THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION

1. THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION

2. The “Crisis of Representation”

3. Critical Theory & Crisis of Representation • The anthropology of gender and feminist theory • Marxist & Post-Structuralist concerns with power & differentiated society • Postmodernism as incredulity (challenge) toward metanarratives of “modernity” • self-other • universality of development

4. Some Features of Postmodernism • Focus on language and textuality • Postmodernism as incredulity (challenging) toward metanarratives of modernity – a systematic skepticism • Postmodernists are suspicious of authoritative definitions and singular narratives of any trajectory of events • celebrates the multiple, incompatible, heterogeneous, fragmented, contradictory nature of postmodern society • No linguistic normality — we can only produce pastiche (heteroglossia), partial truths

5. Hasan: The Culture of Postmodernism Modernism Postmodernism Purpose play Design chance Hierarchy anarchy art object, finished work process, performance, creation, totalization decreation, deconstruction Presence absence Centering dispersal genre, boundary text, intertext Semantics rhetoric lisible (readerly) scriptible (writerly) Narrative anti-narrative grande histoire petite histoire master code idiolect origin, cause difference-difference, trace Determinacy indeterminacy Transcendence immanence

6. Marxism, Post-Structuralism • concern with power/differentiated societies • disagreed with the existentialists' claim that each man is what he makes himself • individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures over which he/she has no control • development of knowledge was intertwined with the mechanisms of (political) power • could be uncovered by using particular methods of investigation • deconstruction – archaeology & the order of things • Writing culture as configuration of knowledge/power

7. Anthropology of Gender & Feminist Anthropology • Filling in the gaps • ethnographic data concerning women -- the reports of male informants transmitted through male ethnographers • explore the importance of female activities • grounded studies that place gender at the center of analysis • gender is an important analytical concept • used to refer to both the male and the female, the cultural construction of these categories, and the relationship between them

8. The “Solution”: Textual Activism • the breaking down of inherited genre distinctions • Decenter “ethnographic authority” • “Partial truths” & holism • Avoid “essentialism” • REFLEXIVITY • POLYPHONY • Historicize the ethnographic present – people without history • Undo bounded group – fluidity & permeability • Translation is not transparent • Attention to power

9. The “problems of representation” • Reflexivity & intersubjective knowledge • Made Invisible – solution: make visible • The hegemony of the text/representation • identify aesthetic elements, narrative structures, epistemology of self-other • “ethnographic authority & the text • The “political” • Made invisible – solution: make visible • Limited scope on the culture/society