Postmodern Anthropology

So, more on my anthropology class having some curious and fascinating links to this English class:

In a recent class my professor was discussing with us the complex part of anthropology that is the writing of it. There are books and books and articles and dissertations on the theory of anthropological and ethnographic (the study and systematic recording of human cultures) writing. Much like history, the present is very difficult to describe as well. Infinite storylines can be told to illustrate a single moment in time. Because of the vastness of content for anthropologists to write about, many people are taking a step back to critique the ways in which the writing is done.

In particular, an Australian anthropologist named Michael Taussig has garnered a lot of attention over his unconventional methods of ethnographic writing. For my own class, we took a look at his piece My Cocaine Museum. Instead of writing his work as if her were giving a speech on the subject of the particular community he had been studying, Taussig presents his research in the form of a story.

He himself becomes a character in a narrative that seeks to give a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of immigrants coming through U.S. Customs, in light of the War on Drugs and the worldwide prominence of cocaine smuggling.

Here is a small excerpt:

Where better to start, then, than in the canyons of Gotham, with Wall Street brokers buying their drugs from a Dominican man in a nice suit in the men's room sniffing cocaine. At the same time across the East River at Kennedy Airport, there is a Chesapeake Bay retriever, also sniffing, urged on by its U.S. Customs-uniformed mistress, "Go, boy! Go find it! Good boy!" as small-statured Colombians draw back in horror at the baggage carousel when their clear plastic-wrapped oversize suitcases come lumbering into sight and smell—plastic-wrapped in Colombia by special businesses that come to your home the day before the flight to seal your baggage against a little slippage.

“A real American decides enuf is enuf. The dog has gotten out of control, he decides, and he tells its handler to back off as the dog jumps up and down slobbering on his chest. "You have your constitutional rights," says the handler. "Here everyone is guilty until smelt innocent," and she urges the dog to leap higher. You need a large dog for this sort of work. The small ones may be smarter but get trampled on.”

A strange narrative, for sure. But with an interesting way to allow the reader to experience the information in a way that statistics and pure observational accounts might not convey. This evolving method is known as ficto-criticism, being a combination of fact and “fictions,” memoirs, official histories, and literary theory. My professor said in class that “Only ficto-criticism can convey the complexity and incomprehensibility of ethnographic experience,” and that “Instead of analyzing facts, you present them as ‘something you have to try out for yourself, feeling your way deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness until you do feel what is at stake, the madness of the passion’. “

I find it so interesting that the study of postmodern literature could encompass this piece of anthropological writing. If you remember trying to figure out what a postmodern history would look like, this seems like a fairly compelling example of what that might truly take shape as. My Cocaine Museum was written in 2004, and he has published numerous pieces since then, but it proves as a great example of pushing the boundaries of your art to explore new (maybe better?) ways of conveying your meaning.

Dying in the Desert: the Character of Younger Brother

The story-arc of Mother’s Younger Brother alone is a thing to behold. Midst attempts to look at the whole of Ragtime, many a literary critique could focus solely on him. Although he always seems to be operating under the shadow of a more prominent person, he certainly draws my eye quite a bit. First Evelyn, then Emma Goldman, Coalhouse, and finally Emiliano Zapata, Younger Brother is a bit of a glutton for a cause.

Love, revolution, justice, more revolution.

During our discussion of him, one aspect caught my attention: how Doctorow portrays social justice through this character of Younger Brother. There certainly is evidence for an argument that Doctorow just shakes his head at the idea of radical social justice. The character of Mother’s Younger Brother begins in a way that might seem like Doctorow making fun of him, making him the angst-ridden young adult, wayward and philosophical. His end also might be thought of as being quite the snide shoot at people who spend their lives jumping from one social justice cause to the next: dying alone in a Mexican desert with no one around.

I will start with his death, as my argument that Doctorow wants us to see Younger Brother as an honorable character. Many of the characters in Ragtime are very high profile: Evelyn Nesbit, J.P. Morgan, Ford, Harry K. Thaw, Stanford White, and in the case of White, his dramatic death is all the media can busy itself with. Had Doctorow included the deaths of any of these other famous characters, the portrayal of them would be, in a sense, a scathing critique of the media. All people die. For the media and public, some deaths are more important than others. Some people DO make significant contributions to the world and should be recognized, but others are famous simply at a disproportionate level, and at their deaths they are portrayed as angelic, saintly even. I see this phenomenon today with the deaths of famous actors, where one day they may be hated, and the second they die, everyone wants to say they were the biggest fan.

Mother’s Younger Brother dies alone, unseen, and no one makes a big deal out of it. He dedicated quite a bit of his adult life to following the shadows of revolutionaries to work for their cause, and it draws to a close far away from home. Comparatively to the extravagant death of Stanford White, I see this as quiet and honorable. Although this may relate little to social justice, I see it as Doctorow’s “head nod” to Younger Brother.

My other point is that Doctorow makes it known that Younger Brother keeps a journal each day until his death. The conscientious participant of life is always reflecting, and journal keeping seems a narrative way to explain self-reflection. He wants to let us know that this character is not acting wildly and  without forethought. Each of his actions are thought-through and purposeful. This helps dispel the accusation that he is a bandwagon revolutionary, simply joining on anything that comes his way.  

Younger Brother’s growth throughout Ragtime also shows that Doctorow was continually thinking about him. Sometimes authors create characters, lose interest in them, and allow the loose ends to pile up, carelessly. Younger Brother is clearly planned with care. His social justice-tendencies were carefully decided upon by his author, and he becomes a person of intrigue, ending his life in an honorable fashion.

The Challenge of a Postmodernist History

My favorite part of Postmodernism is it’s capacity for multiplicity. Diversity is actively sought after as a discussion point. Different points of view are suddenly backed by a cultural movement. The idea that someone might have experienced a different truth within the same set of facts is now “possible.”

A historical record, like one found in your classic elementary school textbook, often shows just one interpretation of a set of facts. Even if a history book is authored by many people, they usually come to a consensus to how to explain this event or that event. But as we have discussed on many occasions in class, it is simply impossible to recount an event in its entirety, taking into account everyone and everything. Although Mr. Mitchell has expressed that this fact seems a little overwhelming, I actually find it more of a challenge. Like I am staring academia in the face, saying “bring it on!” I know full well that simply logically one could never have the capacity to know the entirety of a single moment in time, but there is certainly much we can do.

Drawing upon its embrace of many realities, I propose that a Postmodernism history would try and tackle events from as many sides as it can. For example, to cover the period of the civil war-- it is extremely important to hear it from different points of view for the purposes of understanding the cultural impacts and realities that can’t be glorified in the textbooks.  First hand accounts from white civilians in the North and South, members and leaders of both armies, free blacks persons, and enslaved persons would give a drastically more complete picture of simply what was happening inter-personally and on larger scales.

Doctorow puts this together nicely as he features characters in Ragtime that see the same phenomena occurring, and yet have such different experiences and interpretations. The photojournalist that is exploring the tenements gives a technical and “official” history of the urban New York City slums, but by lingering with the family a moment after he leaves, Doctorow reminds us that the official history is only one piece to a completed puzzle. Both photographer and resident look at the same state of affairs, but I can guarantee that different emotions and thoughts are speeding through the different pairs of eyes.  Had the family written down their experience with the photojournalist and passed it on, it could be paired with the photojournalist’s article to join in our Postmodernist history of the New York City tenement slums on that day in our history.

"I'm Commandeering this Ship! Er, Story!"

I am currently taking an anthropology class at the U of I, and as the semester continued I began realizing many topics that were crossing over with History as Fiction. My anthropology professor, in explaining the role of anthropology since its recognition as a study, gave a shoutout to Postmodernism. In the adoption of the understanding that in a common space there can be multiple ways of understanding, multiple worlds and realities, anthropology benefited as a study of different cultures .

This anthropology class has made me think of History as Fiction on numerous occasions. The professor often relays accounts told by notable anthropologists, and one was of a British woman who happened to bring along Hamlet with her to Nigeria. After a few days of reading it alone, the leaders of the village became interested in what kept her so wrapped up and asked her to share the story. Thinking it had the potential to be universally appreciated, she obliged to reading aloud. But the cultural differences of Nigeria and England became vocalized every time someone would stop her and ask questions, confused by the subtleties of English culture that the play emanates. The meaning could not be appreciated by this group of people who were so unfamiliar with the point-of-view of very society wherein the story resides. The unspoken, longstanding traditions and historical context of the anthropologist’s culture contributed to a story that the Nigerian listeners had clear difficulty gleaning importance from it.

After discovering that the Coalhouse Walker story was a clear transposition of the Michael Kohlhaas tale, my mind immediately jumped to the argument of stories being altered by people to translate better to a new audience. Had someone taken the tale of Hamlet and integrated appropriate Nigerian historical context and cultural subtleties to produce a new version, would the listeners then take away something more valuable? In a context more familiar, would the story carry meaning that would otherwise be lost? Although the Kohlhaas story is unmistakably present, Ragtime provides an added dimension for different people than the original audience of Heinrich von Kleist’s novella. The readers in 1811 Germany were much different than those of 1975 America. The historical context in Ragtime is significant. The nostalgia Doctorow threads through the novel deeply affects how it is read by American audiences. It aides in connecting the Americans of 1975 to Americans during the time period of Ragtime. The story of Kohlhaas has now been filled with the capacity to be extraordinarily meaningful to a different culture.

In his essay, False Documents, Doctorow clearly places the value of narrative presentations of truths as higher than the value of impersonal presentations of facts. The difference seemingly being that the latter lacks meaning. Ragtime only includes a handful of documented facts, and yet, for me, it is full of reality. It puts a face, heart, and soul on some of the different demographics American school-kids briefly learn about, and then weaves them together. From his essay and interview, Doctorow would no doubt make a case for Ragtime giving a better historical context for 1975 America than the “official history” of the people he includes in the novel.

“If there are enough of us, somehow a common wisdom will come through the community and pick and choose what it needs in order to survive and go on.”

This quote from Doctorow’s interview, included in Paul Levine’s Conversations, doesn’t necessarily name Ragtime as a component of our survival, but it most definitely places it in the narrative from which we draw our identity. So is it worth is to commandeer another person’s story if you have the capacity to make it meaningful to a new audience? Doctorow certainly thinks so.