Representationalism
Jan. 18th, 2013 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI have been reading yet more wittering about representation. Not "How can we represent the Other (broadly defined) in a way that is appropriate and respectful?" which I think it an important question, but "Is it possible to be an anthropologist/historian/write about anyone who in is not exactly like me in every way without totally becoming part of the oppressive problem OMG OMG OMG I have met the enemy and IT IS ME" academic wittering.
If an academic honestly feels that by representing something – not by representing it poorly, but purely by the act of representing it at all – they are a priori acting as an oppressive force, then they ought to stop writing. I have no respect for people who claim to feel that way but continue their academic careers.
Either they’re overstating their beliefs for shock value, or they are continuing to behave in a way they believe makes them a morally reprehensible accessory to oppression, because they have a good salary and benefits and excellent job security – because they have, in short, sold their souls to Mammon.
Anthropologists and historians and so forth seem quite hung up on this idea that they have a godlike power. They worry not about misrepresenting something, but fret about the mere act of representation, as if merely by writing about something they somehow materially injure that thing.
It’s as if we think that our writing is magic; as though we believe that a textual representation is a sort of voodoo doll. Not only does a representation control the way that our readers might see our subjects, but it controls our subjects themselves. The poor tribes about whom ethnographies are written are so weak, so powerless to resist, that the mere fact of being misrepresented to people thousands of miles away will cause massive damage to their fragile cultures.
Of course ethnographies (and histories) can be and have been used as tools of oppression. But that's a result of the power relations between the culture writing the ethnography and the culture being written about, not the mere act of representing.
Has Iran, by incessantly representing the US as the Great Satan, forced Americans to see themselves in that light? No! Because representation does not give them the military or economic power to change our opinion of ourselves! Representation can be a tool of power, but it is not in and of itself power.
Tl,dr, writing is not a form of wizardry. It is powerful, but it not so very powerful that merely writing a representation of a thing changes that thing.
If an academic honestly feels that by representing something – not by representing it poorly, but purely by the act of representing it at all – they are a priori acting as an oppressive force, then they ought to stop writing. I have no respect for people who claim to feel that way but continue their academic careers.
Either they’re overstating their beliefs for shock value, or they are continuing to behave in a way they believe makes them a morally reprehensible accessory to oppression, because they have a good salary and benefits and excellent job security – because they have, in short, sold their souls to Mammon.
Anthropologists and historians and so forth seem quite hung up on this idea that they have a godlike power. They worry not about misrepresenting something, but fret about the mere act of representation, as if merely by writing about something they somehow materially injure that thing.
It’s as if we think that our writing is magic; as though we believe that a textual representation is a sort of voodoo doll. Not only does a representation control the way that our readers might see our subjects, but it controls our subjects themselves. The poor tribes about whom ethnographies are written are so weak, so powerless to resist, that the mere fact of being misrepresented to people thousands of miles away will cause massive damage to their fragile cultures.
Of course ethnographies (and histories) can be and have been used as tools of oppression. But that's a result of the power relations between the culture writing the ethnography and the culture being written about, not the mere act of representing.
Has Iran, by incessantly representing the US as the Great Satan, forced Americans to see themselves in that light? No! Because representation does not give them the military or economic power to change our opinion of ourselves! Representation can be a tool of power, but it is not in and of itself power.
Tl,dr, writing is not a form of wizardry. It is powerful, but it not so very powerful that merely writing a representation of a thing changes that thing.
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-18 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 03:00 am (UTC)Or at any rate, why they will someday.