social contexts and
an indefinite series of pos? sible "readers" [55]. Through this
hermeneutic
emphasis on the historical relativity of meaning in diverse
aspects of social reality, Ricoeur also
suggests a dialectical reunification of natural science
explanation and social scientific under?
standing in a form of interpretation which re?
mains open to history. From this perspective,
historiography, like any text and like social action itself,
is:
the operation by which the narrator tells a story and his
listener hears it [56]... a reciprocal relation between re?
counting and following a history which defines a com?
pletely primitive language game...; to follow a history is
a completely specific activity by which we continuously
anticipate a final course and an outcome, and we succes?
sively correct our expectations until they coincide with
the actual outcome. Then we say that we have under?
stood [57].
In this way Ricoeur skirts the pre-emptory positivist vision of
a predictable world, which would incorporate hermeneutics as a
momen?
tary illusion, and instead reincorporates this closure in the
irreducible "openness" of inter?
pretation. Geertz strains for such a resolution, but cannot for
long let go of the positivist vision, at least in his most
theoretical moments.
Tom Wolfe, the first of three narrative theorists I will briefly
consider, similarly seems
closely to approach but stops just short of a dialectical
understanding of the reality he seeks to depict [58]. Wolfe reveiws
the rise of "new journalism" in the 1960s, arguing that its
recourse to the devices of the 19th century tradition of realistic
fiction (especially scene
by-scene construction, dialogue, third-person
point-of-view, and depiction of status life) have ensured an
immediate touch with the
realities journalists must painstakingly docu?
ment. Ironically, literary fiction itself has de?
serted realism, pursuing a new form of classi?
cal story-telling or "neo-fabulism" which loses
all contact with reality, if only because it can no longer
compete on these grounds with up? start journalism [59].
Furthermore, the
earlier "beige" on studiedly neutral journalism reacted with
complaints of "parajournalism" or "zoot-suited prose", which
recalls the
indignant charges of populist sensationalism with which the
original realism of Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, Dickens and Balzac
were met
[60]. Yet these reactions often betray a moral?
izing or politicizing elitism which is veiled by a
pretence of either objectivity or aestheticism
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104
[61 ]. Wolfe's reassessment of the conventional
boundary between objective reporting and re? alistic fiction is
especially relevant to ethno?
graphy, which may also aim to be a form of
journalism. He and the new journalism have
given palpable legitimacy to a style of writing which bespeaks
the same commitment to cons?
cientious fieldwork and unexpected detail, yet belies the
illusion of abstracted objectivism. Many ethnographers would
readily agree with this perspective, however chary of the literary
techniques of realistic fiction. But Wolfe is concerned precisely
to argue that if we are to write about such real experience, the
style of social realism cannot be avoided without laps? ing into
pretension. He claims that the develop?
ment of this technique is for literature what
electricity is for technology, and such evolu? tion cannot be
undone except in reactionary
flights of fancy [62]. Wolfe's insight regarding the truth
about
reality and the fictional techniques by which we depict it is a
point from which we cannot
regress; however, I am dubious [63] that any classical device of
realism, let alone these four, can be canonized as eternal verities
without
paralyzing the reality both ethnographers and
journalists seek to depict. Kermode, whom I
will discuss next, describes a "pleromatic" criterion of
historical realism to which the writers of the Bible and their
medieval com? mentators subscribed: authentication was im?
plicit in prophecy and other forms intercalat?
ing disparate periods of time and meanings of
metaphor which instead imply inauthenticity to the
post-Enlightenment mind [64]. The shift of criteria of realism
which Wolfe him? self traces from classical story-telling to social
realism and from "beige" positivist journalism to the new
journalism further reveals the his? torical relativity of our
narrative techniques for depicting reality; the "neo-fabulism"
(e.g.
Borges, Garcia) which Wolfe suspects of bour?
geois evasiveness may capture the essence of
contemporary reality as effectively as Chaucer or Homer did
their times. Wolfe's own tech
nique of declasse immediacy, mixed metaphor, and stream of
turned-on consciousness seems
less able to depict the 80s than the 60s, and even scenes,
dialogue, point-of-view, and
status cannot be supposed above the history which gave rise to
these techniques. Wolfe's evolutionist analogy between realism and
electricity is naive enough for me to relativise the criteria of
"social realism", hanging on in? stead to the dialectic perception
of reality im? plicit in his more basic criteria: "the reader knows
all this actually happened" [65]. This reminds us that the dialogue
upon which under? standing is founded in experience extends also to
the documentation of this experience, and itself sets the terms of
authenticity.
The line of development of narrative theory which I have picked
up from Ricoeur and Wolfe must also be traced to Frank Kermode, who
similarly examines the interrelationship of literary fiction and
reality. In The Sense of an Ending [66], Kermode explored the ways
in which both fictional and historical or factual accounts of the
world necessarily "make sense",
impute "followability", especially a teleology of beginning,
middle, and ending, to a phenom? enal experience of contingency and
opacity. They are "Active models of a temporal world"
[67]. This narrative reading of experience arises from and
perpetuates a consensus which nevertheless accomodates the
objective world
by deriving its conclusions ad hoc, integrating spontaneous
experience
? "a babble of un
foreshortened dialogue, a random stubbing of
cigarettes, a collection of events without con?
cordance" ? in terms of an ending, anticipated but adjustable
[68]. Heisenberg's and Bohr's principle of complementarity, whereby
theore? tical physics uncomfortably reconciles divergent views of
the world which no pragmatics can re?
solve, serves as a paradigm for either science or
fiction, and does not even necessarily preclude
self-contradiction [69]. On the other hand, the invention of such
fictions nevertheless
must correspond to some primordial reality of "human nature"
against which it can be mea
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105
sured [70]; furthermore, false, insidious, or totalitarian
fiction is in principle distinguish? able from innocent fiction
insofar as the latter
explores rather than dictates the human world and only calls for
conditional assent [71 ]. That these distinctions themselves assume
a
discrimination of truth from fiction is the existential dilemma
which fascinates Kermode, recalling to me Gadamer's distinction
between true and false prejudices. Like Sartre, Kermode ends by
requiring of great fiction the paradox? ical faith in, and
versimilitude to, the contin?
gent world of reality which is lost in the ob
jectivist illusion maintained by non-fiction.
Consequently, although he speaks on behalf of fictional
literature, his conclusion parallels Wolfe's regarding the
journalism of real ex?
perience. Ethnography, as the non-fictional ac?
count of other cultures, can least of all the sciences maintain
the objectivist illusion.
In the Genesis of Secrecy [72] Kermode views this dilemma at the
boundaries between fiction and reality in terms of a contemporary
ambivalence between classical or medieval
Platonic Realism (which assumed the world to be itself
meaningful) and the nominalist
scepticism (to which we as heirs of the En?
lightenment are also committed). Spinoza, in 1670, fatefully
distinguished between mean?
ing and truth, seeing the likelihood of authori?
tarian misuse in their equivocation [73]. Since
the advent of this nominalist scepticism, we must admit the
basic principle that "no narra?
tive can be transparent on historical fact" [74], that is to
say, truth is never implicit in the
meaning of discourse about the world. Yet
this axiom is exceedingly hard to hang on to, and we invariably
slip back into the more an?
cient, innocent, and comfortable assumption of the Realists who
intuited a potential con?
tinuity between words and things that guaran? teed a
transparency of the world. Kermode
quotes Barthes:
We cannot escape the conclusion that the fact can exist
only linguistically, as a term in a discourse, although we
behave as if it were a simple reproduction of something or other
on another plane of existence altogether, some
extra-structural 'reality* "
[75].
The meaning of the world arises in the intricate
imputations of our narrative about it, but de?
spite the scepticism of the Enlightenment we cannot for long see
it this way, and again take the meaning to be true of the world.
This is, ironically enough, the same ambivalence which
Evans-Pritchard (and Castaneda) felt about the
compelling but unbelievable transparency be?
tween Zande (or don Juan's) meaning and truth; but as I think
must be the fate of ethnography, the pendulum of ambivalence swings
between two or more alternative worlds of naive realism,
clear across the peculiar chasm of scepticism created by
Enlightenment nominalism.
In illustration of the dilemma as it faces
historians, Kermode quotes Pynchon:
Let me now quote a historical, or pseudo-historical, nar?
rative of a very different kind. It purports to describe an
engagement between an American and a Russian warship
off the coast of California: 'What happened on the 9th March,
1864... is not too clear. Popov the Russian admiral
did send out a ship, either the corvette 'Bogatir' or the
clipper 'Gaidamek', to see what it could see. Off the coast
of either what is now Carmel-by-the-Sea, or what is now
Pismo Beach, around noon or possibly toward dusk, the
two ships sighted each other. One of them may have fired;
if it did then the other responded; but both were out of
range so neither showed a scar afterward to prove any?
thing.' This passage describes an historical event which is
held to have occurred, to have left no trace, and to be
susceptible of honest report only in the most uncertain
and indeterminate manner. It admirably represents a
modern skepticism concerning the reference of texts to
events. Events exist only as texts, already to that extent
interpreted, and if we were able to discard the interpreta? tive
material and be as honest as historians, quite honestly,
pretend to be, all we should have left would be some
such nonsignificant dubiety as this account of the first
engagement ever to take place between American and
Russian forces [76].
Such a purged chronicle applies "too strict a distinction
between meaning and truth and would leave few historical narratives
capable of interesting us" [77]. Although it is illusory, "we shall
continue to write historical narrative
as if it were an altogether different matter
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106
from making fictions or, a fortiori, from telling lies" [78].
With my case already made for the episte?
mological equivalence of historical and cultural
distance, I can now claim that historians and
ethnographers, as well as journalists, are in an
epistemological predicament similar to novelists. Kermode's
appreciation of the historical dialec? tic between "pleromatic"
certitude and
classical realism, the positivist certitude of the
Enlightenment, and the vertigo of a scepticism which only
gathers momentum since the
sophists and the nominalists (Gadamer's "shadow of philosophy"),
ending in the defi? ant honesty of Sartre's fiction, all this
leaves little room for a facile epistemological re? assurance which
pictures itself as outside
history. The reorientation of journalism docu?
mented by Wolfe further fills in this herme? neutic circle. The
meaning which we hurry to see as truth transparent to the world is
not
only inevitably a narrative of our own making, it is a dialogue
in Gadamer's and Ricoeur's senses, a conversation with more than
one
point of view, which is irrevocably part of its historical
moment and changing with history. That this relativism does not
relieve us of the
demands of truth and morality is ironic or
tragic, but nonetheless true.
Rabinowitz [79] has clarified a further di? mension in the
narrative theory of fiction and
realism by examining the relationship between
author and audience. This more recent "reader
oriented" approach, rather than the "text
oriented" approach still evident in Kermode and Wolfe, reflects
the convergence of literary criticism and Gadamer's and Ricoeur's
philos? ophy of social science on the epistemological model of the
dialogue. If one does not pre emptorily sever the text from its
context, it may be argued that all of the conventions of realistic
narrative pointed out by Wolfe and
Kermode are, phenomenologically, not nar?
rative at all but dialogue. I think that these perspectives can
help a reflexive ethnography to better understand what it is
doing.
Rabinowitz claims we must distinguish at least four audiences
implied in any narrative literary text, correlative to as many
different
modes of the author. The relationships between these several
audience-author levels of narra?
tive meaning are the basis for contextual dis? criminations
between truth and fiction. Most pivotal here is the author and his
assumed or intended actual audience (authorial audience), and the
internal narrator, typical of realistic fiction, and his intended
audience (narrative audience). For War and Peace, the
authorial audience accepts the reality of the War of 1812 while
only the narrative audience accepts the reality of Natasha, Pierre,
and the other characters. The tension between the
two is distinctive of fiction. For Metamorphosis, the narrative
audience is asked without apology to accept what is incredible for
the authorial audience, although the entire context is per?
fectly realistic. "When the distinction between the two
[authorial and narrative audiences] disappears entirely, we have
autobiography or
history" [80]. I would add that the device whereby authorial and
narrative audiences
are merged also includes ethnography, and emphasize (as would
Wolfe and Kermode) that
this is a device.
Rabinowitz further points out that the
authorial and narrative audience each have
their further levels. The former necessarily
implies a factually actual audience and
author (the social and historical facts); the latter fictional
level often includes an "ideal
narrative audience" which is "taken in" or
duped by any fiction the fictional narrator chooses to create.
The two innermost fictional
levels readily become an infinite regress, as Rabinowitz
illustrates with Nabakov's Pale Fire [81 ]. Successful management
of the two outer levels creates a sense of truth against which
these levels of fiction are played off.
Just as the ambiguous levels of dialogue with?
in the fictional narration may exuberantly
explore the distinction between relative truth and relative
fiction, the central ambiguity
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107
between narrative and authorial audience
(and between their authors) explores the more inclusive and less
simply fictional dis? tinction between its own fiction and an
ac?
count of reality. It seems to me that each of the four levels of
dialogue which Rabinowitz invokes serves as a true frame of
reference or
"truth-frame" relative to which its lesser in?
clusive levels are appreciated as fiction. Pheno
menologically, we approach the whole as fic?
tion, yet take each more inclusive level as true relative to our
discovery of an included fiction, suggesting the mutual definition
of these levels is dialectical. Rabinowitz empha? sizes the
simultaneity of the perception of both truth and fiction [82],
precluding any simplistic resolution of this dialectic. The
dialogical nature of the monological narrative illusion itself
is made clearer by the author's apparent intention of such a
simultaneous
and multivocal display of meaning, and the reader's appreciation
of the author's intentions.
Fiction is here a sliding function of truth, al?
though neither is ever unambiguous. What I want finally to
suggest is that in
ethnography, truth is a sliding function of fictional frames of
reference, although neither is ever unambiguous. This merely puts a
some?
what different perspective on Gadamer's dia?
lectic of "true prejudice". Along with auto? biography and
history, ethnography works from an assumption of truth, rather than
an
assumption of fiction. I think it can be shown that the illusion
of meanings "transparent" to truth is achieved through the implicit
accep? tance of a more inclusive level of fiction.
Through the ethnographic exemplars with which I started my
discussion, I will now only suggest some of the ways in which this
per? spective may be developed. At the very least, such
considerations would reopen our under?
standing of ethnography as a dialogue, as well as a narrative,
and reintegrate it in its own
social and historical context. Rhetorical devices which
encourage the
impression of veracity or transparency are in
the first instance simply grammatical. These are less obvious
than, for instance, the scholar?
ly form of documentation which invokes authority through
citation of the wider con? text of scientific literature. In most
non
fictional literature, like history or biography, third-person
narration is "the mode which
best produces the illusion of pure reference"
[83]. On the other hand, the grammatical pattern most typical of
social science is no point of view at all, effacing on behalf of
neutral abstraction even the implied objectiv? ity of third-person
narration. Where some
narrator must be invoked, usually some pas? sive voice avoids
dispelling the aura of objecti fication. The first person plural is
occasionally asserted in what is still sometimes a fictional claim
of authority ("... we have concluded..."). The first-person
singular "I" or "me" is con?
sistently avoided in order not to compromise the sense of
objectivity achievable in a de? tached narrative.
Such innocent but careful modulation of locutions which
introduce or evade introduc? tion of specific points of view is
probably general throughout social science literature.
Perhaps peculiar to ethnography is the "ethno? graphic present",
the previously unquestioned convention whereby history may tacitly
be ig? nored. This sentimentalism seems no longer legitimate, but
is survived by other conventions
such as the segregation of cultural change from
culture, extraneous from intrinsic factors, or
dysfunction from function. Even if ethno?
graphy can no longer be accused of these in? nocent forms of
decontextualisation, it is diffi? cult not to conclude that there
are others of
which we are not aware, or simply by consen? sus not inclined to
recognize as fiction in any ideological sense. Omission is, of
course, selec?
tive, and thereby also constitutes narrative.
Rarely is there a candid accounting of basic conditions of
understanding such as linguistic fluency, duration of time in the
field, form and degree of acceptance, or theoretical biases and
their modification. This seems avoided for
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108
much the same reason that the first-person
singular is judged inappropriate, and the speci? ous plural form
occasionally invoked. Insofar
as authority is established through such con?
ventions, cultural strangeness, geographic re?
moteness or difficulty of access, and the futil?
ity of replication, may be accepted implicitly as credentials
rather than deterrents to credibil?
ity. It is by now apparent that in lieu of other
criteria of verifiability, clearly futile but never? theless
desired in the social sciences, functional
explanation maintains the fiction of transpar?
ency in much the same way that Kermode's
teleological "sense of an ending" maintains
coherence of a narrative through "followabil
ity". Among the various structural, semiotic, or hermeneutic
alternatives which have suc?
ceeded functionalism, the implicit criteria of coherence has
increasingly come to rest in the narrative form of ethnography
itself rather than in some metaphysics which it invokes. Geertz's
"thick description" [84] may be seen as an explicit recognition of
ethnography as
narrative, even as implicitly recommending such devices of
social realism as championed by Wolfe on behalf of the New
Journalism. More recently, Marcus has suggested approach?
ing ethnography as a genre in the interest of
appreciating the claim of authenticity implicit in distinctive
rhetorical devices [85]. Among these he suggests that:
readers expect an ethnography to give a sense of the con?
ditions of fieldwork; of everyday life (Malinowski's
"imponderabilia"); of micro-process (an implicit valida?
tion of participant observation); of holism (a form of
portraiture integrated with the pursuit of particular claims);
and of translation across cultural and linguistic boundaries
(the broad, contextual exegisis of indigenous terms and
concepts) [86].
He also points out that Rabinow [87] and Dumont [88], like
Bateson, appear conscious?
ly to be experimenting (if only implicitly) with an:
ethnographic genre which can accommodate reflexivity while
retaining the traditional authority of its texts, that is, the
rhetorical usage of language and format by which
ethnographers have constructed their accounts as certain
and objective knowledge about others [89].
I only seek to press to its full epistemological implications
the insights which Geertz and
Marcus present as methodologies; unless these implications are
made explicit, such methodo? logies are liable simply to be
reincorporated in the positivist preconception of ethnography.
Having broached these considerations, I
suggest that the ethnographic dilemmas dis? cussed in the
beginning are problematic be? cause the merger of authorial (that
is, intended or assumed) audience and narrative (that is, internal
or constructive) audience, necessary to turn realistic fiction into
non-fiction, be? comes uncomfortably conscious. The tension
between the two audiences, which serves as
the focus of fictional narration, becomes super?
ficially the embarrassment, but more profound?
ly the authentication, of ethnography. The grammatical and other
conventions which I
have suggested above implicate a narrative
audience which is prepared to grant the ethno? graphy many
shortcuts to a transparent truth.
Behind this tacit narrator/narrative audience
agreement stand the author and his authorial
audience, ethnographer and readers whose in? nocence of any such
conspiracy constitutes a
key factor in the truth of the narrative account.
Tacit fiction serves as a frame of reference for
the assertion of truth.
Furthermore, the retrospective exposure of
ethnographic authorship through Malinowski's diary, and its
introspective exposure in Geertz's and Read's reflections, suggest
a background of other audiences we have also overlooked.
At least two of these are the people we write for and those we
write about. Even in fictional literature the subjects of the work
are an
audience in some sense (e.g., an "ideal narra?
tive audience"), so presumably even an ethno
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109
graphy which successfully abstracts itself from its fieldwork
must nevertheless address these real people in some form. As
becomes apparent in all five ethnographic exemplars I have con?
sidered, the correlative of these two audiences is a perfectly
sane, but not morally innocent, schizophrenia of authorship. The
problems of translation intrinsic to ethnography may make it
inevitable that it cannot speak equally to both audiences, but
because the ethnographer once did so (i.e., in his fieldwork), to
resolve the problem by fiat wholly in favour of the
ethnographer's vernacular audience (or worse,
his scholarly audience) begs this central episte? mological
question. At least in this way a fictional authorial audience seems
reciprocal?
ly to be created, participation in which estab? lishes the truth
for a narrative audience which
only appears to include both whom the ethno?
graphy is written for and whom it is written about.
A narrative theory of "anthropological irony" may also be
extended from the moral equivo? cation examined by Geertz and Read
to the
ontological equivocation examined by Evans
Pritchard and Castaneda. Here, the efficacy of the ethnography,
much like realistic fiction, depends upon the ambivalent
disjunction of authorial and narrative audiences: while one
must believe in witches the way the Azande or don Juan do, the
other cannot. Behind this
ambivalence Evans-Pritchard was able to main?
tain the illusion that narrative and authorial
audience were one, whereas Castaneda was
not; consequently the former was accepted as ethnography while
the latter is generally
regarded at best as realistic fiction. Finally, I
suggest that while Evans-Pritchard had to in? voke an authorial
audience which did not be? lieve in witches while his narrative
audience
did, Castaneda had to invoke a narrative audi?
ence which could not believe in witches, while his authorial
audience did. This historical re? versal or irony suggests that
ethnographer audience dialogues are not merely internal to
ethnography, but span ethnographic traditions
in which theoretical controversies may be
merely epiphenomenal. Like the stringent or paradoxical
standards
which Wolfe sets for journalism and Sartre and Kermode set for
realistic fiction, I suggest that ethnography must both consciously
ex?
ploit the distinctions between its various audi? ences and
strive to overcome them. As the
hermeneutic perspectives I have outlined
finally imply, it is the irreducible disparity of dialogue upon
which the authenticity of
ethnographic truth must rest, rest vulnerably, that is, as "true
prejudice". The fiction on which ethnography must verge always
threatens to reveal its prejudices, while the current invis?
ibility of these must be recognized as the only ground of a
claim to the truth. The practical dialogue of cross-cultural
experience can in
this way avoid being foreshortened into narra?
tive prone to the assumption of transparency. The
"open-endedness" which Ricoeur imputes to any narrative, fictional
or not, must not be
innocently closed; on the other hand, the license of fiction
implies that ethnography
must strive for the illusion of closure which
continually threatens to unravel into an open
dialogue again. Just as the merger of authorial and narrative
audiences legitimizes non-fiction, so does this gesture of closure
legitimize ethno? graphy as science rather than fiction. But it
is
just because ethnography is not merely fiction
that it cannot abdicate an open-endedness in
its closure.
Which of the exemplars I have examined
approaches this ideal? Malinowski's personal
intensity and awareness of the "imponderabilia" of his
methodology suggests that his ethno?
graphic vividness was only misled by the posi? tivist seientism
which was hardly resistable in his time. Evans-Pritchard's
ethnography is
usually dominated by the same innocence, but rather than
segregating his existential doubts in a diary apart from his
ethnography, this
dialogue crops up where it took shape, in the true fiction of
Zande witches and the non
unilineal patrilineages of Nuer kinship. Evans
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110
Pritchard's unpretentious confidence was far
less vulnerable than Malinowski's strident in?
tegrity, and nearly saved him from his times. In many ways,
Read's ethnographic confes?
sional, produced not long after the golden age of functionalist
false-consciousness, re?
mains closest to the ethnographic ideal of a
reopening closure I am here postulating. His
reflections are an antithesis to Malinowski's
diary, inviting an ironic gaze that now even seems intended by
both of them. But even Read's gentle tour deforce loses the
internal
dialogue of openness, remaining an apologetic sequel to another
ethnography promised to be less self-indulgent if more
fragmentary.
Castaneda, on the other hand, seems seduced
outside the bounds of ethnography; but one feels this is the
fault of two of his audiences, one too enthusiastic and the other
not enough, rather than the fault of don Juan, the audience which
only appears to have seduced him. At the very least, Castaneda's
ethnography suc?
ceeded in blurring the dogmatic lines between
ethnography and fiction. I have already said enough about Geertz
to reveal my own ambi?
valence about his approach to ethnography. More recently in the
rise of herm