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Sameness and the Ethnological Will to MeaningAuthor(s): Vassos Argyrou

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 40, No. S1, Special Issue CultureA Second Chance?(February 1999), pp. S29-S41Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/200059 .

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Current Anthropology Volume 40, Supplement, February 1999 1999 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/99/40supp-0004$3.00

There was a time in the Western intellectual traditionwhen manthe thinking subject that makes knowl-edge the condition of its own possibilitydid not exist.Sameness and theAt this time, the Classical Age as Foucault (1970) la-bels it, scholars had no epistemological consciousness,Ethnological Will to no awareness of being part of the picture they werepainting. They went about their scientific tasks using

the tools of their traderepresentationswith the cer-Meaning1

tainty that the image of the world they constructed wasthe exact replica of the world as it existed in itself. Inshort, they assumedor had no reason to think other-

by Vassos Argyrou wisethat representations were neutral and innocent,a transparent medium through which the world mani-fested itself to the mind undistorted.

Then, an event of enormous complexity, what wewould today call reflexivity, took over scientific minds.

This article examines the claim that there is a crisis in ethnologi-Scholars who represented everything except themselvescal representation. It argues that no such crisis exists becausein the process of representing discovered that represen-the truth of the most fundamental ethnological representation

Samenessis questioned by no one. It suggests that this claim tations were also things of this world and hence amena-must be understood as an attempt to uphold Sameness in the ble to representation. At this point, the threshold offace of representations of difference that contradict it. The article

Western modernity, there was a fundamental displace-further argues that it is impossible to demonstrate Sameness and

ment, which toppled the whole of Western thought:that every attempt to do so results in the production of differ-ence and Otherness. It concludes by suggesting why anthropolo- representation ha[d] lost the power to provide a founda-gists must nonetheless persist in this self-defeating endeavor. tion [to knowledge] (Foucault 1970:238). If representa-

tion was the product of socially and historically situ-vassos argyrou is Associate Professor of Social Science at In- ated subjects rather than the immaculate conception oftercollege (P.O. Box 4005, 1700 Nicosia, Cyprus). Born in 1955, a transcendental being, one could no longer maintainhe was educated at North East London Polytechnic (B.Sc, 1980),

the implicit assumptions of neutrality and transpar-the London School of Economics (M.Sc., 1989), and Indiana Uni-ency. Nor, by extension, could one maintain that whatversity (Ph.D., 1993). He has been a visiting assistant professor at

Reed College, Holy Cross College, and Colgate University. His re- representation represented was the true nature ofsearch interests are social and cultural theory, symbolic power, things. From now on, it would not be their identityreligion and ritual, and Southern Europe. Among his publications that beings manifest in representation, but the externalare Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean (Cambridge:

relation they establish with the human being (p. 313).Cambridge University Press, 1996), Is Closer and Closer EverClose Enough? De-reification, Diacritical Power, and the Specter One of the first scholars to have applied this critiqueof Evolutionism (Anthropological Quarterly69:20619), and of representation to the discourse that makes Others its

Keep Cyprus Clean: Littering, Pollution, and Otherness (Cul- object of study is Edward Said. In his well-known booktural Anthropology 12:15978). The present paper was submittedOrientalism (1978) he points out that Western knowl-22 xii 97 and accepted 10 iv 98; the final version reached the Edi-edge of the Orient, like all knowledge, is political. Thistors office 11 v 98.is not, however, because scholars of the Orient inten-tionally distort their accounts to serve their personal in-terests or the interests of their societies. Rather, theyare situated and operate within the framework of a geo-political awareness that informs their decision to studythe Orient to begin with and shapes everything else thatthey may have to say about it. Knowledge of the Orient,then, is inherently political, not as an afterthought. Itis political precisely because it is a social and historicalproductthe product of social and historical beingswho are unable to see the world through disinterested

eyes. No one has ever devised a method for detachingthe scholar from the circumstances of life, writes Said(p. 10), from the fact of his involvement . . . with aclass, a set of beliefs, a social position. No one has be-cause no one can. There is simply no such method, novantage point outside the world, even for scholars. Allacademic knowledge [is thus] tinged and impressedwith, violated by, [this] gross political fact (p. 11)the

1. Several friends and colleagues read earlier versions of this paper fact, that is, of the scholars inevitable involvement inand provided generous feedback. I thank Peter Sutton Allen, Trish

life.Glazebrook, Michael Herzfeld, Yiannis Papadakis, Nancy Ries, andcurrent anthropologys anonymous referees. For Said, then, there is a politics of perception of Oth-

S29

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S30 c u r r e n t a n t h r o p o l o g y Volume 40, Supplement, February1999

ernessof difference, that is, understood as inferiority. tion leads to the same conclusion: Our knowledge ofOther societies and cultures is constructed not only inIn ethnology itself, the critique of representation shifts

the emphasis from the politics of perception to the poli- the sense that it is we who produce this knowledge butalso in the more radical sense that we create somethingtics of presentation. Heterodox anthropologists 2 are pri-

marily concerned with the circumstances surrounding that does not really exist. Others, of course, exist, butin-themselves, as a reality wrapped up in itself, foreverthe production of discourse, particularly the transfor-

mation of ethnographic experience into a text. The cen- inaccessible to us. What does not exist as an objective

presence is that particular Otherness that we constructtral argument is that ethnological discourse is mediatedby the fundamental need to tell an effective story, one by means of our ethnographic representations. In this

sense, what we know of Others, that which we claimthat is both coherent and persuasive. This need in turnforces anthropologists to adopt two complementary to be true, is nothing more than fiction (see Clifford

1986a:6).strategies, one of exclusion and one of inclusion. An-thropologists typically exclude from their accounts all Such is the heterodox critique, but the argument runs

into an intractable paradox. If indeed it is the case thatthose things that undermine the credibility of theirstory, among others states of serious confusion, vio- we are all caught in the circumstances of life and the

circumstances of discoursein society and historylent feelings or acts, censorships, important failures,changes of course, and excessive pleasures (Clifford the question arises how heterodox anthropologists can

be aware of this fact. If they too are socially and histori-1986a:13).3 The other side of the coin is the inclusionof poetic, literary forms that transform dry data into cally situated, how can they know anything of society

and history? How can they speak about these bound-a vivid, lively, and entertaining story4 and the use of dis-cursive conventions that stamp the story with aca- aries from a position within them? To be aware of the

existence of boundaries and of the space they enclosedemic authority.Despite the emphasis on presentation, heterodox dis- one must have a view of the whole, and the only way

to have such a view is from a position outside it. Tocourse is unable to ignore completely the politics of per-ception. Over and above any rhetorical devices that an- know that the forest one lives in is a forest and not a

multitude of trees, one must have a view from a sum-thropologists employ, what makes a story trulyeffective is its relevance, the extent to which it ad- mit over and above it. The same paradox can be put in

another way. If indeed it is humanly impossible todresses current concerns. Indeed, the decision to studya particular Other or a certain aspect of Otherness is know how Others are in-themselves, what sense does it

make to say that what we can know is fiction? Onemotivated, albeit mostly unconsciously, by the socialand political concerns that anthropologists share with would have thought that precisely because we can

know only by means of our representations, what we domembers of their own societies. Thus, in response tothe breakdown of European reciprocity in World War I, know is what isreality. Is this not, for instance, what

we say about things that exist in space and time, reserv-Mauss wrote The Gift; Benedicts and Meads work re-flects dilemmas in American society during the inter- ing the term fiction for things that lie outside these

cognitive limits? To speak of fiction, then, is possibleand postwar periods, while current studies of Otherwomen respond to the contemporary concern with gen- and makes sense only when one already knows what

nonfiction is, namely, the truth.der and the construction of female subjectivity (forthese and other examples of this argument see Clifford It would seem, therefore, that heterodox anthropolo-

gists are able, somehow, to step outside society and his-1986b). To say this, of course, is to argue that our per-ception of Others is shaped by the way we perceive our- tory even though, apparently, they too are caught

within these boundaries. It would seem that they some-selves, and this indeed is the heterodox argument. How-ever, the way we perceive ourselves is influenced by our how know the truth about Others, the deficient nature

of ethnological representations notwithstanding. If thatsocial and historical circumstances. Thus, in this way,the heterodox argument returns to the radical kind of were not the case, they would not be able to argue as

they do, nor would their claims make sense. And yet tosociology of knowledge put forward by Said.Whether one emphasizes the politics of perception or acknowledge this is also to recognize that, in spite of

everything, there is no crisis in ethnological representa-the politics of presentation, the critique of representa-tion. Indeed, there is no such crisis; the truth of the

most fundamental ethnological representationSame-2. I use the term heterodox to refer to what goes by the nameof postmodernism. The latter term is far from neutral, but I am nessis questioned by no one, heterodox anthropolo-particularly concerned with avoiding the implication that post- gists included.modernism objectifies and disenchants ethnology. As I will argue Sameness is the most fundamental representationin this article, the postmodern is based on the same fundamental

precisely because it is the condition of possibility of alland enchanted premise as the modernSameness, which is aparticular representations that ethnology has producedmetaphysical ontology of the social.

3. For Clifford (1988b) the archetypal case of exclusion is to be ever since its inception as an academic discipline, if notfound in Malinowski and the contrast between his personal diary earlier.5 To say this is not to claim that the way inand The Argonauts of the Western Pacific.4. Note, for instance, the connections that Crapanzano (1986:6869) draws between Geertzs essay Deep Play and the porno- 5. See, for instance, Pagdens (1982) discussion of the Spanish

churchmens ethnological work in the 16th century.graphic film Deep Throat.

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a r g y r o u Sameness and the Will to Meaning S31

which Sameness has been conceptualized over the years Strategies of Mediationand across paradigms has remained unchanged. Rather,it is to argue that whatever its particular historical man- In their quest for a solution to the ethnological problem,ifestation, Sameness is an ethnological a priori. It is the anthropologists have employed three analytically dis-axiomatic proposition that demarcates the epistemolog- tinct strategies of mediation. The first locates manifes-ical space within which it becomes possible to study tations of the self in other societies, for instance, a cer-Othersas human beings or as human beings whose tain practical rationality6 or a particular institution

culture is of the same value as ours. This distinction which Others are said to lack. In the same vein but inpoints to the two broad conceptions of Sameness as reverse, anthropologists seek to locate manifestationsthey emerge in the history of the discipline. of Otherness in Western societies; beliefs and practices

In the English-speaking world, anthropology became that were once thought to be the (sad) prerogative ofa recognized academic discipline with the appointment Others are now shown to exist among us as well (seeof E. B. Tylor as reader at Oxford in 1884. Before this Argyrou 1996). The third and perhaps most importanttime, the British Association for the Advancement of strategy of mediation tackles Otherness itself. In effect,Science classified anthropology under natural history its aim is to demonstrate that although Otherness has(Kuklick 1991). This should not be surprising. Ethnol- form, it lacks content or, to put it in another way, thatogy could not have been born nor could it have emerged its content is the Same despite its different form.as an independent domain of knowledge as long as Oth- There are countless examples of these three strategiesers were considered to be less than human. Racism was in the ethnological literature, but here I will try to lo-what kept anthropology chained to natural history. cate them in the work of only two major figures, E. B.Others could certainly be studied as part of nature and Tylor and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. More specifically, I will

its history but not as social beings. What liberated eth- explore what these writers have to say about that whichnology from nature and allowed it to develop into a so- has served as perhaps the primary trait of Othernesscial science was the psychic unity of mankind, the magico-religious beliefs and practices. Neither thefundamental tenet of a universal mental Sameness (for choice of writers nor the choice of topic is arbitrary. Ty-discussion see Stocking 1982[1968], 1987). Nor could lor is more often than not presented in the literature asmodern ethnology have emerged and developed into the ethnocentric villain par excellence; he was, in fact,what we recognize today as sociocultural anthropology using the same three strategies of mediation that mostas long as other societies were considered culturally in- if not all anthropologists have been using ever since. Ev-ferior to European ones. Ethnocentrism set the limits ans-Pritchards work on magic is critical because it con-within which Victorian anthropology could operate tains the seeds of the paradigm that was to dominateand dictated its agenda as the study of the origins and the fieldsymbolic interpretation. As for the choice ofevolution of civilization. Others could be studied magico-religious beliefs and practices, past interpreta-as surviving specimens of the European past but not tions illuminate the heterodox critique in interestingas contemporary ways of life. What made the latter ways and implicate it in what it seeks to avoidethno-

possible was the invention of cultural relativism, the centrism. I shall return to these implications below.tenet that no matter how different Other societies are, In his address to the Ethnological Society of Londonthey embody the same cultural value as Western soci- in 1866, the famous British explorer Sir Samuel Bakereties. (quoted in Morris 1987:91) had this to say about the Ni-

To argue that there is no crisis in representationfor lotic peoples he had visited: Without any exceptionthe truth of Sameness is questioned by no oneis not they are without a belief in a supreme being, neitherto say that there is no crisis at all. Rather, it is to sug- have they any form of worship or idolatry; nor is thegest that the problem with ethnology is not epistemo- darkness of their minds enlightened by even a ray of su-logical but ontological. More specifically, the problem perstition. In the same vein, the ethnographer J. D.is to be located in the opposition between two different Lang (quoted in Tylor 1874:418) wrote that the Austra-definitions of social reality or two differentkinds of rep- lian Aborigines had nothing whatever of the characterresentation. The first is the a priori and, as I will argue, of religion, or of religious observance, to distinguishmetaphysical representation of Sameness. The second them from the beasts that perish. For Tylor, religionis empirical and emerges within social and historical was a fundamental human institution; if it existed in

constraints such as those discussed by heterodox dis- European societies it had to exist everywhere else ascourse. It refers, in other words, to all those a posteriori well. The problem, according to Tylor (1874:41920),representations of Othernessof difference understood was not that Others had no religion but that Europeansas inferioritywhich heterodox anthropologists call like Baker and Lang had failed to recognize it becausefiction. The crisis, then, or the ethnological prob- they understood religion in terms of the organized andlem (cf. Stocking 1987) emerges because the empirical established theology of the higher races. Tylor madecontradicts the transcendental. Indeed, in a very impor- certain that Other religious conceptions would betant sense, the entire history of ethnology can be readas a persistent attempt to demonstrate Sameness in theface of the a posteriori representations that contradict 6. For a recent example of this argument see Obeyesekere ( 1992:

1522).it.

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readily recognizable. He defined religion in the widest Bruhl, it was not the case that primitive people mis-applied logic, in which case one could call their prac-possible termsas a belief in spiritual beings.

And yet if Others practiced religion and were in this tices illogical; rather, they knew nothing of logic what-soever. They neither tried to avoid contradictionthesense the same as Tylors European contemporaries,

they also practiced magic, which, one could argue, set most fundamental law of logicnor sought to bring itabout; they were wholly indifferent to it (Levy-Bruhlthem clearly apart. Not so, according to Tylor, for this

manifestation of Otherness was still very much part of 1925:78). The reason for this, according to Levy-Bruhl,

was that they were unable to distinguish between per-European societies themselves. Magic, Tylor (1874:115)pointed out, is found as a survival from the past among ception and representation. For example, it was not the

case that they first perceived their shadow and then de-the ignorant elsewhere in the civilized world. In Ger-many, for instance, Protestants get the aid of Catholic veloped the notion that it was the soul. Rather, the

shadow was experienced immediately and directly aspriests and monks to help them against witchcraft, tolay ghosts, consecrate herbs, and discover thieves. Nor the soul. Moreover, given this conflation, representa-

tions caused primitive people to perceive things thatwas it, in fact, the case that ignorance was confined tothe uneducated of the civilized world. Commenting did not exist in the empirical world.

Levy-Bruhls thesis was attacked for its presumed rac-on the rise of spiritualism during his time, Tylor ( 1874:142) had this complaint to make: Not only are spiritu- ism, but Evans-Pritchard was well aware that his argu-

ment was not biological but social.7 Nonetheless, thealists to be counted by tens of thousands in Americaand England, but there are among them several men of thesis was blatantly ethnocentric,8 and Evans-Pritchard

responded to it by trying to mediate the radical opposi-distinguished mental power. Whether as a survival orrevival, then, the existence of magic in Western socie- tion that it posited. To begin with, he was quick to lo-

cate in Other societies what was for Levy-Bruhl the dis-ties demonstrated that the Other was also within.Nonetheless, this argument did little to explain Oth- tinguishing characteristic of logical mentality

practical rationality and empirical knowledge. It waserness itself. If people everywhere were united by thesame mental abilities, as the psychic unity of man- not possible for primitive people to lead a life enve-

loped in mysticism, he argued, because, unlike us,kind postulated, how was it possible that so many ofthem were involved in such apparently irrational prac- they live closer to the harsh realities of nature, which

permit survival only to those who are guided in theirtices as magic? Tylor needed to reinterpret magic and toshow that although it had formit was indeed false pursuits by observation, experiment, and reason (1965:

8788). He also located in European societies what wasit lacked contentit was not the product of differentminds. for many of his contemporaries the primary trait of

primitive mentalityirrationalism. Theology,Tylor argued that the human mind operates on thebasis of the three principles of association of ideas iden- metaphysics, socialism, parliaments, democracy, uni-

versal suffrage, republics, progress . . . are quite as irra-tified in the previous century by David Hume (1977[171176])resemblance, contiguity in time and space, tional as anything primitives believe in. They are irra-

tional, according to Evans-Pritchard, because they areand cause and effect. Thus, a picture may lead one tothink of the original, the sight of ones house may give the product of faith and sentiment, and not of experi-

ment and reasoning (1965:97).rise to thoughts of ones neighbors, and the sight of awound may evoke thoughts of the pain that follows. The third and most difficult question that Evans-

Pritchard had to confront was that of irrationalism it-Primitive people practiced magic not because theirminds were in any intrinsic way different from Euro- self. If primitive people were indeed practical in their

everyday lives, why was it that they also entertainedpean minds but because they confused associations ofresemblance and contiguityanalogiesfor associa- mystical beliefs and engaged in magical practices? The

problem was to explain how apparently irrational be-tions of cause and effect. For instance, contiguity intime and space of two otherwise unrelated eventsthe liefs were in reality sensible and necessary. He did this

in his classic discussion of Zande witchcraft, where onecrowing of the cock and sunrisewas misinterpreted asa causal relationship. Hence the belief that if the cock of his major concerns was to demonstrate that there

was no necessary contradiction between empirical andwas made to crow the sun would rise. There was noth-ing mysterious about magic, then, nothing unfamiliar mystical explanations of the same event. The Zande at-

tribute the collapse of old granaries on their relatives toabout its Otherness; it was a difference well within thelimits of the Same. Even though analogy is distrusted witchcraft, but this does not exclude an empirical ex-

planation of the event. Indeed, Evans-Pritchard argues,. . . by severer science for its misleading results, [it] isstill to us a chief means of discovery and illustration the Zande are well aware that granaries collapse be-

cause termites eat away their foundations, but this does(Tylor 1874:297). The trick is to know analogy for whatit is, that is, not to confuse it with reality. not explain the timing of the event: Why should these

The same three strategies of mediation can be locatedin Evans-Pritchards work on Zande witchcraft. Much

7. The thesis was based on Durkheims sociology of knowledge; seeof this work can be read as an attempt to refute Levy-Evans-Pritchard (1965:82).

Bruhls claim that there was a distinct primitive 8. It is significant that the original French title of Levy-Bruhls bookwas Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures.mentality that was mystical and prelogical. For Levy-

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particular people have been sitting under this particular world is intrinsically arbitrary and absurd and thatwhatever meaning, sense, and purpose we find in it ex-granary at the particular moment when it collapsed? . . .

Why should it fall just when certain people sought its ists only because we have constructed and placed itthere beforehand. The division that this disenchantingkindly shelter? (1976[1937]:22).

Once again, then, Otherness is shown to have form realization effects, then, is between those who forgetthe truth of the human condition because they cannotbut no real content. There is no confusion of cause and

effect here, nor are the Azande children of mere fancy bear it and turn to the metaphysical to protect them-

selves and those who cannot forget because they wouldgiven over to mysticism. They are simply trying to ex-plain something which, in their culture, appears arbi- be deluding themselves.

The story of the Zande and their granaries exempli-trary and makes no sense. Witchcraft is the idiomwhich the Zande use to explain the collapse of granaries fies how this division is effected in ethnology as well as

any other study of Others. In this story, the Zandeon their relatives and other such unfortunate events.Thus, what initially appears to be irrational is now emerge as a people unable to deal with the possibility

that unfortunate events may happen by themselves.shown to be both sensible and necessary.There is hardly an anthropologist (including this one) They are well aware that it is termites that cause grana-

ries to collapse and injure their relatives, but termiteswho has not engaged in one or more of these strategiesof mediation. At the same time, there is no one or, bet- do not have intentions. And without intention suffering

is absurd, meaningless, and unbearable (Levi-Strausster, no ethnological paradigm that has succeeded in me-diating the conflict between Sameness and Otherness 1963, Douglas 1966, Geertz 1973). Thus, they resort to

witchcraft. For Evans-Pritchard this is understandable,without compromising the former. That this, indeed, isthe case is amply demonstrated by the history of the but it is also something to which he cannot relate as the

Zande do. He knows the truth of the world and is un-discipline itself, since there is no paradigm that has notbeen found, to a lesser or greater extent, guilty of the able to delude himself in this way. In fact, this truth

appears to have cost Evans-Pritchard, who was a be-ultimate ethnological transgressionethnocentrism.9

It is because of this monumental failure that heterodox lieving Catholic, his own faith. As Morris (1987:72)points out, his studies of the Zande and the Nuer haddiscourse criticizes not particular representations but

representation as such, not specific paradigms but eth- precisely the effect he viewed with alarm, namely, torender theistic beliefs untenable.nology writ large. In this lies its radicalism, but it is

here also that we must locate the heterodox strategy of This division between us and those who, like theZande, must forget the truth of the world has beenmediation itself.

Heterodox discourse employs none of the three strat- made even deeper, sharper, and more poignant by het-erodox discourse itself. Heterodox scholars cannot for-egies of mediation discussed above. Rather, it strives to

uphold Sameness by calling into question the means get, and will not let anyone else forget, that what up tonow was taken for granted and was treated as a self-evi-that produce Otherness. Hence, the fact that even

though heterodox discourse criticizes representation it dent truth is nothing of the sort. They seek to remind

all those who may have forgotten that representationkeeps silent about this representation par excellence. IfOtherness, the product of representation, is fiction, and everything that depends on itscience, objectivity,

the truthare things that we have invented and in-what remains is Sameness, which must be true. In thisway heterodox discourse attempts to make room for serted into the world, just like any other social con-

struct, and that it would be sheer delusion to think oth-Sameness, to open space for cultural futures, as Clif-ford (1988a:15) puts it, for the recognition of emer- erwise. Despite appearances, then, heterodox discourse

is armed and operates with the most fundamental mod-gence. What remains to be seen is whether heterodoxdiscourse can succeed where all other ethnological para- ernist weaponthe logic that objectifies and disen-

chants the world. It disenchants the social sciences indigms have failed.exactly the same way in which they disenchanted reli-gion in the not-so-distant past. When science encoun-ters the claims of the ethical postulate that the world isWhat the Natives Dont Knowa God-ordained, and hence somehow meaningfullyandethically oriented, cosmos, writes Max Weber (1946:One of the most fundamental divisions that ethnology

effects is between those who know the truth of the 35051), it pushes religion from the rational into theirrational realm. When social science encounters itsworld and those who are oblivious to it. In all ethnologi-

cal paradigms that take a hermeneutic approach, what claim that representation is the means to the truth ofwe know and the natives do not is an ontologicaltruththe truth of the human condition.10 It is that the but there are structural limits to this trend. Ethnology cannot be-

come a study of us because it would cease being ethnology; itwould be absorbed by sociology or cultural studies. As for the cate-gory us, I use it to refer to anthropologists, but anthropologists9. Critiques, of course, are numerous, but Fabian (1983) provides

what must be one of the most comprehensive. too are socially and historically situated, and if it is possible to dis-tinguish them from other people in their own societies on some10. The division between us and them may raise objections.

It could be argued, for instance, that the category them includes grounds it is equally possible to identify them with such people onother grounds.increasingly people from ones own society. This is no doubt true,

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the world, one might add, it has no option but to treat bring the past into the presentthe capitalist, modernerato write about it. But this, according to Fabian (p.itself in a similar fashion.

This treatment of ethnographic beliefs and practices 71), is sheer fiction (rather than a symbolic claim). Asall anthropologists knowbut apparently forgetdoes nothing less than to reproduce the very divisions

that the established orthodoxy has already effected, fieldwork is possible only when researcher and re-searched share Time (see also Cliffords 1988a and Ty-since what heterodox discourse posits about us is not

only different from everything that ethnology has pos- lers 1986 uses of this argument). It is not possible, then,

to allow this delusion of time reversal to persist in ourited about Others but also something that distinguishesus at their expense. Let me illustrate this with a few midst. We must expose it for what it is, even if to do so

it is necessary to state the obvious.examples. To begin with, the heterodox critique sug-gests that anthropologists are not, or at any rate should Thus, in ethnological discourse it seems that, unlike

them, we cannot forget the truth of the human condi-not be, as innocent as Tylors natives. For Tylor(1874:305) primitive people occupied the childlike or tion, whether in speaking about them or about us, and,

as a result of our persistent remembering, live in a thor-poetic stage of [human] thought; they thought andspoke like poets, using metaphors, similes, and other oughly disenchanted world without metaphysical illu-

sionswhether religion, magic, or immaculately con-such rhetorical devices. Unlike the latter, however,who never confuse the imaginary worlds they construct ceived representations. In short, the picture that

emerges is one in which Others need myths to protectwith reality, natives, being innocent as children, fellprey to precisely this misconception (p. 297): What we themselves from the meaninglessness of the world and

are thus, to use a phrase from Foucault (1984:95),call poetry [is] to them real life.The heterodox claim that ethnography must be unhappy in their ignorance, while we can exist without

fictions and may not be as happy but neither are we asderstood as poetry reproduces and cements Tylors dis-tinction between poets and natives. Here is how Ste- ignorant.

And yet if this is how things appear it is only becausephen Tyler (1986:125) argues the heterodox point: Apost-modern ethnography is a cooperatively evolved we have not carried the process of objectification and

disenchantment far enough. Even heterodox discoursetext consisting of fragments of discourse intended toevoke in the minds of both reader and writer an emer- stops short of what is most fundamental in ethnology,

that which is ethnology, namely, the a priori represen-gent fantasy of a possible world of commonsense real-ity, and thus to provide an aesthetic integration that tation of Sameness. We must, then, complete the cycle

of objectification by thematizing what we have forgot-will have a therapeutic effect. It is, in a word, poetry(my emphasis). Unlike Tylors natives, then, post- ten and placed beyond questioning. We owe it not only

to ourselves but also to those whose lives we objectifymodern ethnographers do not confuse fantasy with re-ality. They are well aware that it is poetry we write, and and disenchant. I shall turn to this unhappy but neces-

sary task of objectifying Sameness in the next section.they call on anthropologists who may have mistakenethnography for a science to see through this veil of illu- For now, I wish to examine briefly a paradox and an im-

possibility.sion and recognize it for what it really is.But the heterodox critique also serves to distinguish It may be argued that the divisions I have been dis-

cussing are unintentional, committed as they are in theus at the expense of Evans-Pritchards kind of nativethe symbolic type, so to speakas well. Anthropolo- course of trying to demonstrate Sameness itself. It was

necessary for Evans-Pritchard to explain witchcraft ingists often argue that in Other societies there are times,such as during ritual, when the flow of time is reversed. symbolic terms because the alternative would have

been endorsement of Levy-Bruhls thesis. So would it beTo use Levi-Strausss (1966:237) celebrated phrase,rites bring the past into the present and . . . the present for heterodox anthropologists to argue that our dis-

course is poetry and time reversal fiction, becauseinto the past. Such practices, we explain, are symbolic.As Levi-Strauss himself (p. 236) points out, in the for- the alternative would be endorsement of the divisions

that our discourse effects. All this is no doubt true, butmer case natives re-create the sacred and beneficial at-mosphere of mythical times, thus denying the profan- this is precisely the pointand the paradox: ethnology

divides the world because it strives to unite it. Thisity of the present, and in the latter they deny thefinality of death. In short, in both cases such rites, brings me to the impossibleSameness.

To say that Sameness is the impossible is not to sayrather like witchcraft itself, transform arbitrary and ab-surd happenings into meaningful events. that it is nothing. It can be and certainly is imagined,

desired, and even experienced. It should be obvious thatThis kind of symbolic interpretation, however, we re-serve for natives only, for when it comes to our own without such imagining ethnology would not be able to

exist at all. Rather, Sameness is the impossible becauseethnological practices, which also appear to reverse theflow of time, symbolism is put aside. We turn instead it cannot be demonstrated. Every time such an attempt

is made, Sameness is disproved; every time it begins toto an old-fashioned positivism and appeal to the truthof the empirical world. It was Fabian (1983) who first emerge it is instantly annihilated. The structural move-

ments of this impossibility can be sketched out as fol-pointed out that our use of such terms as precapitalistand traditional to describe Others suggests that we lows: For Sameness to manifest itself, anthropologists

must define difference as that which does not know it-take the present into the pastto do fieldworkand

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self, for if difference knew itself it would cease being particularly popular in the 1970s is entitled The Air-plane:different and would become the same. If the Zande were

persuaded to adopt the truth that Evans-Pritchard pos-When youfly, the worldlooks like a picture from high upited about witchcraft, they would lose faith in itin

and you took it seriously!the same way that Evans-Pritchard lost his own Catho-Towers look like matchboxes and people like ants,lic faith. If difference does not know itself, then, Same-

the largest palace looks like a childs football.ness begins to manifest itselfrather than being pre-

My dearest, dont cry. If you like, come high up as welllogical or irrational the Zande now appear rational like to see the Earth from the moon; it too is a moon.us. But as soon as Sameness emerges it is instantly de-stroyed because a new difference is born. It is the differ- In this song, Hadjis is advising a friend who seems toence between us who know the truth of difference have taken lifes problems seriously to fly with him.that it is, in fact, the sameand the Zande who do not From a vantage point high up in the air the mighty andand, as our explanation suggests, cannot know this the wealthysymbolized in the song by towers and pal-truth. aceswho can make one cry appear very small and in-

A structurally similar case can be made about hetero- significant. We all appear this way: small, insignificant,dox discourse. For Sameness to manifest itself in this and indistinguishable from one another, just likecase, ethnology must be constituted as that which ants. A perspective outside the world, then, has a lev-knows itself, because if ethnology does not come to eling effect. It effaces all distinctions, divisions, and dif-terms with the limits of representation it will not cease ferences and demonstrates the absurdity of taking themto create difference. If ethnology knows its truththat seriously and thinking of them as real, either bythe Otherness it constitutes is fictionSameness be- allowing them to hurt us or by using them to hurt one

gins to emerge, but before it has time to emerge it is another.destroyed. Ethnology has now become different from all The second anecdote is from Nicos Kazantzakissthose cultural systems, such as Zande witchcraft, that (1973) novel, The Life and Times of Alexis Zorba.11 Ka-do not know their truth. The limit of Sameness, then, zantzakis is traveling with Zorba to the island of Crete,is this: it can manifest itself only on the condition that and he is standing on deck enjoying the sunshine andit creates differenceon the condition, that is, that it the sea breeze. At the same time, he is deeply disturbeddestroys itself in emergencewhich is another way of by his fellow passengers on the boat, the sly Greekssaying that it cannot be demonstrated. with rapacious eyes, their narrow-mindedness and petty

This, no doubt, is an unhappy predicament, but not quarrels. Kazantzakis imagines seizing the boat andonly for anthropologists. It is also a predicament for plunging it into the sea to clean it of all the living beingsthose who are the object of ethnology, those whose pre- that have polluted itboth people and animals. Butsumed cultural inferioritytheir Othernessethnol- he also cannot help feeling compassion, a cold, Bud-ogy strives to refute only to reproduce, time and again, dhist compassion, the outcome of complicated, meta-farther down the road. How should nativesat any rate physical reflection; a compassion, not only for people,

those who, like the native anthropologist, are con- but also for the entire world that struggles, cries, weeps,cerned with such things respond to this predicament? hopes, and does not understand that everything is aI shall return to this by no means easy question. spectacular illusionNothingness (pp. 3031). Once

again we have two conflicting visions of the world: thatof Kazantzakiss fellow passengers, who are totally im-

The Will to Meaning mersed in life, who struggle to take advantage of oneanother and cannot see beyond their petty personal in-

If Sameness is impossible yet clearly not nothing, what terests, and that of Kazantzakis himself, which gener-is it exactly, and how do we come to know the impossi- ates compassion from a vantage point beyond theble? Certainly, we cannot know Sameness from a posi- worldthe outcome of complicated, metaphysical re-tion within society and history, since all such positions flection. From this vantage point, the struggle for exis-are condemned to produce visions of a divided world. tence and all that it entailscompetition, calculation,However, if the vantage point from which we all appear and divisionappear absurd and meaningless. Suchthe same lies outside of these boundaries, how is it pos- things are for nothing, since in the wider scheme of

sible for anyone to have access to it? But there is an- things life itself is Nothing.other question we must raise, the most important one: The final anecdote comes from the island of CyprusIf, as I have suggested and the history of the discipline and has to do with deaththe death of the wealthy, theitself demonstrates, it is impossible to demonstrate distinguished, and the powerful. When such deaths oc-Sameness, if every attempt to do so produces the con- cur, ordinary people often remark, Plousii tje ftoshi, totrary, why is it that we persist in this self-defeating en- idhion khoman en na mas fai (Rich and poor, well bedeavor? All these are interrelated questions, and I will eaten by the same soil), or Kanenas en perni tipotebegin searching for answers with the help of three eth- mazin tou; oullous thkio metra ghi miniski mas (Nonographic anecdotes from the Greek-speaking world.

The first is a song by the Greek singer and critic of 11. The book is known in English as Zorba the Greek. The transla-tion that follows is my own.modern Greek life, Costas Hadjis. The song that was

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one takes anything with him; we all end up with two readiness of the sly and rapacious, the power ofthose who own palaces and towers, of the rich andmeters of earth). Such comments are meant to highlight

the absurdity of the struggle for wealth, power, and famous. In short, it is the kind of life characterized bydistinction, division, and difference.fame since none of them survive death. At the same

time, they point to the fundamental equality of all, rich From a vantage point outside the world, this kind oflife is absurd because it has lost contact with reality.and poor, important and unimportant. In the face of

death, such divisions are obliterated and what remains Although it unfolds within the boundaries of finitude,

it proceeds as though there were no such boundaries.is the same for all, two meters of earththe grave.It is now possible to return to the questions raised at Having forgotten its limits, it portrays the fleeting mo-

ment as eternal and elevates the contingent and the ac-the beginning of this section and attempt to addressthem. To begin with Sameness, it now appears that this cidental to the status of the immutable and the neces-

sary. This kind of life, in other words, is so immersedaxiomatic, a priori representation is not simply an on-tology of the sociala definition of what the social in the game and has invested so much in it as to mis-

take the game for reality. But from a position beyondworld is really like but a metaphysical ontology, for itis made possible by an imaginary position beyond the the world reality is nothing of the sort. What is true,

permanent, and inescapable is human finitude and byworld. In the first anecdote, the vantage point fromwhich we all appear the same is spatialan airplane, extension the essential and fundamental Sameness of

allcommon humanity. Hence, the more entrenchedthe moon. In the second and third anecdotes, the spatialmetaphor begins to assume its proper metaphysical sig- the divisions of the world, the more absurd and mean-

ingless life becomes.nificance. Although he does not elaborate, Kazantzakismakes it clear that his compassion for the world of This brings me to the last and for the purposes of this

essay most important question: If it is impossible tostruggle and division was the outcome of metaphysicalreflection. For their part, Greek Cypriots make death demonstrate Sameness, if every such attempt has no

other outcome than to create difference, why is it thatthe ultimate social equalizer. The objection could beraised, of course, that death is a this-worldly phenome- we persist in this futile endeavor? The positivistic

methodological formula that argues for the rejection ofnon and as empirical as anything else we know. We maynot experience our own death, but we witness the death hypotheses that are not corroborated by facts does not

apply and has never applied to ethnology. Sameness isof others. This is no doubt true, but it is also the casethat death always intimates something beyond itself. not a hypothesis, nor does it have anything to do with

epistemology. It is a metaphysical ontology of the orderWe conceive it not just as the end but as a passageapassage through which, as the Cypriot saying has it, no of magico-religious systems, itself a system that makes

anthropological lives meaningful and hence somethingone takes anything with him. What lies on the otherside of this passage could be anything, but whatever is that must be and is placed beyond all empirical ques-

tioning. This becomes quite clear when one considersposited does not affect the present argument. It couldbe, for instance, the believers eternal life or, as in the two things.

First, ethnology is a discipline without history, or, tocase of Kazantzakis the atheist, an eternal silenceNothingness. What is important for the purposes of be more precise, it has a history that its practitioners

reject as little more than a grand mistake. As I have al-this discussion is that the other side is imaginableand imagined. Thus, in this sense, even Nothingness is ready pointed out, there is no single ethnological para-

digmbe it evolutionism, functionalism, structural-something and not nothing. It is a metaphysical posi-tion, a notion that we use to reflect on what is happen- ism, or culturalism, to name just a fewthat has not

been found guilty of ethnocentrism. In practice, thising on this side.It is not death as such, then, that is the ultimate so- means that for the past 150 years anthropologists have

sought to place Sameness outside history and beyondcial equalizer. It is whatever position beyond deathand before life, for that matterone cares to imagine. the reach of all those empirical representations of Oth-

ernesswhat heterodox anthropologists call fic-Positioning oneself in this way enables one to consti-tute lifeones own life as well as life in generalas a tionthat contradict and undermine it. One does not

need to call this strategy cold (Levi-Strauss 1966) orspectacle, to demarcate its boundaries and to visualizeit as a whole. In short, it enables one to become aware label Sameness an archetype (Eliade 1959) to see that

it is intimately connected with magico-religious imag-of life as a radical finitude. Life can now be contrastedwith, measured against, and evaluated in relation to the inings. Second, the incorporation of Sameness into his-

tory would mean nothing less than tolerating the arbi-infinity of the beyond and the beforebe it God, Noth-ingness, or the Unknown. It is this inescapable finitude trariness and absurdities of the world, chief among

them racism and ethnocentrism. This is not to say rec-that makes us all the same. And it is this finitude alsothat makes life appear absurd and meaninglesslife in ognizing that such absurdities exist; it is to say, rather,

recognizing that they are intrinsic and inescapable char-general perhaps (and Kazantzakis comes close to thisview), and certainly life of a particular kind. As the eth- acteristics of the world, and anthropologists clearly do

not. If the three ethnographic anecdotes are anything tonographic anecdotes clearly show, this is the kind of lifecharacterized by the struggle to gain and maintain ad- go by, a world of difference and division is absurd and

meaninglessan unbearable world. Thus, we must findvantage over othersexemplified by the pettiness and

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ways to deal with the Problem of Meaning (cf. Geertz discourse would have us believeis the same as thenatives magic and religion. Ethnology is the anthropol-1973) ourselves, and apparently we do. We tackle the

meaninglessness of a world of division in the same way ogists witchcraft, insofar at least as it makes anthropo-logical lives meaningful. I am well aware that in striv-in which the Zande tackle the meaninglessness of a

world in which granaries collapse by themselves: We ing to demonstrate this Sameness I am setting up acertain division. In effect, the implication of my argu-forget to objectify Sameness as they forget to objectify

witchcraft. If we did, we would have to recognize that ment is that the native anthropologistan Other of

sortsknows what the natives dont knowthe na-Sameness is itself a construct and hence that whateversense, meaning, and purpose we find in the world exists tives, in this case, being ones Western colleagues. This

division is regrettable, but perhaps it is not without aonly because we placed it there in the first place. And,as we well know, this is a dangerous thought. To quote certain value. No doubt it provides additional proof that

Sameness cannot be demonstrated, but what is moreGeertz (1973:102) again, it sets ordinary human experi-ence in a permanent context of metaphysical concern important is that it may begin to do what we wish but

are unable to achieve, namely, to undermine whateverand raises the dim, back-of-the-mind suspicion that onemay be adrift in an absurd world. power ethnological discourse exercises over Others. It

would now be possible for Others to respond to our dis-Ethnology, then, must persist in its endeavor to up-hold Sameness in the face of all those representations course with a knowing smile, the sort of smile that rec-

ognizes ethnology as a quest for meaning, one to bethat produce difference and division. But if it must per-sist, it must also reckon with the divisions that it itself taken no moreand no lessseriously than any Other

such quest.creates. As we have seen, Sameness can manifest itselfonly on the condition that it destroys itselfon the

condition, that is, that it creates difference. Thus, thestage is set for a vicious circle in which attempts todemonstrate Sameness produce difference that must be Commentsand is reckoned with only to be reproduced fartherdown the roada long road that leads from Victoriananthropology to heterodox discourse. It is this will to k a m a r i m . c l a r k e

Department of Anthropology, University ofsecure Sameness that has been driving ethnology for thepast century and a half. But this is not simply or even California, Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A.

([email protected]). 1 x 98mainly a will to power or a will to truth. It is above alla will to meaninga desire for an ethically meaningful,that is, socially unified world. Argyrou argues that the social scientific attempt to

highlight Sameness results in the oppositethe pro-duction of difference, but this effect is critical becausethe native anthropologist . . . knows what the na-Conclusion: The Native Anthropologist

tives dont knowthe natives, in this case, being onesWestern colleagues. Essentially, for Argyrou, althoughThis paper does not tell a story with a happy ending. If

what I have tried to show has any truth to it, the picture articulations of human difference have been the productof scientific racism, it is the will to meaning that differ-that emerges is rather bleak. Ethnology strives to dem-

onstrate Sameness, but Sameness is one of those be- entiates one group from another and one individualfrom another.ingsand what I have in mind here is the existentialist

philosophers Beingthat cannot be demonstrated. The crisis of representation in anthropology since thepublication of Saids (1978) Orientalism has made itWhat is even worse, every attempt to do so inevitably

results in the production of Othernessof difference- critical not only to call into question the idea of objec-tivity but to empower marginality and allow for newas-inferiority. I have also argued that this self-defeating

exercise, which is ethnology, must persist because its and creative ways of disrupting the discursive powersthat inform identity formation. The relationship be-practitioners are motivated by a will to meaning. In-

deed, if such a will existsand I think it doesthen tween representations of Sameness and the discursivepowers that naturalize Sameness and/or difference arecalls for an end to ethnology, such as those from outside

the discipline (cf. Said 1989), fail to understand the na- central to authorization of certain tropes of differenceas opposed to others. Although Argyrou clearly demon-ture of ethnology completely. But if ethnology must ex-

ist, how are those who must deal with its consequences strates how representations, the tools of the trade,have been used by scientific minds to construct dif-to respond? This brings me to the native anthropolo-

gist. ference, the privileging of textual authority has alsoplayed a major role in determining whether SamenessThe native anthropologist, who is not merely a

subjectivity but also a historical phenomenon, strives is questioned at all. Given the history of human differ-ence, Argyrous dissatisfaction with the inevitable lackto do what anthropologists do, namely, demonstrate

Sameness. This has been my aim in this paper. I have of attention to Sameness and his focus on anthropolo-gists persistence in articulating difference through thesought to show that ethnology, far from being a dis-

enchanted realm of belief and practiceas heterodox explication of cultural meaning is no surprise.

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It seems to me, however, that the empirical strengths and competent) to engage in practices from which suchknowledge can emerge. Knowledge worth laboring for,of anthropology have nothing to do with this existential

question of sameness or difference. Rather, they I would argue, is knowledge that changes the knower(and the known; there are no one-way practices). Theare concerned with the larger issue of constructing a

narrative of the psychic unity of mankind that helps key is in the difference between meaning and sense.Meaning posits and confirms (as do the whimsical in-us to ask more theoretically interesting questions about

the past in the present. The task of anthropological in- sights into the human condition Argyrou derives from

his ethnographic examples). Anthropology, as I see it,quiry should become enabling us to understand thatcultural interpretations and meanings not only are sim- is about making sense; it is not a quest for meaning. As-

suming we would find it, to whom would we peddle it?ilar but are constructed and authorized as similar andlegitimate. The broader questions then can be What are With whose authorization? Sense strikes and illumi-

nates; it comes from, and causes, struggle; it is, to usethe conditions of reception which facilitate assumednotions of community? How are similarities and mean- an apt Greek term, agonistic. Meaning may be met with

a knowing smile. It is not always easy to deal withings legitimated? And what role do disciplining mecha-nisms play in the quest for community? I propose that sense gently.

In the end, to use an old, somewhat arrogant but use-we replace the problematic of the corroboration of au-thentic sameness or difference with that of the cultiva- ful phrase, the argument affirming that ethnology is

always about Sameness is either trivial or wrong. Triv-tion of difference.The lingering gap between the political economy of ial, because no doing is imaginable that does not give

itself, or cling, to an identity (which, incidentally,discourse production and the history of power providesa special space for new frontiers. Tracing the relation- makes ethnocentrism also a trivial notion); wrong,

because action, in our case knowledge production,ship between power and other idioms of division is im-portant as we rethink how inequalities and representa- could not take place unless identities were transformed.

What sounds like a paradox is, however, just a way oftions develop, grow, and transform communities.affirming that Sameness and Otherness are neitherqualities nor states but actions and processes. Such ac-tions are historically situated and politically involved.j o h a n n e s f a b i a n

Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of To suggest, as Argyrou seems to do, that because we arealways working in, from, against situations we are con-Amsterdam, OZ Achterburgwal 185, 1012 DK

Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 10 vii 98 demned to enacting Sameness may have the attrac-tiveness of a pathetic gesture admitting defeat; it alsoelevates failure to do the damn work that ethnologyArgyrou states his argument boldly and clearly, and CA

is to be commended for circulating his heavily critical always is to a metaphysical condition.So there we are: Argyrou says Sameness is an ontolog-and philosophical piece. It has helped me to further

work on some thoughts I have been pondering. How- icalwhat? A problem? A position? A being? I say,

it is, inasmuch as it enters our critical thoughts on an-ever, I will limit myself to the central issue he callsSameness. thropology, a matter concerning the possibility of

knowledge production, hence an epistemological mat-Leaving aside the merits of his appeals to historythe gap between Foucaults classical age and Edward ter. This is what allows me to continue presenting expe-

riences and documents in ethnographic and historicalSaids critique of Orientalism seems rather large, andTylor, Evans-Pritchard, and Levi-Strauss hardly cover accounts that have a chance to strike by the sense

they make rather than give meaning that comforts.the history of our discipline since the EnlightenmentArgyrou assumes a position that is as unassailable as it What I dread is being read as if all the pleasures and

pains of writing anthropology were about nothing butis gratuitous. The problem with ethnology, he says,is not epistemological but ontological. In the end ev- taking a position, or about nothing but enacting a posi-

tion, which comes to the same.erything is, maybe, but ontology does not get usthrough the day. He needs to make his claim becausethe only way he seems to be able to locate himselfin the world of anthropology is by taking a position in r i k p i n x t e n

Cultural Sciences, University of Ghent, Blandyberg 2,what he imagines as a space or place (and by insistingthat taking a position is something of a metaphysical 9000 Ghent, Belgium ([email protected]).

7 vii 98nature). Philosophers may worry about the being ofanthropology. Anthropologists, since they have lost, asArgyrou repeatedly and astutely observes, their ontolog- Argyrous paper is remarkable in a variety of ways. He

takes seriously the critique by Fabian on anthropologysical certainties, have been worrying about what they aredoing. one-sided perspective on the Other. This was an episte-

mological critique, to be sure. At the same time heWhat are we doing? We work to produce knowledgeabout people who usually do not share what goes, for grants Saids political criticism on Orientalism. He is at

home with the postmodernist attacks, but he claimsus, without saying. The problem of alterity is not oneof (ontological) difference but one of being able (willing, there should be a place under the sun (of science) for

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the strange business of studying Sameness in the Other. alities are equally valid). To me the latter position is anabsurdity, forgetting how to explain that we can com-Indeed, he thinks that our implicit and aprioristic con-

ceptualisation of the Other in terms of Sameness has municate and interact (though not flawlessly). But yetother positions are possible. One of the more interestingontological rather than epistemological status. It is at

once inescapable, unprovable, and necessary. Thus, old- ones, I think, is that of ontological realism (presuppos-ing the ontic Sameness of people) and moderate episte-fashioned positivists and phenomenologists, on the one

hand, and heterodox critiques, on the other, are both mological objectivism (and hence moderate relativism).

The early advocate of such position was Joseph Need-wrong in their investment in epistemological battles,since they should address the deeper ontological level, ham, the China historian. He was intrigued by the way

traditions of learning about the world (the epistemologi-where opponents unconsciously meet. This is a neatanalysis, but will it do? cal level) differed and indeed induced more or less dif-

ferent views about the world: Chinese science andI think Argyrou has a point in referring to the ontolog-ical level. I guess I am just one among many who have European science prove suited to their tasks but incom-

patible. The existence of one world (the Sameness inbeen told by native subjects that as far as they were con-cerned, they conceived of the world and its peoples ac- Argyrous argument) need not be given up, but different

methods, intuitions, and/or criteria for knowledge maycording to their way, different from the Western one.This can easily be phrased as consciousness of ontologi- pertain, yielding different knowledges or different

ways with the world. Choosing that position, I havecal differences. The question, then, was how to organize(avoid, confront, . . . ) the apparently unavoidable meet- to allow some room in and around the notion of truth

(rightness, validity): instead of a direct correspondenceing of these different worlds. For instance, Navajoswould look upon this meeting as risky, potentially between ontological and epistemological knowledge I

advocate a position of perspectivalness (with D. T.profitable, and contaminating, while the worldswould meet and stay clearly separate from each other Campbell). That is to say, one ontological reality can be

approached from different perspectives on and of(Pinxten 1997). There is, in other words, a variety ofways of which the Navajo way is one. That there is knowledge. The weaving together of these perspectives

may result in a more encompassing truth than theone way (world) is a Western preconception.However, ontological arguments in themselves do knowledge produced from just one perspective.

not suffice. Contrary to Argyrou I hold that epistemo-logical stands of necessity complement ontology. Inother words, there is no ontological knowledge (knowl-edge about the ontic) without . . . knowledge, hence Replyepistemology. Argyrou himself takes this path by iden-tifying with the postmodernists an intractable paradox:one cannot say anthropology fiction without an epis- v a s s o s a r g y r o u

Nicosia, Cyprus. 8 x 98temology (factuality, truth notions, etc.).

The argument I want to make runs as follows: It maywell be that we Westerners (probably because of Chris- I thank Fabian, Pinxten, and Clarke for responding to

my paper. Their comments give me the opportunity totian cosmology, as Argyrou vaguely suggests) share anontology which ascribes sameness to all human beings, clarify certain important aspects of my argument.

Clarke seems to have misunderstood much of what Iand it certainly is the case that we have gone all overand been able to communicate and interact with all am trying to do in my paper. She thinks, for example,

that I am saying there is lack of attention to Samenesskinds of people in a more or less flawed but real way.But that part points to epistemology: How do we know in ethnology and a focus on differences, I am in fact say-

ing the reverse. She argues that the empiricaland what do we know (with flaws)? The statement thatwhenever we have tried to capture and express Same- strengths of the discipline have nothing to do with

Sameness but rather with the psychic unity of man-ness we have ended up with difference is not, however,saying anything about our knowledge of Sameness. It is kind; and yet, as I show in my paper, the latter is a par-

ticular case of the former. Nor can I argue with Clarkeonly speaking about our fallibility in knowing, an epis-temological characteristic. It would be problematic about what she proposes, because it is not at all clear

to me.only in the naive epistemological position in which westick with an absolute notion of truth based on a strict Pinxten thinks that I have a point in bringing ontol-

ogy into my analysis, but, as he points out, ontologicalcorrespondence between ontic reality (people are thesame) and the truth of our knowledge that we can de- arguments are not enough; they must be supported by

epistemology. There can be no ontological knowledgescribe them (as absolutely the same). This is, however,just one and indeed an old-fashioned absolutist view of (knowledge about the ontic), he argues, without . . .

knowledge, hence epistemology. But ontology is notthe relation between ontology and epistemology. A sec-ond possible position would be that of ontological rela- knowledge about the ontic, not about beings, that is,

not factual, empirical knowledge. On the contrary, it istivism (people are fundamentally different in reality)combined with epistemological relativism of the post- what makes such knowledge possible; it is knowledge

of Being, any definition of reality that opens up spacemodernist kind (for example, all stories about these re-

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for empirical investigation. An example of ontological ful vision of the world? Take, for example, Fabiansbest-known work, Time and the Other. Its aim is to il-knowledge would be the tenet of the psychic unity of

mankind. What kind of ontic, factual knowledge does luminate how anthropology makes its object ofstudy. But why, one might ask, should anyonein-this tenet make possible? Everything that one can say

about Others as human and hence social beings cluding Fabianbe interested in this topic at all? Whybother to explain how ethnology places the Other in thewhether about their kinship system, religion, exchange,

or marriage practices. Without this piece of ontological Western past? I do not need to answer these questions

myself; Fabian does that for us in the opening pages ofknowledge, Others would be regarded as less than hu-manas they clearly were even during E. B. Tylors his book. [We are] trying to make sense of what hap-

pens, he explains, in order to overcome a state of af-timeand investigation of these and other institutionswould make little sense. As far as we know, it is only fairs we have long recognized as scandalous. What is

this scandal? It is the scandal of domination and ex-human beings who believe in God, trade, or marry. It isnot ontology that needs epistemology, then, but the ploitation of one part of mankind by another (1983:x,

my emphasis). Fabian, then, wants to make sense ofother way round. But, more to the point, I brought on-tology into my analysis for two reasons. First, I wanted and to illuminate what ethnology does because what it

does is to divide mankind into West and Other. Andto demonstrate that, contrary to what heterodox dis-course claims, the divisions of the world that ethnology this is scandalousindeed a profanity of the highest

orderbecause, as every anthropologist knows, man-effects are not the result of our inability to know thetruth about Others. We know this truth and posit it a kind is indivisible. It is One and the Same. To tolerate

this division would be to tolerate an arbitrary and ab-prioriOthers are the Same as Us. Second, my aim wasto inquire about the nature of this ontological knowl- surd world.

My argument, Fabian suggests, is that ethnology isedgeSamenessan inquiry that has shown it to be ametaphysical notion. always about Sameness, and this, he says, is wrong.

It is wrong first because knowledge production wouldThe foregoing could, of course, be interpreted as anattack on ethnology, and, indeed, this is how Fabian un- not be possible and second because there are other

meaningful things about ethnology, such as the plea-derstands my paper. It should be apparent, however,that if my paper is an attack on the discipline, it is a sures and pains of writing [it]. I could add many other

meaningful things to Fabians list, but what does thisstrange one indeed. What I have tried to do is nothingdifferent from what ethnology has been striving to provethat ethnology is a polysemic symbol? All sym-

bols are. Ethnology is always about Sameness, not be-achieve for the past 150 years, namely, to demonstrateSameness. My aim has been to show that far from being cause there is nothing else meaningful about it but be-

cause this tenet of common humanity is the disciplinesa disenchanted realm of belief and practiceso disen-chanted, in fact, as to know that its own representations condition of possibility. As for the question of knowl-

edge production, far from being an obstacle Samenessare fictionethnology is as enchanted as the magico-religious systems that it studies. But my paper is ethno- or, at any rate, the will to uphold it which is a will

to meaningacts as a catalyst. If we now know howlogical for another reason as well. It tries to make senseof the discipline on the basis of ethnological ideas. Un- anthropology makes its object of study, it is because

Fabian could not tolerate the divisions of the world thatlike heterodox discourse, which treats ethnology in amanner reminiscent of E. B. Tylors scientistic treat- ethnology effects.

Fabian finds my argument about Sameness trivial.ment of magic, I employ the ethnological method parexcellencesymbolic interpretation; and instead of In order to do anything, he suggests, one must have an

identity. No doubt. But the point is not that we all havepronouncing the discipline fiction, as heterodox dis-course does, I argue that it is neither true nor false but identities. It is rather that some of these identities are

open to question and doubtthe anthropologist as sci-a way of making anthropological lives meaningful.Fabian strongly objects to this idea. There is a distinc- entist, for examplewhile others are not, that some

can be a conscious basis for action and others cannot.tion to be made, he says, between meaning, which pos-its and confirms, and making sense, which strikes My paper tries to explain why Sameness (if it is an iden-

tity at all) is placed beyond questioningwhy, evenand illuminates. Ethnology is not a quest for meaningbut a quest for illumination. The distinction that Fa- though it is the ethnological basis for action par excel-

lence, its true nature must remain unconscious. Andbian makes is not new. Geertz posits something of asimilar nature in his distinction between religion and this is hardly a trivial matter. It shows that what we say

about Others applies with equal force to our own beliefssciencethe former strives to maintain the giv-enness of the world, the latter to dissolve it into a and practices; and it undermines the division we effect

by claimingwhether indirectly or, as in the case ofswirl of probabilistic hypotheses (1973:112). I discussthe ethnocentric implications of this argument in my heterodox, explicitlya thoroughly disenchanted uni-

verse for ourselves.paper, and there is no need to repeat any of it here. Thequestion that I want to raise is this: Is Fabians distinc- One last point: The argument that everyone must

have an identity leads Fabian to suggest that ethno-tion valid? Is ethnology a quest for illumination for illu-minations sake or, as I argue, a quest to illuminate centrism [is] also a trivial notion. Fabian does not ap-

pear very confident about this last statement. He makesthose dark areas that threaten to undermine a meaning-

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