The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (1988)
By James Clifford

Synopsis: This book examines the "postcolonial crisis of ethnographic authority" - that is, "who has the authority to speak for a group's identity or authenticity?" (8). It does this by tracing the development of anthropology, and says that West can no longer consider itself to the the sole authority on 'other' cultures. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the argument that there is tension between the humanizing aspect of anthropology which seems to render things understandable (the render the strange ordinary), and the surrealist aspect which seeks to render the ordinary strange. The surrealist does this by picking up on fragments and random oddness. Clifford himself is more in favor of the surrealist approach, and writes that "A 'culture' is, concretely, an open-ended, creative dialogue of subcultures, of insiders and outsiders, of diverse factions" (46). In this way, an ethnography of polyvocality should be employed. Some anthropology tries to "collect" culture, corner it, and categorize it, and label the non-Western as primitive artifacts always on the verge of disappearing.


Interesting Specifics:

Participant observation began around the 1940s.

"Ethnography is an explicit from of cultural critique sharing radical perspectives with dada and surrealism" (12).

"The West can no longer present itself as the unique purveyor of anthropological knowledge about others" (22).

"A 'culture' is, concretely, an open-ended, creative dialogue of subcultures, of insiders and outsiders, of diverse factions" (46).

Clifford equates surrealism with ethnography because surrealism's aesthetic "values fragments, curious collections, unexpected juxtapositions - that works to provoke the manifestation of extraordinary realities drawn from the domains of the erotic, the exotic, and the unconscious" (118). Seeks to provoke the unexpected (145). Culture now is all fragments and irony, and culture now as an object to be collected (120).

But, this ethnographic surrealism is different from ethnographic humanism which seeks to render culture and things comprehensible. [In this way, the two approaches can be seen as postmodernist vs. modernist].

Interacts With:
Seems to take a positive postmodern approach, without really explicitly talking about postmodernism. In this way, can be seen to interact with:
Jameson (pomo negative), Koolhaas (pomo positive), Venturi and Brown (pomo positive), Baudriliard (pomo negative, bordering on pomo neutral)