The predicament of heroic anthropology Albert Doja To cite this version: Albert Doja. The predicament of heroic anthropology. Anthropology Today, Wiley, 2006, 22 (3), pp.18-22. 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2006.00439.x. halshs-00405952 HAL Id: halshs-00405952 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00405952 Submitted on 5 Oct 2009 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Published in: "Anthropology Today", vol. 22 (3), 2006, pp. 18–22 DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8322.2006.00439.x The predicament of heroic anthropology ALBERT DOJA Albert Doja completed his doctoral and post- doctoral research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and University of Paris-5, Sorbonne. He has lectured and researched in Albania, France, England and Ireland. His latest book, Naître et grandir chez les Albanais: La construction culturelle de la personne (Paris: Harmattan), was published in 2000. He is Senior Research Fellow at the College of Humanities, University of Limerick, Ireland, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. Fig. 1. The young Lévi- 51 Strauss as fieldworker and 35 adventurer. RAI In the course of establishing structural anthropology as by contemporary anthropologists in their accounts of the an academic discipline in France, Claude Lévi-Strauss forms of resistance to oppression, it can be argued – albeit has been criticized both on the grounds of anti-humanism on the basis of completely different materials – that con- (Sartre 1960, Ricoeur 1969) and of its apparent opposite, trary to the beliefs of the majority of post-structuralist in the form of a humanistic metaphysics (Derrida 1967a, critics, Lévi-Strauss is again, if not at the centre, at least 1967b). These critics claim to reveal the weakness and very close to the current anthropological paradigm – in any alleged contradictions in the work of Lévi-Strauss; he has case much closer than Sartre. been accused variously of failure to subject his material Similarly, a synopsis of Lévi-Strauss’ critique of to analysis, of ethnocentrism, subjectivism, empiricism, Western humanism, which is philosophically expressed in clichéd thinking, archaism, primitivist utopianism, epi- the conception of man as a subject, shows a number of par- genetism, sloppy thinking, nonsense, theology and meta- allels with the principal axes of Heidegger’s criticism of physics – in short, of everything that is at odds with what modernity (Renaut 1992), a favourite theme of the decon- normally stands as Lévi-Straussian analysis. I showed structionists in other respects (Derrida 1987). It is there- elsewhere the critical extent to which Lévi-Strauss’s fore striking to note how Derrida and his supporters, while legacy has been misrepresented to the collective detriment criticizing Lévi-Strauss’ alleged metaphysical humanism, of anthropology and social sciences in general (Doja 2005, failed to grasp the philosophical relevance of his struc- 2006a). Now if we are to understand the modern condition tural arguments on this point. It would have been suffi- at all we need to return to Lévi-Strauss’ critique of history cient for Derrida and his followers simply to borrow from and colonialism, for his writings helped to make possible Heidegger the deconstruction of the history of modernity, modernist ideas of deconstruction, reflexivity, and the both its cultural component, with the advent of humanism, transient nature of culture and identity. and its philosophical aspect, with the advent of philoso- phies of the subject. The rules of the game Derrida’s Grammatology (1967a) represented an impor- It is of course not surprising that we find, in various aspects tant attack on the foundations of the structural approach, and of the new epistemological paradigm of anthropology, the his technique of ‘deconstruction’, the best-known or most echo of Sartre’s reflections on the importance of the inter- infamous of post-modernist strategies, has been widely action between social praxis, human agency and history used to destabilize anthropological and other assumptions in understanding symbolic systems (Delacampagne & about language, writing and meaning. Derrida’s strategy of Traimond 1997). But although some of the configurations critical analysis serves to expose underlying metaphysical described by Sartre 50 years ago are echoed in the very assumptions, in particular those which appear to contra- close attention paid to the details of indigenous discourses dict the surface argument of the text itself. The term has 18 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 22 NO 3, JUNE 2006 Fig. 2. Claude Lévi-Strauss’ office in Paris. A T DOJ T ER LB A become synonymous with post-modern theory of various ‘of explicitly and systematically posing the problem of the sorts, but anthropology has been viewed as an arena par- status of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the ticularly appropriate to the post-modernist agenda, espe- resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage cially with regard to unpacking of some of its key terms itself’ (ibid.: 414[282]). In his desire to deconstruct meta- and concepts such as ‘otherness’ and ‘culture’. physics, he was constructing a scholastics. Yet the ‘tristes tropes’ of post-modernists have identified Derrida’s critical engagement with Lévi-Strauss should a genuine and widely acknowledged problem in empiricism be seen as a necessary and important intervention in the and historicism, mainly through their dismissive attitude debate which developed around structuralism in the par- toward scientific analysis and the largely uncritical appro- ticular circumstances of 1960s France. Both Derrida and priation of literary criticism (Polier & Roseberry 1989). It Lévi-Strauss, in their own ways, were responsible for a is hardly surprising, therefore, that Derrida’s theories have redefinition of their discipline and for the development of taken hold especially in North American departments of a new ‘paradigm’. Whereas in anthropology Lévi-Strauss literature (Haverkamp 1995), while Lévi-Strauss’ contri- applied the structural method to the study of social facts, bution goes unrecognized, particularly in contemporary Derrida undertook a radical criticism aiming at the ‘decon- North American anthropology. struction’ of Western philosophical tradition. No wonder, then, that Lévi-Strauss’ contribution to However, if Lévi-Strauss’ text is for Derrida symptomatic the deconstructionist paradigm itself, notably in rela- of a specific history of Western metaphysical thought, the tion to the wider projects engaged in The savage mind urgency of his critique stems from the hegemony of struc- and Totemism, is ignored and largely overshadowed by tural discourse, which, he maintains, overstates its claim explicitly literary and philosophical debates (e.g. Lyotard ‘precipitately to have gone beyond’ the oppositions of the 1979). The post-modern critique, rather than building on old metaphysics (Derrida 1967a: 148[99]). Indeed, beyond it, at best neglected and at worst failed to understand, and the question of structuralism and the accusation that it is therefore rejected, Lévi-Strauss’ claim that ‘the ultimate ‘caught, by an entire layer, sometimes the most fecund, of goal of the human sciences is not to constitute, but to dis- its stratification within the metaphysics of logocentrism’, solve man’ (1962: 326[247]). Above all, the ‘rationality’ Derrida’s intervention can be seen as the clear reaction argument is rarely invoked, despite the fact that it could of philosophy to the challenge of structuralism and the lay strong claim to having mapped the philosophical human sciences. It is primarily about a philosophy which parameters of an increasing preoccupation with issues of is getting the measure of the new anthropology in full flow. contextualization and reflexivity within anthropology, in In this sense Lévi-Strauss was representative of what was the face of the declining coherence of meta-narrative and becoming a threat, to the extent of establishing a new arena grand theory. of intellectual power in the French academy. Apart from his radical questioning of the history of A gamble of rhetoric philosophy and the sciences, Derrida sought to distance Derrida engaged in a very tight game with Lévi-Strauss’ himself from the ‘controversy’ between Sartre and Lévi- work. But using structural anthropology for the purpose of Strauss, revealing the extent to which the debate between deconstruction meant that the instruments of this decon- anthropology and existentialism seemed obsolete and out- struction largely themselves resulted, as Derrida had to dated, a minor skirmish over a boundary which had already recognize, from the structural ‘adventure’ itself, whether shifted. Whereas Sartre’s criticism of structuralism, its it was ‘the sign of an epoch, the fashion of a season or the neglect of concrete relations and its reduction of human symptom of a crisis’ (Derrida 1967b: 9[3]). After all, to use agency and historical process, remained squarely within a against an entire movement of thought a critical logic which certain humanistic philosophical tradition, Derrida could is incontestably at the basis of that movement is somewhat be said to have engaged structuralism on its own ground, problematic. Derrida obsessively pursued his programme at the level of its discourse and its concepts. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 22 NO 3, JUNE 2006 1 It is clear that what Derrida was charging the new dis- is never absolutely present outside a system of differences’ cipline of anthropology with, as it was presented by and (ibid.: 411 [280]). represented in the person of Lévi-Strauss, was a lack of Derrida himself located his own work in the perspective discipline at the conceptual level.