The World of Sorrows

 

            So it began. Johnny struggled to rid the image that had haunted him since early breakfast. But no matter how hard he tried to shake the image from his mind. To set it aside. To displace the inexplicable unknown that could not be reasoned, he did not how to deny what Two Crows knew or with any certainty did not know.

            He had failed to realize his vision. All too late the image of denial haunted his consciousness; his subconscious; his primordial id; staring back at him wanting explanation and rationality. It did not want to be set aside; or, to be displaced. It wanted validation. It wanted narration. It wanted to be deployed; redeployed over and over again.

            The image that spirited Johnny’s mind and it wanted to be born into culture. To spread like a virus—and infect the world. It wanted to take hold and reveal itself to the world, but it needed Johnny to speak it into reality…

* * *

            Any student of psychology, anthropology, or science fiction or otherwise understands that reality cannot be viewed until it has been objectified—or at least observed. In the sense that, until it is shared with another, the other’s view of their world is internalized, private and unspoken. If the perception of another, if vivid enough, will find a place, a name, and at the least, acknowledgement. How it spreads beyond textual and contextual impression is dependent upon the receiver perception of the other and their acceptance of what has been transmitted to create culture.

            Culture has a purpose, whether viewed with a capital “C,” or small “c”; its purpose is to transmit the values, the ideals, and ideologies of the hegemony. And, for our children, according to Naomi Quinn (2005), “Culture has everywhere evolved to enhance the child’s brain’s capacity to learn (480).” In essence, culture was and is the arbiter of humanity’s text, in which the narration of community was and is told writ-large to individuals small and large over and over again in order to insure its world was and is created and its place was and is maintained: temporally, spatially, and geographically.

            Thus, for this author, the science fiction genre was and is one of the vehicles that allows for culture to be maintained with a critical eye; and, through the examination of science fiction, the taboos, the extremes, the narrows, and the mainstream can be parsed, separated, and atomized for individual absorption. A unity, some claim to be, hegemonic and dichotomous in its presentations of the medias: writing, television, and oration.

            Although there are the other genres, other fictive writings, television shows, and orations that allow creation of alternative worlds, such as murder mysteries, romance novels, and non-fiction historical writings, science fiction can examine these worlds as well, and in turn, propagate the social narratives of the hegemony and the oppressed.  In the sense of Bourdieu’s “creative structure”, science fiction sets aside the norm, and enables the formation of alternative possibilities that can be deconstructed away from the “habitus” of socialization and idealized predispositions. Moreover, science fiction is a “configuration” (Ruth Benedict, 1932) of constructs of culture and cultures that can impart the ideals of identity, but also refute the fallacy of such folly. It is psychological. It is imbues the human condition; the evolution of the human spirit. It is science fiction, the Rorschach test of the Western-American culture set; symbolically, imaginatively, and to some degree, interpretively gives insight to the cultural milieu that makes up the Western thinking. From the psychological anthropology perspective, science fiction mental make up encounters the multi-various montage of cultural “somatic” meanings of diversity.  In essence, science fiction whether locked in a utopia or in its counter-opposite, dystopia setting, becomes the materialist’s structuralized perspective; and is constructed in the form of vilification of the “modes of production” whether it is technological or post-apocalyptical viewpoint.

            For instance, in the Mad Max series of movies, the over arching hegemony had been destroyed in a post-apocalyptic event, and the corruptive feudal states had replaced the once over burdened populace of consumption with fear and scarcity. In this world, it was the over consumption of goods and the means of production that brought down civilization and entombed humanity into a “new dark ages”; where knowledge and technology are in the “network” (Blanton et. al., 1996) of a few individuals restricting access and control of resource materials.

            By network, I mean to say that power is perceived as coming from the top down. In essence, a centralized authority in which the resources are limited to an individual or within a constructed “network” accessible only to a few (Blanton et. al., 1996). The Mad Max movies replay these themes repeatedly in order to create a world of despair and hopelessness in order to create the mythic hero who will save the downtrodden. He is the anti-hero, fights against the establishment, the feudal states that is, in order to bring a better day and a better world to those that have lost their way.

            The Mad Max movies are a simulated world, a possibility, in that it can be born into reality, if we let our guard fall. As a movie, it can be physically seen, observed in the physical world of senses, with the exception of smell, unless of course one considers the smells of the movie theatre (popcorn, soda, and candy). But I stray, the purpose of movies, television, books, radio, or any media for that matter, including in one’s head, is to realize the potentiality[1] of one’s vision imparted onto the physical world.

            In terms of the psychological, the media[2] in which this potentiality is formed has left us pondering of whether they are prescriptive or descriptive for the narration of transmission (or deployment). In other words, how does culture permeates itself into the individual in order to shape the reality that is perceived? A possible source to answering this question can be found, in part, and in this author’s view, in the science fiction genre.        

            A genre, which at times, that can be very insightful as well as outright over the top fantastical. The many worlds that can be created in science fiction are first created in the simulation of a person’s mind, at one point displaced (set aside), validated, narrated, and then deployed into and onto reality. It is at this point, the question comes into play, of whether the projection from within the person is anew, or an instance of recapitulation of the culture is writ-large; in most cases, it is the latter, instead of the former.

This recapitulation of culture is revitalized in which the reforms the values, the ideals, and overarching beliefs that entwine the individual and culture are inexorably linked. Looking from the many perspectives of psychological anthropology, from Sapir’s “Two Crows” to Kroeber’s “super organic” to Levi-Strauss’s linguistic structural model, one has to wonder, if anthropology fully understands the extrasomatic nature of humans.  Oh, to be sure anthropology may have coined the term “extrasomatic” to indicate humanity’s adaptability, but the arguments of understanding human nature’s variability in projecting itself onto reality, at best, is quixotic. I believe that mental creation of reality that humans project are simulated worlds, which are combined in the form of associations, or put properly, in the form of the social consciousness becoming the collective; or, as some see it, the super organic (Kroeber, 1917).

                                                            * * *   

Johnny speaks the horror’s name. A world of uncertainty forms. Its foundation is set in fear and emotionalism in doubt to the skies of Sorrows. A place that had become known for its melancholy citizens and despairing souls, where Johnny’s heart sank deeper into his chest and his mind raced as he regretted for speaking its name. Now it was born into the world, waiting for a carrier to breed its discontent. It was Johnny’s culture, his moment of subversion, and his chance to renew the world in the image and name of the horror he had spoken.

He asked himself, what would he do if it took hold? His friend Lane, a soul, who had lost his way since birth, had heard him say the horror’s name—and recoiled in disgust. What had made him say such a thing? Had Johnny lost his mind? Who was he to counter the world before him? Lane ran away. Johnny looked desperate as his friend’s rejection broke his mettle, but he knew he had to tell others and why he had spoken it. He had to tell the horror’s name and the story of why it came to him. He was compelled, if not obsessively, he certainly was a bit overly determined. But his friends shook their heads in disgust, sympathy, or derided him for even talking about the story over and over again.

Nonetheless, it came to pass, that Johnny’s horror’s name was repeated. Like a wildfire, which has its own beauty, consumed and burned those who heard its name and enveloped them into something anew and ineffable. Even more, like a virus, the horror’s name attached itself throughout the small community of Sorrows. It reshaped the landscape—and its form shined light onto darkness that been Johnny’s world.

The Sorrows had always been a place of darkness—dank and foreboding. Like Sodom and Gomorrah Death’s odor filled the nostrils, and the people faces mirrored each of their personal hell, their madness, and their bitterness. Their very foundations were grounded in light and shadows, which danced off the walls of the city—and they gave it a name—Chiaroscuro. The darkness of shadows inter-played the desperation of the Sorrows’ geist, never quite fomenting into physicality and translatable into perceptual reality. Johnny’s specter left the local folk psychology into disarray, the foundation of the community was disassembling, crumbling, disintegrating and transforming the very culture that embodied the darkness…

                                                            * * *

Science Fiction Thinking

I have repeatedly, in various ways, implied, inferred, indirectly, and directly to state that science fiction not only mirrors one’s culture, but also the individual’s view of the world. It is these mental capacities that shape the reality of potentiality. But, in addition of all this, science fiction potentiality has also created a cultural narrative and ideology of its own.

In a paper by Darko Suvin (1972), he says that, “SF is, then a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment (p. 375).” In other words, science fiction allows for the potential, a possibility, a placement, if you will, for alternate viewpoints to best into a simulated “cognitive” world. Thus, science fiction allows for the estrangement (Suvin, 1972:374-375), and “sees the norms of any age, including emphatically its own, as unique changeable, and therefore subject to a cognitive glance.”

It is then, the conflation of cognition (which other vehicles and methodologies are capable of as well) with science fiction that sets it apart from other vehicles, this genre gives the permission of the authors, the viewers, and those outside of the genre to extrapolate their own interpretation, filter, if you will, in projecting their mental potentiality unto the sensory or physical world. This physical sense can be embodied within the mental construct as well as the projective construct in how the world view can be seen in the cultural and individual perspective.

This is what I mean, in a paper by William R. Bascom, in 1953, that folklore and anthropology should be concomitant, in that they are both entwined and cannot be parsed or separated (pp. 283-290).  He says in discussing the positioning of folklore within anthropology, “Folklore, however, falls squarely within the fourth field, cultural anthropology, which is concerned with the study of the customs, traditions, and institutions of living peoples.” Essentially, folklore and anthropology are the individual narratives of a culture that illustrate the potentiality of not only redeploying those cognitive traditions that are seen from within and without, and whether emically or etically, but also can be demonstrated empirically in such vehicles as science fiction, as imparted by Suvin:

In the 20^th century, SF has moved into the sphere of anthropological and cosmological thought, becoming a diagnosis, a warning, a call to understanding and action, and—most important—a mapping of possible alternatives. This historical movement of SF can be envisaged as an enrichment of and shift from a basic direct or extr (a) polative model to an indirect or analogic model.

 

Therefore, science fiction can be used as an analogy, in which cultural norms, deviancy, taboos, or any other sub-categories that can be thought of, and in turn, examined. Suvin says that myth, fantasy, and fairy tales, however, should not be confused, he sees these as a disservice to science fiction—and is “creative suicide” (p. 375).

Suvin then believes that science fiction, and I tend to agree, is a cognitive exercise that is multi-vocal, multidimensional, multi-local, multi-reality, and multi-lingual in its expression of empirical knowledge and critical thought. In closing remarks of his poetics essay on science fiction Suvin says,

Significant modern SF, with deeper and more lasting sources of enjoyment, also presupposes more complex and wider cognitions: it discusses primarily the political, psychological, anthropological, use and effect of sciences, and philosophy of science, and the becoming or failure of new realities as a result of it (p 381) [Suvin’s emphasis].

 

Therefore, science fiction was and is a result from the Age of Enlightenment and a way for Western thought to express and extrapolate itself. Suvin continues, “Once the elastic criteria of literary structuring have been met, a cognitive—most cases strictly scientific—element becomes a measure of aesthetic quality, of the specific pleasure to be sought in SF [Suvin’s emphasis].” I see this structuring in the context of Bourdieu’s structuralizing structuring, in which, the contextual and textual perspectives are “capitalized” in socialized forms of culture or sub-cultures in providing an “educational tool” for critical thinking. Suvin eventually concludes,

Even more importantly, [science fiction] demands from the author and reader, teacher and critic, not merely specialized, quantified positivistic knowledge (scientia) but a social imagination whose quality, whose wisdom (sapientia), testifies to the maturity of his critical and creative thought (p 381).

 

It is this “critical and creative thought” that makes science fiction a functional feature for analogy and metaphor gives the individual and the “group social collective” dynamic to exploit the potentialities of one’s projective simulation onto the world.

* * *

            A new day had been borne unto the world of Sorrows. The horror’s name had brought a new way of thinking, a perspective, based on rationality, based on empirical data, based on observation, but also entangled with emotion. The shadows that once dance on the walls of the city, now illuminated the dark towers in their full decrepit display, the state of tattered pillar were rundown and in need of repair, walkways, thoroughfares, expressways had deteriorated beyond repair showed the city at its core being. The illumination from the horror’s name revealed the state of fear and foreboding that had reigned within Sorrows had imbued the citizenry with the smallness of spirit and of physical stature.

            The citizens of Sorrows saw themselves as they were: small minded, closed-off, fearful people who looked for the darkness as comfort food in order to maintain a life of scarcity. Never did they seek for abundance or happiness. They never knew such things were possible, but now, a light in which the horror’s name had born, had perfunctorily disrupted life. It shown their foibles, their failings, their discontent—their bitterness for existing—Johnny’s friends were changing. He saw things that he did not know were possible. He saw changes he had only seen in nightmares of possibilities. He had spoken it—and the world had changed before him. The horror’s epidemiology was a contagion that infused enthusiasms, possibilities, and potentialities. It was a disease that spread with a single word—and it was a contagion that made the opposite sex swoon. Words are like viruses Johnny soon realized, they either catch on, hold tight as they can, or they fail to take hold and are thwarted by the defenses of the other person. However, despite his fear, he told his world of the horror’s name. His validation, his story, his telling inspired him, compelled him to do it again and again; it became comfortable and rewarding.

***

Science Fiction and Gender

            Invariably, when one thinks of science fiction genre, an image of a geeky ten year old boy with acne and glasses, reading a novel with giant robot on the cover with a blonde young woman scantily clad in the arms of the robot, screaming her head off for somebody to rescue her. This is the stereotype that has been generated, and like a place name in Western Apache (Basso, 1995), the term science fiction generates an image, a history, and expectation from the receiver of the message—and certain beliefs that in general—science fiction has primarily been written by men. This is not the case, however; one of the first novels, in the fantastic genre was written by woman, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.

            Her novel has been often the standard bearer of what a “critical cognitive” extrapolation of the fantastic should be, an enough of an estrangement to take one in the potentialities of natural science into the area of the unusual, but not so fantastic that it is rejected—and considered out of place. This is how science fiction entangles the reader, and why Darko Suvin rejects fantasy as being part of the genre. He says of fantasy,

A genre committed to the interposition of anti-cognitive laws into the empirical environment… [in] that fantasy is significant insofar as it is impure and fails to establish a super-ordinated maleficent world of its own, causing a grotesque tension between arbitrary supernatural phenomena and the empirical norms they infiltrate  (p 375)…

 

In other words, if the simulated world is too fantastic, it can be rejected out of hand as a farce. A world that is too improbable to be created in reality has no basis to be simulated, although it can be displayed in the form of fiction, television, and movies. But to return to point, Mary Shelley setting the standard for the science fictive propelled the simulated worlds into a “structuralizing structure” (Bourdieu) which enabled the vehicle for cultural examination.

            It is unfortunate, however, that so few women, until recently, have written in the genre of science fiction. This is due, in part, of the perception of the structuralized stereotypes of who reads the fantastic novels, and in part, of who were in the position of power in deploying the simulated worlds. Granted, in the beginning, there were more than capable women writing for the start-ups of science fiction magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Quarterly. These women not only wrote what has often been associated with female writers, the utopian future models, but also compelling space operas (Donawerth, 1990).

Authors such as Minna Irving, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Clare Winger Harris were all early contributors to the genre, but sexism often held these women back in making deeper contributions. Harris once quoted her editor, Hugo Gernsback, as saying that “as a rule, women do not make good scientification [sic] writers, because their education and general tendencies in scientific matters are usually limited” (Donawerth, 1990:39). The belief back then was that, when women names appeared on the bylines of stories that it “lowered sales to adolescent males” (ibid, 40). It was not really until the 1960s when women came back into the fold of the genre in full force with authors such as Ursula K. Le Guins, whose father was anthropologist A. L. Kroeber, and wrote such classics as Lathe of Heaven and Left Hand of Darkness.

What is fascinating is that science fiction and anthropology took similar parallel courses, in the matter of how women influenced their particular fields; Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were early contributors to the study of the human cultural conditions. Both of these women contributed heavily in establishing the foundations of anthropology, Ruth Benedict in setting up the early school of culture and personality and Margaret Mead in providing the structure for cross cultural comparative analysis. And, not unlike science fiction, these alternative views of the world provided by anthropology and public access to those worlds, allowed for the human imagination to recreate those worlds within their minds.

In her paper, Jane Donawerth makes the case for the continual encouragement for women to be involved in not only the genre of science fiction (heretofore referred to as the genre), but also in the field of science as well. By involving and encouraging women to write science fiction, and seeing the genre being written by women, she says “Using women writers in a science fiction unit also allows female students (not just males) to see themselves as potential writers.” Thus, giving a place at the table for the other to be represented in their world view, instead of being invisible[3] they can be part of the simulated world as an “active agent.” Donawerth continues,

Women’s experiences in our culture naturally produce different emphases in their writing. Teaching science fiction by women writers will add to discussions not only the possibilities of women becoming scientists but also the awareness of important contemporary issues, such as changes in gender roles, alternative methods of childcare, and the importance of empathy and communication, rather than aggression, for resolving problems (p 41).

 

Therefore, from Donawerth’s perspective then, the mental construct of the genre enables the potentialities of feminine point of view to be brought into simulation; and, this is in turn, allows for, as Dan Sperber (1984) may put forth, a kind of “epidemiological representation” that could and has become viral within the attitude of the hegemonic culture. Essentially, a feminine perspective becomes part of the psychological makeup that may have been simply ignored or discounted as unimportant to the contribution of the culture writ-large, except for limited and assigned “representations” or conceived “roles.”

Tying all this altogether, the genre, anthropology, Sperber and Donawerth, and the representation of feminism being more active, is another illustrative point of how science fiction can examine culture—and be adaptive to a simulation or projection of observed reality.

***

The sun came up. Its light illuminated a new world. The people of the Sorrows had been transmogrified into something that they thought that could never happen. They now knew different. Heads were held high, eyes shined with life, and Death’s odor had dissipated. The world had changed—and Johnny’s words—his horror’s name had become the representation of choice. The world changed once it had been taken, transmitted into the minds of those who had feared it, its power had been subversive, its truth had been enlightened, and its vision undeterred. The name that had found a place—a moniker that enveloped change—and brought the potentiality of acceptance—the word that feared if spoken aloud—and referred to as the horror—was the word to be known as Hope. The world of Sorrows changed its name—to the Land of Reveries.

***

Science fiction, Folk Tales, Emotions

            Early in anthropology, one of the examining questions,was the quality of human intelligence the same among “different races,” or “ethnic groups.” Franz Boas, considered the father of anthropology, provided his answer in a paper, “The Mind of Primitive Man”; he says

… If we compare civilized people of any race with uncivilized people of the same race, we do not find any anatomical differences which justify us in assuming any fundamental differences in mental constitution… [And] when we consider the same question from a purely psychological point of view, we recognize that one of the most fundamental traits which distinguish the human mind from the animal mind is common to all races. It is doubtful if any animal us able to form an abstract conception such as that of number, or any conception of the abstract relations of phenomena. We sfind that this is done by all races of man (p 3-4)…

 

I reference Boas, by way of introduction, to set the stage, if you will, to illustrate a point in regards to how attitudes change over time. In this paper he wants to make the case that the assumptions about race are incorrect; and, that more information is needed to either refute or support certain cultural assumptions that were prevalent in his era, circa 1901, in regards to human development as a species. But this paper also has an interpretation of folklore which I find useful, Boas says

When we define as folk-lore the total mass of traditional matter present in the mind of a given time, we recognize that this matter must influence the opinions and activities of the people more or less according to its quantitative and qualitative value, and also that the actions of each individual must be influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the mass of traditional material present to his [or her] mind (p 3).

 

In other words, folklore is a vehicle, similar to the genre, in which cultural (traditional) matters are transmitted to the individual as well as the group. In the Western cultural mind set, folklore is used to establish values, ideals, beliefs, and emotions in order to facilitate boundaries for group and individual behavior, but one of the main differences between folklore and science fiction is that while both do and can retransmit the cultural messages, folklore is the celebration of the past—look backwards in time and can stagnate the “evolution” of culture. In the case of science fiction, it looks forward and sets itself aside into the future, giving the potentiality of resolution or correction within the extrapolation of the simulated world.

            Folklore then is a vehicle that imbues cultural transmissions from without to be “embodied” within the individual and reformed, later to be deployed back into the culture writ-large. The embodied deployment passes on the emotional association of what has been imbued from without, therefore creating a didactic relationship with the sensory environment[4] from outside the personal “self.” This embodiment of one’s environment with the later redeployment creates what Bourdieu refers to as “habitus” entangling the folkloric tradition in the conditioning of the person, but also the aspect of the “self.” This is the other aspect of folklore, the psychological conditioning of the individual nuances of the person’s engagement in relation to one’s cultural transmissions socialization are realized.

            This socialization in aspect of habitus, embodiment, and physical conditioning are part of the mental potentialities of the person and the identity of the “self.” And in turn, the creations of the cultural and individual narrative of the folklore are diffused throughout the body and mind of the society. From a cross-cultural perspective it could be argued that folklore, the human narrative, is the one universal that can be consistently illustrated as a necessity for the human agent. As Michelle Scalise Sugiyama puts it,

            World folklore is also strikingly consistent in its subject matter. Studies of worldwide variants of particular folktales (e. g. ‘Cinderella’) and the classification of folktales by plot units (i.e. ‘motif’) show that certain topics recur across widely divergent cultures: cosmology, topography, animal characteristics and behavior, birth and death, and a wide array of topics that may be loosely categorized as ‘human social behavior’—for example, sex, marriage, religion, prohibitions, punishments, deceptions, and violence. In sum, all peoples tell stories, and the stories of all people exhibit similar concerns (p 235).

 

 

Those concerns being the basic travails and trails of life, and the interaction of the other, in telling our narrative of what we perceive to be true of our human experience within our surrounding environment and of others.  This is how the genre interconnects Western culture set attitudes in modernity, in that science fiction is the modern expression of the storytelling narrative and provides a vehicle in which social mores can be vetted in totality.

            In the totality of the storytelling narratives, there can be certainty that these are interactive in creating emotions within active participants (that being the reader, the listener, or the viewer). However, in the science fiction narrative, emotion is often portrayed as lacking, or better put, cold. Catherine Lutz says,

Science-fiction films and novels often present threatening aliens as characterized by lack of emotion. The Body Snatchers, extraterrestrials take over human bodies, leaving their victims altered in only one fundamental way—they cannot feel. The ‘cold fish’ and the ‘cold hearted’ are cultural types whose most important failing is a lack of warmth. A metaphor for emotionality, warmth is generated by action and feeling. The warm, live person has the heat of emotions; the cold, dead one feel nothing on either side of the grave (p 57).

 

In essence, the science fiction narrative is often portrayed as being technical, mechanical, cold, sterile, and emotionless. This is due, in part, to the fact science fiction is seen as a rational, logical, empiric system, and perceived to be extension of the natural sciences. But, this is counter to what narratives are suppose to be, they are, if anything, to elicit a particular emotion and create a response for one to take action. Science fiction then, takes on the other roll of the storytelling narrative, that is, to be instructive, a teaching tool for the perceived future, in which, the participant (the observer) is learning something of value that can be later applied into action; or, to be used as a cognitive moment of recognition for later formulation of potential reasoning, an adaptive strategy for modifying behavior or philosophy.

 Philosophy and Cultural Myths

 

            One of the more fascinating aspects of science fiction is how it is situated as a “touchstone” in many areas of Western thought. How science fiction is used to convey not only the moral lessons for the future, but also of the past. Moreover, science fiction is rooted in the foundation concepts of the Enlightenment, meaning that it is used often to explore the human relationship, in regards to potentiality and the enlightened spirit, if you will excuse the metaphor. In fact, science fiction, in the Western tradition, is another form of an explanatory and exploratory metaphor, in which the cultural milieu can be observed, explained, and examined with rational, logistical, and logical perspectives.

            For instance, a book edited by Jason T. Eberl, Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, takes a critical analysis of the 21^st century version of the television show that is currently running on a cable channel, known of as, of all things, the Sci-fi Channel, which runs on a weekly basis. Battlestar Galactica, the actual name of the show, is actually a remake of an older television show of the same name, in the late 1970s. The 21^st century version of Battlestar Galactica, of course, has been updated, and reset to the latest cultural and geopolitics of today. What is most interesting is how the television series seems to go out of its way to challenge the status quo and the cultural hegemony.

            In the original series of the 1970s, there were two primary metaphors being put on display, the geopolitics of the cold war between Russia, China, and the West, such as the United States and Europe, and the technological, the machine—cyborg—relationship between humanity and the human condition. These themes have somewhat changed geopolitically, of course, but the machine—cyborg—human relationship and human condition remains in the 21^st century version. This aspect of the show, to keep it rooted in the human condition, was not only a necessity but also has to be grounded in the function of the narrative. In so being that, the storytelling narrative, whether it is  with the oral tradition or told in the fashion of a scientific fantasy, must be embodied within the human form of expression in order to be diffused or deployed to the larger cultural mores of the group or individual agents. Or, put simply, it is the necessary psychological component, the human “self,” that must always be expressed and essential for the creation of new simulated worlds.

            In an essay by Robert Sharp, “When Machines Get Souls: Nietzsche on the Cylon Uprising,” in the show, Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons are machine robots who have been installed with an artificial intelligence program, and eventually rise up against their human masters. Sharp begins the essay with the statement, “Picture yourself as a slave” (2008, 15). This is to draw you into his hypothetical world and provide a basis, a launching point, in garnering a perspective that a machine can be human too. Throughout the essay he uses a variety of situations, where he discourses on the morality of slavery, argues for sentient beings and their rights, and implies whether sentient being’s behavior can create a spiritual soul, and ask by inference does self-awareness come from only human beings? This question has all kinds of implications in the realm of science fiction, from cloning to artificially intelligent machinery, then finally the essay explores the Cylons from the perspective of Nietzsche’s grand discussion in regards to how slavery’s morality interplays with the Cylons, the machines, having a “soul” and believing in a god—a single god, “the one true God,” and does a comparison of the Jews exodus, and wandering through the desert for 40 years, and only to return for vengeance against your enslavers—humanity. Sharp draws reference of several episodes that have been aired to build his case.

            Another essay by the editor Jason T. Eberl, and his wife Jennifer A. Vines, “I Am an Instrument of God”: Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning, examines the nature of belief, and how humans, and also in this case, Cylons, the machines, create a world of meaning through belief, and through the rationality of the empirical—what can I prove? Again, the authors use several episodes to lay the foundation in regards to how the show philosophically scrutinizes the ideology of faith, beliefs, and meaning. This science fiction episodic series tries to extrapolate why humans feel the need to create something greater than themselves—a structure or an agency—that has to be not themselves, but something that has a narrative meaning and morality that imparts the values or ideals to be imbued, instilled to the individual and extended into the culture for a code of conduct. They end the essay with the following,

The recognition that human beings are essentially rational animals motivates many religious believers to engage in secular, and not merely faith-based, discourse. At the same time, however, religious believers hold that there are limits to pure rational inquiry, and so faith must take over at those junctures to further our knowledge.

 

Hence, the litmus test for the validity of religious beliefs may be, as Roslin asserts, whether they ‘hold real-world relevance’ (‘Lay Down Your Burden, Part 2’). To the degree that religious believers acknowledge rational, scientific inquiry can deliver to answer some of  the ultimate questions of human concern, the ground is fertile for mutually respectable and fruitful dialogue as humanity continues its ‘lonely question’  on this ‘shining planet, known as Earth’ (p 167).

 

On the contrary, the importance of meaning and any belief is that, what is important for the human condition is that we find it necessary to justify our existence. To look for the unattainable, and search for meaning in the ineffable questions of, why are we here? What matters most is the journey and the story we create for ourselves along the way; the creation of the stories we bring to the observable world.

Orientation

A paper by David Samuels, “These Are the Stories That Dogs Tell”: Discourses of Identity and Difference in Ethnography and Science Fiction, discourses on the similarity of ethnography and science fiction. He lays out the narrative nature of both anthropology and science fiction illustrating their psychological tools in establishing rapport with the reader in a description of the Other from another culture or another world. He says of anthropology and science fiction,

In both genres, the alien is often constructed along fairly conventional lines of Western psychologism. It is the revelation of ‘underlying psychology’ that helps the reader identity with the alien subject in both ethnography and science fiction, by constituting a space of common universal humanity within, and simultaneous with, the constitution of alienation. By this orchestration of the reader’s desire, the manipulation of the form and placement of such psychological revelations, the author can make the reader feel greater or lesser identification with the other (p 97).

Samuels quotes Daniel Cottom in referring to these constructions as enchantments; some refer to them as estrangements (Suvin, 1972), while still others may refer to it as form of displacement (Stewart, 2006, unpublished). No matter how they are referred to, these constructions allow for the reader to be absorbed into the world of ethnography or science fiction wielding their “literary power” (Samuels, 1996).

            David Samuels negotiates through several ethnographies to demonstrate how ethnography and science fiction use “underlying psychology” to create the simulated textual worlds to engage the reader. Through identification and alienation, and the examination of the “self”, he refers to this as Western cultural poetics, extrapolating both of the genres in trying to discern their commonalities. He then speaks to how each deals with Otherness and how science fiction conveys “cultural poetics” in revealing “underlying psychology motivations.” He uses one of the gold standards of science fiction, Star Trek, a television series of the late 1960s, as way to promulgate his theory. One of the main characters, Mr. Spock, who is half-Vulcan, and half-human, is used as the example of identification and alienation (Samuels, 1996:98).

            The character of Mr. Spock is used as a metaphor of the Other along with him being a juxtaposition of emotion and rationality. In addition, the series itself interplays the theme of “us versus “them” to communicate how the alien cultures behave differently. He then puts forward the argument for naturalization he says, “Science fiction and ethnography, as modern discourses, share common narrative techniques and practices in the naturalization [process] … in order to produce empathy for the other (p 101).”

David Samuels further elaborates the textual construction of both genres in how they orientate the viewer/reader in relation to the other. He says of this,

To put it reductively for a moment, it could be said that science is more interested in disorientation, and ethnography reorientation, of the reader. That is, science fiction is more comfortable with presenting to the reader a disorienting lived enactment of a different social formation. Ethnography, other the hand, tend to be uncomfortable, and to pull back quickly disorienting move, inserting the distance of an explicitly reorienting explanation. Ethnographic writing sometimes falls back on a sort of covert prestige adhering to the ability to present an authoritative and coherent of the other (p 102-103).

Thus, science fiction and ethnography gives us a sense of orientation, one from examining the spatial anomalies of disorientation, and other through the structure of agency of “authority and coherency.” In anthropology then, psychological motivation is to recapitulate the familiar and co-opt the message of the hegemony of their own cultural biases. Understand I am not inferring that the modern anthropologists are ethnocentric, but I am implicating them, at times, as being restricted to their own cultural lens of academic authority of prestige.

            With that stated, the ethnography and science fiction, from the Western construct can demonstrate, cross culturally, that humans need to tell stories, and that this need is innate, if not entwined with our human evolution development. Going back to the paper of Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, in which she lays out the potentialities of the evolutionary narrative, she states “Indeed, a growing number of evolution-minded anthropologists and psychologists have reached the conclusion that many patterned cultural means of exchanging information relevant to the pursuit of fitness in local habitats (p 238).”[5] In other words, the construction of the narrative has been born into our genes, if you will, and science fiction and ethnography provides and fills the psychological need in understanding those things that are different from us.

Final Thought

            Woven into my paper was a short story, a narrative of a community, that let fear and hopelessness rule their psychological nature and the creation of their world. I attempted to illustrate in my short story, how the textual construction of narration can be simulated within the minds of you, the reader, and thus, are observable—and therefore objectified. It is this objectification, in which the narrative storytelling begins, because it is set aside, at first, within the individual’s mind, validated, narrated with the person’s filters and interpretations from personal experiences and enculturation, and then redeployed to the next observer for objectification. My short story was to illustrate this to you, the reader, how narration can be the creator of worlds, and new personal experiences within the individual—and redeployed those experiences into the culture writ-large. Science fiction and anthropology, through ethnography, can create, do, and promote the vision of new worlds—and hopefully bring a better understanding of the world we all live in.

                                                                        Bibliography

 

Bascom, William R.

1953 Folklore and Anthropology, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 66, No. 262 (Oct-Dec., 1953), pp. 283-290.

 

Basso, Keith H.

 

            1995 Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque (1995).

 

Blanton, Richard E.; Feinman, Gary M.; Kowelewski, Stephen A.; Peregrine, Peter N.

 

            1996 A Dual-Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 1-14.

 

Boas, Franz

1901 The Mind of Primitive Man, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 14, No. 52 (Jan.- Mar., 1901), pp. 1-11.

 

Donawerth, Jane

 

1990 Teaching Science Fiction by Women, The English Journal, Vol. 79, No. 3 (Mar., 1990), pp. 39-46.

 

Eberl, Jason T.

 

2008 Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Knowledge Begins Out There, Blackwell Publishing, edited by Jason T. Eberl, 2008: Chelsea, MI.

 

Kroeber, A. L.

 

1917 The Super Organic, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun., 1917), pp 163-213.

 

Lutz, Catherine

 

1998 Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll & Their Challenge to Western Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1998: London

 

 

 

 

 

Samuels, David

 

1996 “These Are the Stories the Dogs Tell”; Discourse of Identity and Difference in Ethnography and Science Fiction, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 88-118.

 

 

Sperber, Dan

 

1984 Anthropological and Psychology Towards an Epidemiology Representation, Man (N. S.), Vol. 20, pp. 73-89.

 

Stewart, Gregory K.

 

2006 Just Another Day in Paradise in Day: Science Fiction America—The Signs and Symbols of the American Life Mythology, editor J. David Eller, Ph. D.,  (unpublished).

 

Sugiyama, Michelle Scalise

 

            2001 Narrative theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters, Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 25 (2001), pp 233-250.

                                                           

Suvin, Darko

            1972 On the Poetics of the Science, College English, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Dec., 1972), pp. 372-382.

 

 

I have been trying to stay rather neutral to the run-up to Iowa caucuses, but the vitriol of the past few weeks has left me rather on “edge.” Essentially, the rhetoric of who most qualified and most experienced has been lost on me for quite a while. Simply, because none of them other than Bill Richardson, on the democratic side, has any experience of being the executive and having foreign policy knowledge.  On the republican side, the candidates are trying to outdo “Bush” on policy, Rudy Giuliani every other word, practically, is in regards to 9/11, while Mitt Romney tries to deflect the arbiters of hate regarding his religion.

Nevertheless, the theatrics of politics has propelled the obfuscation of meaningless dribble of he said, and now, she said in who is best qualified for the presidency. Admittedly, experience is a factor, but so is character, and authenticity. Therefore, the question becomes, how do we evaluate the next president of the United States of America?

In the age of political spin, commercialization, and propaganda, the imagery of the heir apparent for the presidency, of the greatest democracy on the planet, has already wore hard on the electorate, but it also has been apparent for quite a while that the voting public has no true idea of who their candidates are; or, for that matter know themselves. This is what I mean. In a recent article by George Will (link here), allays the myth by Shelby Steele that, although Barack Obama may be a viable black candidate, he cannot win because he has not paid certain “umbrage” to the old school guard, meaning black “power brokers” and tribute to the politicos of the democratic party.

In other words, he has to pay “dues” or “tribute” to the cronyism of the party “power elite.” Furthermore, since Barack Obama is not displaying the angst of the downtrodden black man, who should be railing against the injustice of black disenfranchisement, he is not “black enough” to radiate the emotional desperation of the oppressed minority. Essentially, he is not blaming the “white man” for all his woes. Shocking! This is unacceptable to many of the old guard, who wish to continue to tether the transgressions of blame to the past failures of the black community, in lieu of propelling itself with the tools of empowerment both economically and educationally.

Instead of blaming, Barack Obama message is that of, transcendence. In so being that, from a literature perspective, he is the Horatio Alger story. The narrative of a hard working individual, trying pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and taking on the everyday challenges of life, and moving upwardly with one’s: intelligence, merit, and ambition, has reminded Americans of its greatest mythos of hope. The American Dream is attainable.

Barack Obama has shown the youth and the 13^th generation (under 50) of America that they can make a difference. He has shown that his message of change and hope and that America has moved beyond the trivialities of race and is maturing beyond its adolescence into adulthood.  Shelby Steele’s condemnation of Barack Obama shows the desperation of the old guard trying to hang onto its power and credibility through the dissemination of angst, bitterness, and victimization. Instead of empowerment, they (the old guard) cultivate fatalism. The message of Obama is of empowerment, hope, and change.

This message to the electorate transcends the typical convention of the political pessimism, it is inspirational, and fortifies the words of Martin Luther King of “not judging a person by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.” The Iowa electorate divisively showed that they were examining qualities of the candidate, not the color of their skin. Now, in New Hampshire, the independent minded citizenry, whose state motto is, “Live Free or Die,” are about to vote—and Obama’s message seems to be resonating: authenticity, hope, unity, which transcends, reflects, and reaffirms the beacon of liberty that so proudly became the American ethos.

If the American public chooses to elect Barack Obama to the presidency, it will unbound America from its history of the status quo and conventional politics, which resides in fear and distrust, into a nation of hope and unity, healing the wounds of divisiveness. Obama’s message for the Western-American culture set represents a maturation and infusion of youthful energy with the wisdom of knowing that without hope and change prosperity and equality cannot be achieved.

Editor’s note: This is my final paper for my Foundation of Cultural Anthropology. It has been revised from its final version given to the professor, I would to thank her for her input and comments.

I have a confession. I have been stuck for over three weeks in how to describe how anthropology plays a role as an “intellectual discipline.” How do I convey the role that anthropology plays through the “power and knowledge”  of institutions, such as Marxism, Modernism, Colonialism, Capitalism[1], and every other neo or post “ism” of the last 150 years or so. Of course, I can bind the ties of such abstraction of thought through the eyes of its advocates, such as Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Taussig, Renalto Rosado, Roy D’Andrade, and Sandra Bartky. I regurgitate their essence of meaning and thought into some form of coherency, and only to have it dismantled by the critics of agency and habitus (Bourdieu). In other words, to have the signs and symbols re-evaluated and redefined into something other than what is stated or written.

 Nevertheless, I stand or sit here pondering what is the role of anthropology plays in co-opting, dispensing, as well articulating the use of power and knowledge, I am lost in a cliché that has been rattling in my brain for the past weeks—“Knowledge is Power .” A second cliché rattles the brain as well—“Ignorance is Bliss.” Further images come into my mind and I wonder what disconnection of thought they are related to.  The image of innocence rolls into another disconnected moment, as the thoughts of Adam and Eve and the “apple” from the “Tree of Knowledge” fill my brain.

 Another image fills my brain, an old science fiction television show known as “Star Trek,” where the captain of a starship has challenges the “status quo” by usurping authority of an artificially intelligent computer, which has its citizenry living in fear and ignorance. The images come by the dozen, one after the other. I then think of Benedict Anderson and what he calls “imagined communities.” I realize I am lost in a menagerie of images, cultural roots, and interconnected “disjunctive” moments (Appaduri, 1990), which ramble aimlessly in dark corners of my mind, only to have the light of revelation reveal their inconsistency. Even now, I have taken notice of the natural dualism of my words: light, dark and the continuity of what they mean and don’t mean. Ideas are new and fresh as I take an accounting of what it all means.

Clifford Geertz in the opening paragraph of the “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” with regards to new ideas, he says “Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual centerpoint around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built,” in other words, for me at this moment, power and knowledge can be found in the “imagined communities” of disconnection.  I am a product of my culture. I have multiple “imagined communities” that have ties that bind, which have been subverted, truncated, emboldened, and embraced all at once. One may ask, how does my diatribe of words put on display “power and knowledge” and the role of anthropology? I will answer in the form of a narrative.

The other day, I was listening to the radio, a late night talk show, where the discussion of politics of the day has been reified to a rare art form. The issue of the moment was the words of Andrew Young, a onetime UN ambassador, political activist, and “leader” of the black community whom proclaimed that “Barack Obama was too young to be president,” and he needed to “wait his turn.” Two points of order: Barack Obama is black and he is the same age as John F. Kennedy was when he was elected as president: 43. In the form of multiple “imagined communities,” Andrew Young’s comment had power and relevance. This is what I mean. In terms of equity and equality the United States has failed miserably when it comes to the election of women and minorities in the positions of “power.” One of the reasons for this is for the popular “stereotypical” image of how women and minorities are viewed within the American cultural construct.

For instance, one of those precepts is that certain dues have to be paid in order to be qualified—such as experience. How that experience is viewed is in the eye of the beholder, but there is another overlay for women and minorities. Some of it has to do with education, some of it has to do with political capital, and some of it has to do with perception of being “rational.” Meaning, women and minorities are viewed as “emotional” or, at the least, seen “unqualified logically,” because of lack of training due, in part, to social economic factors. Another aspect of the “imagined community” construct has to do with hegemonic culture perception of power in the American ethos sense (that those in power): they are to be white, male, heterosexual, and educated at a high power university—such as Harvard or Yale. Now tie in a Clifford Geertz’s view from “Thick Description,” the “winks, twitches” in which culture is on display, in so being that those who broker power and cultivate it, retain it through co-option and inversion, in which, the subversion of masses perceives that they are valued and heard by those in power.

 Instead, through the use of knowledge, history, and exploitation, those in power take advantage of those who are ignorant of the system and in the “archaeology of knowledge,” (Michel Foucault). In other words, by understanding the roots of the past and the origins of why things are and where they come from, one can control not only the access of knowledge, but the distribution of it. Therefore, by knowing the source of one’s past (having an “archaeology of knowledge” of where a movement or idea began) with overlaying habitus of its culture, its agency, and belief (Bourdieu), the “hegemonic culture” has a method to usurp the power from the minorities and women—by dividing and conquering. For instance, when obtaining small business loans, minorities and women are first divided into categories of sexes, race, and financial need. This sets one against the other for what is to believe to be “limited” resources. By setting up classifications, categories, and “tracking” areas of those who are considered disenfranchised by the “establishment” the perception of scarcity is ingrained within the “imagined communities” as being insufficient and therefore must be separated from one another in order to obtain resources. The scarcity of resources is thus used as a component to “institutionalize” certain beliefs, ideals, and stereotypes of oppression through the artifice of “imagined communities.”One instance of this institutionalized “imagined communities” can be seen with Andrew Young, to return to point, when he proclaims,  Barack Obama’s youth as a “problem” he was signaling to the black community, which has been stereotyped and disenfranchised, to believe that “there is one way” to obtain power, that dues have to be paid (by Obama) to the old guard (those who laid the path before Obama, whether they be black or white benefactors), and that certain “tributes” have to be paid to the “hegemonic” culture.  Young was “coding” to those within the “imagined community” that he is not “our man,” and he is not ready. Therefore, for Barack Obama, if the old guard of cronyism feels that one has not paid sufficient dues, then the passing of the torch is denied. This aspect of black culture, like a “wink or twitch” is in full display, but unwritten and unspoken. This is in turn leads to self-esteem being lowered, as an individual and as a group, because  one’s worth is tied to the acceptance to one’s community-at-large. In this case, an influential black leader, like Andrew Young, has denied acceptance of Barack Obama. Instead of empowering Senator Obama for achieving a worthy aspiration (but also inspirational) for the presidency, the former UN ambassador, undercuts his achievement. The “imagined community” of unspoken rules and rituals has, in effect, chastised Barack Obama for being “too” ambitious and not “knowing his place” is a layer that seems to run as a “core element” within the black community; and, once again disenfranchising an able, capable, and qualified individual by shaming him openly and publicly.

However, as I view my narrative and interpretation of my community, I realized I have performed an ethnographic moment, an emic view, of which I explained the “winks or twitch” that are on display within my community. My ethnographic interpretation is objectified by my willingness to examine what the “winks and twitches” mean, but to some, it is skewed, because of my “closeness” to the group and the community writ-large that I am observing. Therefore, “I cannot be objective,” because I am part of the group that I am reporting on. I am blinded by the machination of my community, its habitus, its rituals, and its performances that encapsulates my worldview.  I must be “told” from an outsider, who has “authoritative” etic view of omniscience of how my cultural insight is to be interpreted. Geertz says, however, “The ethnographer ‘inscribes’ social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, which exists in its inscription and can be reconsulted” (Geertz, 19). Thus, this is what I have done. What I have tried to do is to convey in my account, by writing it down, sprinkled with the language of the arbiter, the observer, and the authority of anthropology and to share a narrative of inferred “social consciousness” of the implicit that cannot necessarily be understood solely through interviews with informants and observations.

Essentially, I have tried to use the role of anthropology to be the empiric observer; looking objectively at the small morsels of culture that are obtained in my momentary representations of individual acts. However, I often observe the role that anthropology has sometime plays has not always been that of the sideline viewer, it has at times, been used to manipulate or assuage a population in order to facilitate a viewpoint of the hegemony. Often written in the language of the obscurity, only to be understood in pomp bombastic erudite triteness and in the language of the academic, therefore, anthropology role has been used to obfuscate the message of a culture or ethnicity or gender.

One example of this is Sandra Lee Bartky’s criticism of Michel Foucault for not speaking up for the oppression of women; she feels that he has undervalued one half of the population. She says:

Foucault’s account in Discipline and Punish of the disciplinary practices that produce the ‘docile bodies’ of modernity is a genuine tour de force, incorporating a rich theoretical account of the ways in which instrumental reason takes hold of the body with a mass of historical detail. But Foucault treats the body as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women bore the same relationship to the characteristic institution of modern life. Where is the account of the disciplinary practices that engender the ‘docile bodies’ of women, bodies more docile than the bodies of men? Women, like men, are subject to many of the same disciplinary practices Foucault describes (Bartky, p. 65)

In other words, why didn’t Foucault show the unjust treatment of women? Simple, he didn’t have to. It was understood implicitly that body has dualism of its own. Both male and female are entwined in its rationality and irrationality of emotion, of expression, and of affection for its genders. This is what I mean. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault is writing about a period of transition, when the power of religion was being transformed by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Individual feudal states, which partitioned territories, are becoming nation-states and centralizing. It is a time for defining national borders and individual boundaries; a time for not only redefining the hegemony, but the value of personhood and personhood itself. It is the establishment of the individual and the certitude of a new form of social contract. It is the establishment of “order” versus “chaos,” structure versus ambiguity, justice versus vengeance. This period of which Foucault writes is a response to “absolutism” and the demarcation of compassion. In a sense, it was a rebirthing of civility, a new age of rationality, a reawakening of the possible, and a period, if you will, of individual enlightenment. Foucault says:

This need for punishment without torture was first formulated as a cry from the heart or from an outraged nature. In the worst of murderers, there is one thing, at least, to be respected when one punishes: his ‘humanity.’ The day was to come, in the nineteenth century, when this ‘man’, discovered in the criminal, would become the target of penal intervention, the object that it claimed to correct and transform the domain of a whole series of ‘criminological’ sciences and strange ‘penitentiary’ practices. But, at the time of Enlightenment, it was not as a theme of positive knowledge that man was opposed to the barbarity of the public execution, but as a legal limit; the legitimate frontier of the power to punish.

In essence, when the only form of punishment is death even for the most trivial form of indiscretion, what is the point of civility? Foucault continues,

Not that which must be reached in order to alter him, but that which must be left intact in order to respect him. Noli me tangere. It marks the end of the sovereign’s vengeance [my emphasis]. The ‘man’ the reformers set up against the despotism of the scaffold has become a ‘man-measure’: not of things, but of power.

Thus, the authority of punishment has been taken away from the individual despot, but given to the state, which is made of its people, and the redefining of the “social contract” is determinate upon the supplication of its citizenry and how they define themselves as a people by the “rule of law.” Foucault does not have to pay tribute to the women he already has in the voice vernacular of the day, when he say ‘man’ he means the body whole—male and female. Nonetheless, Bartky misses the point Foucault does not have to vilify the system of punishment for the case of women. He is reporting on the transformation of “discipline” and “punishment” of the social body. It as if there was only one cure for a simple scratch or any injury to one’s arm—and the solution was to cut it off, only to find out that a simple scrape need not be so treated radically, but simply to put a bandage on the cut with a bit of cleaning will cure it, this changes one’s perspective. This is how the reformation of punishment and discipline changed the social body of European thought and the nature of power.[2]    

This nature of power can be seen later in the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Benedict Anderson, and in Sandra Bartky, but it is Roy D’Andrade who brings the discussion to the forefront. What is the role of anthropology? What is its power? How does one use it to influence the social body? D’Andrade defines the differences of objectivity and subjectivity along with trend of a new model that was “morality” based. He says, in the beginning of his essay, Moral Models in Anthropology:

Originally, I thought these attacks came from people who had the same agenda I did, just different assumptions about how to accomplish that agenda.  Now realize than an entirely different agenda is being proposed—that anthropology be transformed from a discipline based upon objective model of the world to a discipline based upon moral model of the world (D’Andrade, p 562).

D’Andrade realizes the transformation that anthropology is about to go under is questioning its very foundation to its core, what does “the other” see and is it the same as what I see? This question asks do you share the same values as I do? Do we have something in common? If so, aren’t you as “upset” as I am about in how “power” oppresses those without it? What action will you take? Will you join me in my outrage? So on and so forth. This shift in anthropology has D’Andrade concerned and believes it is a step in the “wrong” direction. Moving away from the “objective” view of the world, to some, at least, as a subjective view, and moral oversimplification of the modern world, has set, in his opinion, on an unnecessary track of collision and collusion with the hegemony at large. [3] 

Years of anthropology have dealt with the necessity of creating the “grand theory” and the dominating effect of its own discourse on the public forum (see Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Marvin Harris as examples).  Anthropology has also tried to explain the nature of the human condition, which has brought more understanding more about that condition, but  even more questions to why humans behave the way they do. It is this agency, as Bourdieu defines it, “witting or unwittingly, willy nilly, [as] a producer or reproducer of objective meaning.” In other words, anthropology’s role is malleable just as the people who study it. Ideas, models, theories, as well as perception of the worldview, are ever changing.

Earlier, in the paper, I said I had a “confession.” This was a true statement, but it was also a “disjunctive” one as well (Appaduri, 1990). In a way, it was short hand for you, the reader, to understand my confusion, and it also connected us to each other within an “imagined community.” I understood, more likely than not, you, the reader, would form some sort of connection to me, on the basis, in the likelihood that, “you,” the reader, might be a Christian, that,  “you” come from a community that shares the same values that I do, and  that, more than likely, was from the same western-American culture set.[4] It bounded us together, after fashion, and we had an understated emotional tie to one another—and “we” might have had the same shared vision at one time. Images of the Virgin Mary, crosses, and priests, come to my mind. Churches, bells, rosaries, and confessionals rattle the brain as the certitude of these images implies a sacred trust. By inference, for those in the know, the First Church, or at least, that is imparted, the Catholic Church symbols prevails throughout the “imagined communities.”

The words, “I have a confession” is multi-vocal, multilayered, and in multiple reality. It is secular. It is religious. It is Baudrillard, in that, the simulacra of religion can be a metaphor for life, death, future, past, present, redemption, betrayal, power, knowledge, ignorance, and by extension anthropology. By understanding the yet to be, and the unknown, the confession is a nexus of power, in which, all can be understood and denied all at once. But, there is another component, to my “I have a confession” statement—contrition. You, the reader, know that, I am about take “responsibility,” for an unknown act, and with this confession, will impart a piece of knowledge, in which you believe will give you “power” over me. This power is in the form of perception. The confession statement, at the least, places those, in observance of it, the ability to “judge” the knowledge that is being imparted. However, there are other aspects of the “confession,” the sincerity and how much of the knowledge I reveal. The “confession” makes me accountable only to the extent I wish to make my act of contrition credible. It is my apology. An act of defense, in which, my role as the offender I can be “absolved,” my confession provides an opportunity for knowledge. This is a role an anthropologist should covet. This is what I mean. It is not the role of anthropologist to be the moralist, but the informer, who shares his observations—and acknowledges their cultural biases—in the form of cultural capital. For the role of the anthropologist then, is not to curry power, but to provide knowledge. The anthropologist role is to “un-spin” the web of entanglement, to “confess,” if you will, and to sift through the makings of “plans within plans.”[5] The anthropologist true power lies in their observations, writing them down, and reporting their findings to the public—not just for academia. The anthropologist is to be the servant of the people and to provide a bridge to the others “imagined communities.” Which leads me to one final admission,  the earlier inference of religion, by stating, “I have a confession” implied to “you,” the reader, that we may share the same “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) and was used as a tool to create a common ground. However, when that it is not possible, and the “other” is different, finding a common ground can be most difficult.

For instance, Renalto Rosaldo uses his anthropology to illustrate from a personal view of how it took the death of his wife to understand the “rage” he felt. He was the etic observer of a tribe of headhunters, who must adapt to outside forces of Christianity and the Philippine government. To the tribe he was an outsider, who observe, tried to understand them, but simply could not be one of them. In Rosaldo opening remarks, he conveys the illusory connection to the “other,” he says:

If you ask and older Ilongot man of northern Luzon, Phillipines, why he cuts off human heads, his answer is brief, and one on which no anthropologist can readily elaborate: He says, that rage born of grief, impel him to kill his fellow human beings. He claims that he needs a place “to carry his anger.”

And, then he states simply, “Either you understand it or you don’t. And, in fact, for the longest time, I simply did not.” It is this personal touch, or attention, that is imparted from the article, Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage. In Rosaldo’s anthropology, he tries cultivate a connection of personal familiarity with his audience, which he says goes against the tradition. He does this to simplify the experience for the reader, and is contrary to what “traditional anthropology” expects. He says of this, “My effort to show the force of a simple statement,” referring to the headhunter, “taken literally goes against anthropology’s classic norms,” implying that there is a set of rules that must be followed, “which prefer to explicate culture through the gradual thickening of symbolic webs of meaning.” The last reference by Rosaldo, “webs of meaning” is to punctuate his point that he is against type, but a simple man and anthropologist; in addition, to this simplicity that he is accessible to one and all. This type of anthropology is more personable and less on the objectification of those being studied. It is more reflective and actualized, in the sense that, the studying of a different culture provides a mirror to our own culture; and, in this role anthropology is most useful and most powerful. It is the personal narrative of observation that transcends differences, criticism, and expectations. Anthropology breathes truth in that there is a connection and a history to us, as individuals and also among us as group, in which, one can, universally belong. Anthropologists, such as Nigel Barley, Clifford Geertz, and Renalto Rosaldo, are storytellers. Their ability to synthesize the histories, ideas, notions, and complexities of the human condition of the other is the most p