Anthropology and Moral Optimism

This is a complementary presentation to What is Anthropology? This presentation focuses on the purpose of anthropology, primarily based on material from Anthropology, Moral Optimism, and Capitalism: A Four-Field Manifesto. It can be adapted to a variety of anthropology courses and presentations.

This presentation uses examples from the four-field Applying Anthropology: An Introductory Reader. I use this presentation near the end of my introductory classes–it can serve as a review and summary of the material, putting the issues into a larger context. The presentation can be easily modified to accommodate other articles.

The presentation draws on and is inspired by Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World, borrowing the wording and format.

The presentation begins with a slide on optimism and pessimism. This information used to be at the Wikipedia entry on optimism but has since been edited and removed. This blog entry titled Pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will preserves the previous Wikipedia entry. Apparently Gramsci was quoting Romain Rolland, but still–Gramsci was sitting in an Italian jail cell and managed to have “optimism of the will,” so I give him credit for it.

The next slide elaborates with a quote on hope from Anna Tsing’s Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. This quote expresses a similar sentiment, in the face of the forest destruction she documents in Indonesia:

Hope is most important when things are going badly in the world; in the face of almost certain destruction, hope is a Gramscian optimism of the will. Such “unrealistic” hope begins in considering the possibility that tiny cracks might yet break open the dam. (Tsing, 2005:267)

Then comes the list of articles from each of the four fields, followed by the idea that anthropology is not just about documenting arcane if interesting facts, not a retreat or refuge from the messy world, but is a counter-punctual dialogue with Western power:

The more anthropology solidified as a degree-granting discipline, the more the mechanics of insitutionalization made anthropologists act as if their primary interlocutor was not the West and as if the primary goal of the discipline was not a counter-punctual argument–even if inherently diverse and always renewed, enriched, and recapped–to some primary Western narrative. We need to return as confidently as Boas had wished–too late–to the identification of these primary interlocutors without whom the detour into the Savage slot remains a self-congratulatory exercise. (Trouillot 2003:136-137)

After that I put up a lot of slides explicitly re-capping Trouillot’s 1-2-3 scheme in Global Transformations (2003:134). Trouillot says that “with slight changes and the necessary dose of humor, we can reproduce the scheme ad infinitum in North Atlantic discourses about non-Western peoples inside and outside of anthropology” (2003:134). So be sure to have humor with the ad infinitum reproduction here!

There is some risk in using this classic 1-2-3 scheme, which Trouillot dates to the Las Casas v. Sepulveda debate, for in the third proposition “the Savage is neither an active participant nor deciding subject, since he has fulfilled his role as evidence and has no further epistemological or decisional relevance” (2003:134). Trouillot will at other points emphasize the need to make the native a full interlocutor (2003:136), but here he wants to seize this formula and make it explicit, as that can actually make room for further intervention:

Anthropology should abandon the fiction that it is not primarily a discourse to the West, for the West, and ultimately, about the West as a project. On the contrary we should follow the steps of Las Casas in addressing the Sepulvedas of our times directly, in identifying clearly the ultimate listeners. . . .

The better we identify such interlocutors–inside and outside of anthropology, and indeed outside of academe, from rational choice theorists, historians, and cultural critics to World Bank officials and well-intentioned NGOs–the more chance there is for savages to jump into the discussion, establish themselves as interlocutors, and further challenge the slot by directly claiming their own specificity. The identification of the interlocutors and their premises facilitates the identification of the stakes. . . . Institutionalized anthropology has tended to choose comfort over risk, masking the relevance of its debates and positions and avoiding a public role. (2003:136-137)

I then reproduce–in PowerPoint bullets–Trouillot’s final paragraph on p.139 and that is in the sidebar for this blog. I sometimes print this out, with other slides, so the presentation is not too text-heavy. At the point about naïve liberalism I pause for a musical interlude. I used to play John Lennon’s “Imagine,” but then began showing “The Anthropology Song: A Little Bit Anthropologist.” This may be unfair: I love both these songs, but there is a certain stylistic naïveté to their musical genres. The advantage to using “The Anthropology Song” is that if the presentation falls flat, at least the song can stick.

This is the side of humanity that we choose to prefer . . . anthropology as a discipline is the best venue through which the West can show an undying faith in the richness and variability of humankind. (Trouillot, 2003:139)

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