>>> Maureen Therese Anderson <manders at midway.uchicago.edu>
First, based on your pomo-branding in several posts, including mine, I've
gathered that you associate the idea of relational, codefining oppositions
(e.g. self/other; rational/superstitious) with postmodern theory. So
here's the first thing to clear up: the observation that groups never
constitute themselves sui generis but always in co-defining relationships
with others, well that's a founding-principle of stodgy old sociocultural
anthropology. (And of other stodgy disciplines, as well.) The theme unfolds
differently in different anthro traditions (American cultural, French
structural, etc.) but they've all had it in common since long before Homi
Bhabha, Judith Butler or Lacan came to town. So while you can criticize
notions of positional, co-defining values as too culturalist or too
structuralist, you can't criticize them for being too pomo.
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Chas.: Greetings and welcome, Maureen. On the issue you mention here the unity and struggle of opposites always seems like it is Hegel to me, and thereby in Marxism , too. What I can't figure is why some of the postmods don't seem to give credit to Hegel or don't even call it dialectics. In other words, it's older than sociocultural anthro even.
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
The slug-fests around these issues can get ironic at times. As, in my field, in the well-publicized one a couple years back between Gananath Obeyesekere and Marshall Sahlins. [Bref: Sri Lankan Obeyesekere accused (in a much discussed, prize-winning book) academia's preeminent cultural-structural anthropologist, MS, of being an imperialist Whiteguy for saying that the Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was a god, since *ob*viously nobody could be that naive. Which generated notoriously anti-pomo Sahlin's cantankerous response (in a much discussed, prize-winning book), to the effect that it was Obeyesekere who was in fact trapped in the native "mythical thinking" of 18th century bourgeois empiricism, with its empirical reason/pure objects dualisms.]
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
Chas.: Personal note on this. Sahlins was sort of a mentor of mine when I was an anthro major/grad. student. I was sort of spoon fed _Culture and Practical Reason_ in lectures, where Sahlins changes from materialist to structuralist. It was only within the last year that I thought the key dialectical question to ask Sahlins ( I asked him on the phone) and structuralism is "how does the structure change". Since postmod seems to have structuralism as one of its premises, this is a question for postmod too; or maybe post mod asks structuralism this, but I haven't found that in postmod yet.
Sahlins seems to be moving toward the structure changes in practice. Well, we're back to Marx sorta.
I was "interested" when I "returned to anthro" recently and found out about this critique of Sahlins hypothesis about the apotheosis of Cook. I bought Sahlins _How Natives Think_.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
That slugfest, incidently, links up to a Buffy post, where I'd suggested that we think twice before uncorking the champagne because of Buffy's enlightened "no gods/religion" aspect. You branded that caution as cookie-cutter pomo-theory, whereas in fact it echoed "cultural" arguments similar to Sahlins' anti-pomo ones. (Maybe as an experiment you could try posting your grievances for a few weeks without any recourse at all to the term, postmodernism. It might help clarify things for all concerned.)
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
Chas.: Could you elaborate these Sahlins arguments ? He's one of my fundamental "chose-a-pensee" , still. Are you saying Sahlins is anti-pomo, and his critic is pomo ?
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
I'm going to read the rest of your post.
Charles Brown
BA anthro. Mich '72
MA anthro Mich '75
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((