Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 13:42:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Global Monoculture


On Fri, 2 Jan 1998, Eric Yost wrote:

> I'm looking for a clearer distinction between the ground covered by
> cultural anthropology and cultural studies.  From what I've read so far, it
> seems to consist in the recognition that the "participant/observer method"
> of cultural anthropology is laden with so much ideological baggage it
> cannot float.

Actually, this has already happened within anthropology. But efforts to
let "primitive" peoples speak for themselves, or to adopt their cultural
perspectives have also proved equally suspect.

  Yet, methinks, if that method is bogus, from what stance
> does one write culture studies? It's like Nietzsche's critique (in Twilight
> of the Idols) of those who assert "the value of life" -- from what vantage
> point do they survey all of life to be qualified to sum its "value"?

What is interesting about the CS project is that it strives to look
not only at "Other" cultures in ethnographic terms, but also our own.
This means looking at how we ourselves are trained and examining our
critical methodologies and academic disciplines as themselves "cultural 
artifacts" of a sort.  

One consequence of this is that the CS folks I know don't presume to be
able "to survey all of life." With Nietzsche, they recognize the problem
of grounding, and the social/politcal struggle over grounds.  and they
adopt his "perspectivism."   At this point in the 20th century, it is
a bit difficult to believe that when one leaves behind an old approach
to culture for a newer, one has really left it all behind, or
simply resolved the problems which it couldn't manage.  Still, one
tries to recognize what has not worked, solve problems, etc.  And one
does not have to suppose that to take a stand on methodological or
political issues is automatically to claim a transcendent ground.
(Nietzsche would certainly understand this.)

The limitations of social science methodology, along with the
recognition that those who study culture also cannot do without it, 
has generated much interest in interdisciplinary approaches
and the use of multiple methodologies (think here of the Radway and
Horton texts I discussed in a recent post.)  One gets what one can
from straight social science approaches, but, critical of how their
methodology often obscures the object it constructs for the social
scientific gaze, one strives to integrate SS with other approaches
(e.g., literary criticism) which demand more empathy with and respect
for the object and the subjectivity of those who constructed it.

Thus one can see the rise of CS as one more attempt to resolve the
tension between "Verstehen" and "Erklaeren"--but with the extra 
problem of seeing this opposition itself as a cultural artifact,
sometimes, at least.

hh



     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---