I just finished reading the violence of the letter for the second time and I have to confess I didn’t understand anything the first time. Also it took me ages to read it the first time maybe it is an ESL problem, who knows.
Since this text is constructed in such a complicated way I will try to de-complicate the few things I understood.
Every write (Derridas included) is based on a system of assumptions. We don’t start from scratch and try to find all the truth of the world. Derrida’s analyzes these “pre-assumptions” and deconstructs them. He talks about the différance, how the meaning of something is never fully comprehended, but is always deferred to another system of things, for which that first meaning has opened a new set of things and continues like this in an endless chain that can only be stopped by writing.
What is ethnographic work nowadays? How can you escape the “misconceptions” that Derridas critiques about Levi Strauss work?
(p. 123) Levi Strauss implies according to Derrida that the Nambikwara “only draw lines” He assumed they don’t have writing because they have no word with that definition or something approximate. For Levi Strauss it has only and aesthetic value, as something extrinsic to linguistic value. If Levi Strauss had a different conception of writing, maybe his conclusions about the Nambikwara would had been different?
What do you think Levi Strauss would have said about the wild child?
Do you think he would have seen his innocence corrupted by society?
Enthnocentrism v. Anti-enthnocentrism (cont...)
ReplyDeleteI found one of the most interesting themes of Derrida's "Violence of the Letter" was his critique of Lévi-Strauss's ethnographic view of 'primitive' culture as enthnocentric disguised as anti-enthnocentric. Ethnocentrism is defined as understanding another culture through one's own cultural lens, or "judging other cultures by the standards of your own, which you believe to be superior"(according to OSU).
In this case, Lévi-Strauss (LS) tried to integrate into the Nambikwara culture to study and observe behavior as an unbiased social scientist. Ethnocentrism had been defined and discouraged by the Anthropological community at the time of "Writing Lesson" and undoubtedly, LS saw his ethnographic view as anti-ethnocentric.
As we discussed, and what becomes apparent through Derrida's critique, is that LS came to the Brazilian rainforest carrying the baggage of enthnocentrism disguised as anti-ethnocentrism. His educated, western worldview placed non-western "primitive" cultures in a Utopian light. Academics in the social sciences were no doubt sympathetic toward the "untouched" cultures that still existed in the world during this post-colonialist, post-WWII period (Tristes Tropiques, 1955). Derrida touches on the guilt that western anthropologists placed on themselves, perhaps because of the colonial past and the growing empirialism, the increase of technology, industry, population growth, etc. These are the burdens that LS carried with him as he entered the rainforest. Although he may not have seen his own culture as "superior", he is in the position of power (and notes this throughout his travelogue), he blames himself for inciting violence among the Nambikwara people (as Derrida explains so well using LS's writing lesson), and he constructs the Nambikwara people as the "noble savages".
Derrida critiques LS's ethnography an as ethnocentric work (among other things). I tend to agree with one reservation - how does an anthropologist escape their own biases? We are all subject to our environmental and cultural influences. Is it possible to escape ethnocentrism? If not, is there a way to speak to that fact to construct a more accurate or honest ethnography?
Hi all. I'm posting this for Jen...
ReplyDeleteThanks Daniela for kicking off this discussion.
In response to your question: "What is ethnographic work nowadays? How can you escape the “misconceptions” that Derridas critiques about Levi Strauss work?" As I mentioned yesterday, I find it hard to respond to this question from Derrida's perspective. I appreciate his deconstructive analysis of Levi Strauss' research, and in many ways agree with his critique of "ethnocentrism in the consciousness of a liberating progressivism" (pg. 120). Nonetheless, I don't think Derrida successfully proposes an alternative model for a more responsible, or less ethnocentric, ethnography.
In retrospect, I wonder if Derrida would find the activity of modeling alternative ethnographic methods a useful exercise at all -- probably not. Derrida's main goal seems to be communicating an overall suspicion of any framework that attempts to implement an overarching hierarchy or rule set to what's "real." Toward that end, Derrida's critique is always formulated as a reaction to a reaction (to a reaction and so on). One topic that we didn't discuss in depth yesterday was what this means to our (linear) notions of "progress" -- one of the most controversial ideas in the discipline of anthropology, I'm sure. I'm very interested in how other scholars we read will address this topic throughout the rest of the course.
In response to your other question: "If Levi Strauss had a different conception of writing, maybe his conclusions about the Nambikwara would had been different?" Yes, I think Derrida persuasively argues that Levi Strauss' conclusions would be vastly different had he had a less narrow, "phonocentric" conception of writing. If Levi Strauss had approached writing from this broader perspective, he would have conceived the activities of A Writing Lesson not as a singularly violent "infiltration" of the Nambiwaka's "radical goodness" (pg. 119), but as a more complex (still violent) process of identification.
Best,
Jen