The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford
The Predicament of
Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations
with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology,
travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, James
Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be
contingent fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts.
His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the
authority to speak for any group’s identity and authenticity? What are
the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and “the
other” clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern
interethnic relations?
In chapters devoted to the history of
anthropology, Clifford discusses the work of Malinowski, Mead, Griaule,
Lévi-Strauss, Turner, Geertz, and other influential scholars. He also
explores the affinity of ethnography with avant-garde art and writing,
recovering a subversive, self-reflexive cultural criticism. The
surrealists’ encounters with Paris or New York, the work of Georges
Bataille and Michel Leiris in the Collège de Sociologie, and the hybrid
constructions of recent tribal artists offer provocative ethnographic
examples that challenge familiar notions of difference and identity. In
an emerging global modernity, the exotic is unexpectedly nearby, the
familiar strangely distanced.
Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations
with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology,
travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, James
Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be
contingent fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts.
His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the
authority to speak for any group’s identity and authenticity? What are
the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and “the
other” clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern
interethnic relations?
In chapters devoted to the history of
anthropology, Clifford discusses the work of Malinowski, Mead, Griaule,
Lévi-Strauss, Turner, Geertz, and other influential scholars. He also
explores the affinity of ethnography with avant-garde art and writing,
recovering a subversive, self-reflexive cultural criticism. The
surrealists’ encounters with Paris or New York, the work of Georges
Bataille and Michel Leiris in the Collège de Sociologie, and the hybrid
constructions of recent tribal artists offer provocative ethnographic
examples that challenge familiar notions of difference and identity. In
an emerging global modernity, the exotic is unexpectedly nearby, the
familiar strangely distanced.
Categorías:
Año:
1988
Editorial:
Harvard University Press
Idioma:
english
Páginas:
381
ISBN 10:
0674698436
ISBN 13:
9780674698437
Archivo:
PDF, 25.65 MB
IPFS:
,
english, 1988
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