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.