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Wesleyan University
Anthropology and HistoricityAuthor(s): Jean-Loup AmselleSource: History and Theory, Vol. 32, No. 4, Beiheft 32: History Making in Africa (Dec., 1993), pp
. 12-31Published by: forWiley Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505630Accessed: 10-02-2016 18:05 UTC
EFEREN ES
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ANTHROPOLOGYAND
HISTORICITY
JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
ABSTRACT
This articletries to assessthe componentof Frenchanthropology nfluencedby the
Marxistparadigm,
while
also
showing
he links
of
Marxism o
functionalism.
With
the
collapse
of the Marxist
problematic
ne
must establish
a
new
anthropology
hat
gives
greaterattention
o
history
n
"primitive"
ocieties.
It
is
also
necessary
o rethink ome
of the centralproblems
onfrontinganthropology:
n
particular,
o
reevaluate he links
between
anthropology
and
development;
o
locate
constructivism
n
the
discipline;
o
measure
he
extentof
phenomena
f
reappropriation
n
exotic
societies;and to examine
the aptness
of
binaryoppositions
uch
as "state"
ersus
"stateless
ocieties,"
and "indi-
vidual" ersus"community." y
thus
questioning ome
of the central magesof
anthro-
pology,one is led to posetheproblemof "primordialyncretism,"hat is, thediffusion
of institutions
spreading
rom a
common
cultural
ground or background,as well as
the
problem
of the links between
universalism nd
culturalism.At the end of this itin-
erary,
and
by
taking
the
example
of
the
pair "people
of
power"versus"people
of the
earth,"
t
is
argued
hat
the
prevalence
f
the
phenomenaof reappropriation
n
exotic
societies
s
explained
by
the
universality f certain
values.
I. INTRODUCTION
Within
the
different
trends that
have
driven
the
history
of
anthropology-
evolutionism,
diffusionism, culturalism, functionalism,
or
structuralism-the
question
of the
historicity
of
"primitive" societies
has served
as
a
reference
point,
whether
positive
or
negative.
To a
great
extent
anthropology
has been
founded
on a
rejection
of
history
and
this
rejection
has
been
consistently
main-
tained since the
beginnings
of
the
discipline.
As
I
belong
to a
generation marked
by
the
independence
of
Africa and
by
the
advent
of
the
Third
World
on the
international stage, I have naturally been inclined to assert the historicity of
African societies
and
to see them as
capable
of
responding
to an
outside envi-
ronment.
This
is
why
I
owe
my
first
debt
to Georges
Balandier
whose
ideas,
as
Emmanuel
Terray
has
observed,' corresponded
with
my generation's
consciousness of the
Third
World;
but
I
did not
truly begin
to work
in the
field
of
anthropology
until
1965
when
Claude
Meillassoux
included
me
in
his
research
team
on
the
1. EmmanuelTerray,
"Presentation " inAfriqueplurielle, Afriqueactuelle,
hommagel
aGeorges
Balandier (Paris, 1986), 9-11.
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY
13
Systemes economiques africains.
He suggested that
I
begin research
on colonial
slavery,
a
realm
which
was to represent one of the
major lines of his
intellectual
career.2 Having
thus become involved in the
examination of
travel accounts
devoted to Africa, I became passionately interested in the multiple bonds that
societies
form
with each other.
Thus
I
decided to
dedicate myself to the study
of
long-distance
trade, situating myself on the
margins of an
anthropological
profession
which,
since
Malinowski,
had favored
the concept of
closed and
single totalities.
I
preferred,
by
contrast,
to analyze what might be
called "net-
works of
societies."
Having chosen Mali as my
region,
I
decided to
study
a
trading community
from
a historical
and anthropological perspective. I
chose the
Kooroko commu-
nity because it seemed relatively well defined sociologically; I was therefore
free to study it over a long
period,
beginning with
its roots in precolonial times.
However,
my ambition was not
only ethnographic
-in
that,
I
did not escape
my generation
-
but
I
also
hoped
to
formulate
a Marxist
theory
of
long-distance
trade.
At
that
period,
Marxism
represented,
as
Jean-Paul Sartre
said,
the
unsur-
passable
truth
of
our
time.
It is
impossible
to
think
of the
reception
of Marxism
in
France
in
the 1960s without
thinking of
Maurice Godelier and Louis Al-
thusser.
I
took the seminar of
Godelier,
who
was then assembling the texts
that were to be published under the title Rationalite'et irrationalite'eneconomie
(1966). The
study called "Objets et
methodes de I'anthropologie
economique"
fascinated
me
especially
for
its innovations. Both this
study
and
the "Essai
d'interpretation
du
phenomene
economique
dans
les
societies
traditionnelles
d'autosubsistance"
by
Meillassoux3
appeared
to
provide
the
key
to
the
func-
tioning
of
primitive societies
and the means
to
reconcile science and
political
commitment,
logos
and
praxis.
I
have not
been philosophically
trained,
but I
have
always been
intensely
interested in philosophy and philosophers, and I have a lively admiration for
Althusser's works and his school.
I
devoured
the two
volumes
of
Lire le
Capital
(1965) and most
particularly
the
study
"Sur
les concepts fondamentaux du
materialisme
historique" by
Etienne Balibar. And
yet,
without
rewriting history,
I
must admit that
from
that
period
onward
I had
a certain reservation about this
project
for
rehabilitating
and
renewing
Marxism.
My
fundamental
empiricism
prevented
me
from
fully subscribing
to
the
fine
combinative
substantialism of
the master
of
the
Rue
d'Ulm and
his
disciples.
I
did not know all
that Althusser's
thinking owed to Spinoza, but a certain anti-essentialism raised doubts about
a
theory
that seemed
incapable
of
explaining
social
change.
Upon my
return
from Mali
in 1969
it was
within
this Marxist
problematic
-
this
episteme
as
they
then
said
-
that
I
attempted
to
organize my
material from
the
field.
Terray's
book,
Le marxisme devant
les societe's
primitives
(1969),
had
just
been added
to this
theoretical
panoply.
But the
analysis
of
the
object
I
2. Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie
de l'esclavage (Paris, 1986).
3. Meillassoux, "Essai d'interpretation du phdnomene 6conomique dans les societes traditio-
nelles d'autosubsistance," Cahiers
detudes africaines
4
(1960), 38-77.
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14
JEAN-LOUP
AMSELLE
had
chosen
to study
-bringing societies in
close
contact
through
long-distance
trade
-proved resistant
to the Marxist
treatment to
which I
wanted to
subject
it.
Marxism
shares with
conventional
sociology its
constant
practice
of always
putting either the "mode of production" or "society" in first place. I, however,
had
chosen to
analyze
relationships
between
societies
-an
approach that
does
not
belong
to
the
usual
realm of
study of
sociology or
anthropology.
Only
structuralism
I
will return to
this
point -claimed
to
give an
account of pro-
found
regularities
that
transcended
cultural
differences,
even if it
constructed
a
purely
hypothetical
closeness as
it compared
societies
which,
in
most
cases,
were
not effectively
linked to one
another.4
In
1972,
I
defended
my doctoral
thesis,
which was
published
in 1977
as
Les
negociants de la savage.5 The theory of the origin of profit in commercial
capitalism,
which
constitutes its
core,
now
seems a
bit outmoded to me
in
light
of
the
political and
economic
evolution
of
the past
few
years,
even
if this
theory
still
has
its
partisans. This book
was the
origin
of
a
series
of
research
studies
on
the
historicity
of
primitive
societies6
and on
the
impact
of
outside
domination
on
African
societies,
notably through
monetary migrations.7 Even
if
this
last
work still
finds a
favorable echo
today8
it seems to
me
that it
stresses
imperialist
domination too
much and does not
grant
enough
importance
to
the
integration
of precolonial African societies into greater totalities such as comprehensive
economic or
political
networks.
It
was to
escape
from
the thesis of
imperialist domination
and
from the
problematic of
the
"mode
of
production"
rigidly
conceived
that I
was
trying
to
define the
dilemmas to
which
a
frozen
conception
of Marxism was
leading.9
The
stress
on
the
relationship
of
forces,
on
conjunctures,
and on
the
production
of
social
relationships
-
to the
detriment of
reproduction
-
undoubtedly
owed
more to
Balandier,
Touraine,
and
Castoriadis
than
to
Marx. It is within
this
problematic that I still situate
my
research
today.
I
am
not
the
only
anthropologist
who
has hesitated between
Balandier
and
Levi-Strauss.10
Throughout
the
course
of
my
studies,
I
have
been
fascinated
by
the
fine
analyses
of
Levi-Strauss,
which
corresponded
perfectly
with
some
of
the
interpretations
Marx,
Althusser,
and Godelier
were
giving
us. What
particularly
attracted me were
Les structures
eilementaires de la
parents'
and
4. Even for societies that probably have a common origin, a structuralanalysis
-that
is to say,
a
transformational one
- is
not without difficulties
as long as exact historical
linkages
have not
been
established between each
unity. See
N.
Thomas,
Out
of Time:
History and Evolution in
Anthropological Discourse
(Cambridge, Eng.,
1989), 109-111 on the
neo-evolutionist presupposi-
tions
of the
structuralist comparativism of Sahlins.
5.
Jean-Loup Amselle, Les
negociants
de la savane (Paris,
1977).
6.
Amselle,
"Sur l'objet de
l'anthropologie,"
Cahiers internationaux de
sociologie
56 (1974),
91-114.
7.
Les
Migrations africaines, ed.
Jean-Loup Amselle (Paris,
1976).
8.
F.
Dureau, Migration
et
urbanisation, le
cas de
la C6te d'Ivoire
(Paris, 1987); C.
Quiminal,
Gens
d'ici, gens d'ailleurs
(Paris, 1991).
9. Amselle,
"Le
fetichisme de la
soci&t6,"L'Homme et la
societte
51-54 (1979),
163-177.
10. Terray,
"Presentation."
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY
15
Anthropologie structurale
which seemed to be the anthropological
counterpart
for
Marx's works
in
economics.
But from
my
first
contact
with field
research,
I was struck by the historicity
of Malian societies. Buffeted by history, inserted
into vast state formations that endlessly rose and fell, invaded by Islam- Malian
societies,
and especially the
Peul, Bambara, and Malinke ethnic
groups,
did
not seem fit for a structural
analysis. I then felt that
Balandier was right in
always stressing
the
profound
dynamism
of
African
societies and the deter-
mining character of the colonial situation.1I
Armed with this resource, I embarked upon my second
research
project,
a
study
of the Wasolon and the surrounding regions. There
too,
not one of the
societies
I
studied in the field seemed to correspond
to what we
had been taught
in our classes at the university. We had been told about the Dogon, the Nuer,
and the Tallensi; about stateless societies and state societies;
about polytheism
and
Islam; about
oral and written cultures.
Yet to
me
none of these
catego-
ries and none of these binary
oppositions seemed to account for the social and
historical fluidity of the region
I
investigated. Instead
of ethnic groups closed
in
upon themselves, instead
of political systems and an
understanding of the
world that were clearly demarcated,
I
found
myself faced
with
hybrid systems
and with crossbred forms of logic (logiques
mitissess),
as
I
called -them
n
my
last book. For me, as for some colleagues, the shock was severe, for one had
to think
"against
the
grain"
and to
find
other
paradigms,
an uncomfortable
predicament since the university
favors the
reproduction
of
prevalent
models
or,
at
best,
controlled
departures
from them. This search for
new
interpretative
models
was
accompanied
by a renewed questioning
of
a
certain
anthropology,
which was defined either
by the excessive valuation of the most "primitive"
societies
or, inversely, by
a
fanatic
denigration
of them.
In the 1970s French
anthropology
underwent a certain
change
of direction
with the appearance of two works, La Paix blanche by Robert Jaulin (1970)
and La Socijte
contre l'Etat
by
Pierre Clastres
(1974).
These two books
appeared
during
the worldwide
distribution
of
the
works
by
Carlos
Castaneda
who had
picked up again
on certain major
themes of
the
ethnology
of colonial
adminis-
trators, namely
the
attempt
at
"metamorphosis"
and at
passing
over to
"the
other
side.""2
t is
in
connection
with these works
that a
group
of
anthropologists,
of
which
I
was
one, gathered
around
Meillassoux
and
produced
a collective
work,
Le
Sauvage
a la
mode, published
in
1979. Conceived
at
the
height
of
the
Marxist
triumph, this work concealed a certain number of ambiguities. Against an
anthropology
it
perceived
as
mundane, "trendy,"
or
"ideological,"
it tried to
oppose
a
"scientific"
anthropology, relying
on the
elucidation
of the relation-
ships
of
production
and class
structures. Rather
than
placing
this book
under
the
sign
of
Marxism,
it
would
have been
preferable
to
bring
to
light
the
presuppo-
sitions of the authors we
criticized.
Especially by deepening
the
objections
made
11. Georges Balandier,
Sociologie actuelle de l'Afrique noire
(Paris,
1955).
12. Jacques
Berque,
"Cent vingt-cinq ans de sociologie maghrebine," Annales (January-
March 1956).
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16 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
to Levi-Strauss by Jacques Derrida
and Pierre
Bourdieu,'3
a
more firmly based
criticism might
have been
produced. Indeed, if our criticism has often been
badly received, it is because it challenged certain fundamental postulates of
anthropology, namely the existence of cold, primitive societies
-
societies
without writing, without
leaders,
and without power. It is exactly on the exis-
tence
of this
separated
domain that the
legitimacy of
our
discipline
rests.
Marxism could not do much to counter the perverse effects of this problem-
atic.
For
Marxism,
like all
sociological
theories,
is based on a radical
opposition
between
"precapitalist
societies"
and
"capitalist
societies,"
and this
is why
in
certain
Marxist
analyses,
for
example
those
concerning hunter-gatherer
socie-
ties,
one can
find
points
in
common with precisely
the
works
this
book
meant
to criticize. Far from constituting a sharpbreak with the rejectedanthropology,
the
very
fact of
isolating hunter-gatherer
societies or
segmentary
societies and
of elaborating "modes
of
production" for
them
actually reinforced
the
deficien-
cies
of that
anthropology. Emphasis
should
rather have been
placed
on the
dependence
of
hunter-gatherer
or
segmentary
societies
on an exterior
environ-
ment,
but that
would
have
radically questioned
Marxist
"discontinuism,"
to
which most of the contributors
to this work adhered.
What lesson can
be
drawn, then,
from this
attempt to overturn anthropology?
Rather than opposing the relationships of production to the supposed intention-
ality
of
a
society ("society against
the
state"),
it
would
undoubtedly
have
been
preferable to reason
in terms
of historicity
and
of encompassing
networks. Yet
this undertaking
did awaken some echoes
among
Americanist
anthropologists
(Descola),'4
who thereafter gave
more
emphasis to the immersion of Native
American
societies
in vast
totalities,
including the precolonial states of the
region.
If
Americanists
are
now involved
in a
deconstruction
of
ethnicity
analo-
gous
to that
of the
Africanists, they
owe
it no doubt
partly
to ventures
such
as Le
Sauvage
a
la
mode.
The
main ideas that
came
forth from this work, the historicity of primitive
societies
on the one hand and the existence of
encompassing
networks
on the
other, however,
recalled one of the
major
themes
of
Balandier's
book,
that
of
the
opposition
between internal and external
dynamism.
As
the
deconstruction
of
ethnicity
was
launched,
researchers had
available to them
works
by
another
precursor,
Paul
Mercier, whose analyses
ran counter to certain received ideas
of anthropology. A student of the Somba of northern Benin, Mercier had
realized
that the classical definition
of
ethnicity
could not
be
applied
to this
group."5Drawing upon
the
Anglo-Saxon
tradition and
especially
the works of
Max Gluckman
and
Siegfried
Nadel,
Mercier
stressed the
historicity
of
ethnicity
13. Jacques Derrida, De
la grammatologie (Paris, 1967); Pierre Bourdieu, Choses dites
(Paris, 1987).
14. P. Descola, "La chefferie amrrindienne dans F'anthropologie
politique," Revue francaise
de science politique 38 (1988),
818-827.
15. Paul Mercier, Tradition, changement, histoire, les "Somba" du Dahomey septentrional
(Paris, 1968).
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
HISTORICITY
1.7
by shedding light on a radical difference
between the ethnicity of
precolonial
and colonial
periods.
Armed with this theoretical
arsenal,
this small group of researchers plunged
into the work of dismantling the notion of the ethnic group. Some ethnologists
in
the early 1980s were exasperated by the journalistic
failing,
then and now,
of
recounting an event in Africa in terms
of "tribalconflict" or "ethnic struggle."
If
in journalistic fiction the Arab world
is the realm of fundamentalism and
that of India the world of
caste,
then
Africa is par excellence the chosen land
of
ethnic antagonisms.
Think,
for
example,
of the media treatment and the
political utilization of conflicts in
Liberia,
Ruanda, and South Africa. These
researchers, then,
did not want to deny that ethnicities existed in Africa, but
to show that present ethnicities, to which social players think they belong, are
products of history. Thus constructivist was placed in the foreground at the
expense
of
primordialism. By showing that
one
could not
assign
one
single
meaning to
a
given
ethnicity,
the
relativity
of
ethnic memberships
was
empha-
sized without
denying
individuals the
right
to claim the
identity
of their choice,
The result of this long collective
effort,
begun
in
the early
1980s,
was published
in
1985
in
a collection entitled Au coeur
de l'ethnie.16This book became
the
object
of
discussions rendered more passionate
by misunderstanding. Ap-
pearing right after the demise of the regionalist movements of the 1970s, it ran
head on into some of the facts of the
ready-made thinking of the
era,
notably
that of
the
leftist-ecological
movement. But
beyond violating
the
sensitivity
of
the
1970s,
it also undermined the
foundations
of
an anthropology
in
danger
of
losing
its
privileged
framework
of
analysis,
the
ethnic group.
If
the
ethnic
group does
not
exist, the anthropologists
implicitly
said,
what
do
we have left
to
study?
There was
no
question
of
making
the
anthropological object disap-
pear,
but
simply
of
casting
it
in
a new
light.
It
seemed obvious that postwar
French anthropology, dominated by structuralism, had granted the name of
the
group being
studied-the
ethnonym
-the status
of
stable
referent,
while
sociolinguistics
and
pragmatism,
launched at
the
expense
of
structural
linguist
tics,
stressed the sociohistoric
fluidity
of this same referent.
The focus
on
"networks of
societies";
the precolonial African "world
economy"
and
"colonial
spaces";
the
distinction between
"encompassing"
and
"encompassed societies";
and
the
display
of the
performative
character
of the
ethnonyms
were used
together
to
sketch
out an
anthropology
different
from
the one that was then stage front in France. The contributors to Au coeur de
l'ethnie thus seemed to be
drifting
from
their
specialty
and
drawing
nearer
to
history. Perhaps they gave the impression
of
abandoning
the
necessity
of struc-
ture for the benefit
of
the
contingency
of the event.
However,
this
is,
I
believe,
a
false debate.
I,
for
one,
have not renounced all
nomological preoccupations,
or
attempts
to discover
regularities
or
identify
systems,
even
if
the available
schemes do not
always satisfy
me.
16. Au coeur de l'ethnie, ethnies, tribalisme et Etat en Afrique, ed. Jean-Loup Amselle and
E. M'Bokolo (Paris, 1985).
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18 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
Rather than conceiving of ethnicities as closed
universes,
side by
side,
of
political systems as neatly separated
entities,
of religious conceptions as clearly
defined
worlds,
or of types of economy as distinct regimes, I choose to study the
interrelationships, the overlaps, the intertwinings among them. In this regard,
Meillassoux17used the notion of ensemble symlectique, but in contrast with
him
I do not see in this phenomenon the simple effect of the domination of
an economic
system-slavery-but
rather a characteristic of the totality
of
West African societies. Thereby
I
join the positions of Ronald Cohen and
Igor
Kopytoff,8
who each stressed "center-periphery" relationships and the
"frontier" as matrices of African political formations.
II. ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
In
the French tradition, and to a lesser extent in the Anglo-Saxon, it is not
always good
form
for an
anthropologist
to become involved
in
development.
This situation is undoubtedly linked to the quasi-exclusive domination
over
French anthropology by structuralism on the one hand, and by the school of
Griaule on the
other. The emphasis these schools placed
on
structures
and on
the
study of cosmogonies respectively has discredited all preoccupation
with
the history of exotic societies. While in an earlier period Durkheim had used
the works of
Hanoteau
and
Letourneux, while Mauss had
read and commented
upon
those
of
Delafosse
and
Montagne,
and while Delafosse in turn had
partici-
pated
in the
creation
of the
Institut
d'Ethnologie
and the Institut International
Africain, by the 1950s the communication between university ethnologists and
colonial administrative
ethnologists
had
been broken. The divorce
between
practitioners of development and anthropologists dates back to this period, as
does the emergence of an autonomous field of academic anthropology.
From
an epistemological and archeological (in the Foucauldian sense) perspective, it
is
interesting to show
how,
from its very
beginnings,
ethnology
was indissociable
from a development project. The binary oppositions ethnos versus
polls,
seg-
mentary societies versus state
society,
or
community
versus
society,
seem
to
reflect an
implicit
value
judgment
about
the
best
form of
social
life.
By partici-
pating
in
evaluations
of
development projects
and
by mingling
with
experts,
anthropologists may
rediscover the
very
essence of
ethnology.
Research
within
the framework
of
projects
and
"intermittent
attention" to
the views of
expert colleagues
constitute a
precious
resource
for
ethnologists.
The
"development" perspective
forces
one
to
grant greater importance
to eco-
nornic
and
social-regional
history,
aspects
too often
lacking
in
ethnological
monographs. Anthropological
studies most
frequently
are reduced
to the de-
scription
of a few
villages,
taken
out
of
their
context,
and
compared
to units
17.
Meillassoux,
Anthropologie de l'esclavage.
18. "State Foundations: A Controlled Comparison," in Origins of the State, ed.
Ronald Cohen
and Elman Service (Philadelphia, 1978), 141-160; The African Frontier, ed. Igor Kopytoff
(Bloomington,
Ind., 1987).
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY 19
of the same type hundreds or thousands of kilometers
away. In
contrast,
re-
search done
with
development in mind constrains the anthropologist to give
precise answers to questions about the totality of a given
region and the web
of the different societies within it.
This rehabilitation of research centered on
development ought not to make
one
forget
that the
ethnology
of the
development experts compares badly with
that of the colonial administrators. While the latter were
in the region for long
periods,
the modern experts are often satisfied with
"instant
anthropology,"
which generally is no more than an interview with a few
farmers. This weakness
in participatory observation, linked to the essentially
macroscopic perspective
of the experts, generally
is
increased twofold by a complete lack of
knowledge
of regional history, even if some of them are by conviction inclined to overesti-
mate the impact of colonialization.
In
this context,
anthropologists therefore
have an important role
to
play,
especially
if
they have the
chance to intervene
in
a development operation
in
the region they are already studying. Of course
researchers,
by their mere presence, cannot modify the course of events. Moti-
vated by scientific considerations, they must limit their
participation
to
under-
standing
the
transformations that affect their field. Indeed,
if
development
activities
have
heuristic
value,
it
is
because
they
concern the
totality
of
present-
day Africa. In this regard, two villages, one on the edge of a development
project and the other located
in
its
vicinity,
will
experience on the
whole
the
same evolution. Anthropologists therefore
have much to learn about the
phe-
nomena of development, and
their
intervention poses no problems of legitimacy
as far as it
occurs
in their own
area.
On the other
hand, "ethnographic au-
thority"'9ceases
when
the researcher participates
in
development projects
out-
side
his or her
zone
of
inquiry. Thus
two
cases have to be
distinguished.
In
the same cultural
area
the
anthropologist
is
justified
in
intervening, for,
apart
from some micro-differences revealed by ethnography, profound similarities
exist that
give a
familiar
feeling
to an entire
region.
For
example,
in the
totality
of the Sudanese-Sahelian zone of
West
Africa,
one can
identify
some
grand
common
characteristics,
such as the
presence
of
Islam;
the role of
warfare,
slavery,
and
commerce;
or
the
opposition
between
people
of
power
and
people
of
the
earth.20
In
a
milieu
close to
their
area
of
study, anthropologists
will
thus
quickly identify
those
elements
that resonate
with those
they
normally
encounter. For this
reason,
a delocalization
of the
knowledge
of
the
anthropolo-
gist is positive: by resituating the village or the district into a larger whole, one
escapes
from
ethnological
fetishism and one
grasps
more
firmly
the relative
distinctiveness
of
one's
object
of
research.
However,
outside
of
the cultural area under
study,
one's
"ethnographic
au-
thority"
is
no
longer
valid. The
anthropologist's
work is then
equivalent
to
that of an
expert,
that
is,
it is
superficial. Anthropology
can
only
suffer
by
19. James Clifford, "On
Ethnographic Authority,"
in The Predicament of
Culture
(Cambridge,
Mass., 1988), 21-54.
20. Siegfried F.
Nadel, Byzance noire (Paris,
1971).
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20
JEANLOUP AMSELLE
withdrawing into
the warm
comfort of its traditional object of
research. It
should, instead,
reintegrate the
developmentalist
logic which gave birth to an-
thropology and from
which it should never have been
separated. Every
science,
like every identity, is constructed, and as such it attempts to forget its origins
and
to propagate the idea that it was
born fully
armed with the attributes that
confer
legitimacy
upon it. Yet the birth of all
the
scientific,
and
of course
humanistic,
disciplines is linked
to eminently
practical concerns
which,
far
from discrediting
them,
should
guarantee their
legitimacy. By returning to the
practical
preoccupations that accompanied its
emergence,
and by
understanding
the history of its
separation
from
these
concerns,
anthropology
will
make a
new leap forward
and escape the
criticisms directed against it. By
returning to
the practical ethnology of the colonial administrators, anthropology will per-
haps also address one of the major
challenges of our
era: the opposition between
human rights and cultural
relativism.
This plea
for
research that is
not
cut off from
development
corresponds to
one of my main
preoccupations, that
of
rejecting
an
ethnological
reason
that
splits up
sociocultural continue
and
proceeds by
comparative
straddling.2'
Eth-
nology,
in
fact, supposes
a lodestar
by
which one can
judge
the whole
of
past
and present
societies, just as it
supposes
an
implicit
value
judgment
about
certain societies deemed to have remained backward.
Thus against ethnology
I
oppose
anthropology,
that
science
of
humankind
rather than of societies. But unlike
the
structuralists,
I
judge it impossible to
grasp
the
activity
of
humankind
from
a limited series
of
unconscious
structures.
At its
root,
structuralism
postulates
that societies make certain choices within
a
restricted number of
possible
combinations.
But the
idea
that
different human
societies
possess
a
kind
of free
will
collides
with
the
fact
that the
planet's
cultures,
far
from
being
simply juxtaposed
in
space,
are
inserted
in
multiple
hierarchies.
In
this
regard,
one
should
reevaluate
one of the
central postulates
of
anthro-
pology:
cultural
relativism.
By
simply comparing
Western
society
to a
contem-
porary "primitive"
ociety
or
to
a
society
that has
disappeared,
it
is
impossible
to
overcome the
comparativist
aporia,
since
the
approach
proceeds by arbitrarily
juxtaposing
societies distant from one another
in time
and
space. Only
by taking
account of a
regional
sub-group
-
the
cultures
of
Sudanese-Sahelian West
Af-
rica,
for example
can one
compare these societies and rank them
in
a hier-
archy. 1
can
legitimately compare the Peul, Bambara, Malinke, Senufo, and
Minyanka
cultures,
because
they
are
historically linked,
but it is
very
difficult
to
compare,
even
from
the
angle
of
their
differences,
the French
and
Bambara
cultures since
they
never had
any
interaction before
colonialization.
The
refusal
to
compare
French
culture
and Bambara culture
under
the
pretext
that
they
have
no
common
value scale
is
devoid of
any basis,
and
it
is
only by arbitrarily
setting apart
one element or another
(excision)
from the core of a
given group
21. Jean-Loup Amselle, Logiques metisses. Anthopologie de l'identite en Afrique et ailleurs
(Paris, 1990).
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
HISTORICITY
21
(such
as Soninke society)
that one
circumscribes the space within
which
partisans
of
human rights and
defenders
of
respect
for
cultures clash.
The analysis
of the
relationship between
human rights and
cultural relativism
is at the very root of the thematics of identity. By studying colonial ventures
after the
Age
of
Enlightenment and
by
demonstrating their
concern to respect
indigenous
cultures, sometimes to
the point of
inventing
them,
one
is led to
favor a
constructivist
approach to identity.22
ILL.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
If
French
sociology is the heir of
Rousseau (The Social
Contract), it was
also
shaped by the reactionary theories of Maistre and Bonald, who felt a nostalgia
for
the
Middle
Ages and valorized the
"community"'at the
expense
of
the
"society."23
This
problematic
of the
"community"
was
born
in
Germany
in
the
heart of the
Romantic reaction
(Herder,
Fichte,
T6nnies), but it also
developed
in
France
in
authors such as
Fustel
de Coulanges
and
Durkheirn.
Durkheim
was
particularly
obsessed
with
social
bonding,
doubtless from a concern
to
substitute
a form
of
republican cohesion for the mechanical
solidarity
of
the
Ancien Regime
and
the anomie of the
market.
This
approach
consists
of
empha-
sizing, in an organicist perspective inspired by Spencer, the "collective con-
science"'
as
well
as,
in
a
general
way,
the monism and
the monadism of so-
cial
objects.
Closely
related are the works of
Halbwachs and
numerous other
French
sociologists,
who
tend to
make
of
every
social
group
a
given
"already
there,"
a
given
to which
they assign
a
conscience or a
memory.
In
France,
this
sociological
naturalism has been
reinforced by
Hegelian
Marxism,
which
quite
naturally
transplanted
itself
into
this
Durkheimian
problematic.
Indeed,
both
in
Hegel
and in Marx, groups first exist "in themselves," then at a later stage acquire a
consciousness of
themselves.
This
objectivist
sociology
cannot be conceived of
independently from a
philosophy
of
history:
a
teleology
is
necessary
in
order
to
construct a
sociology,
and the
existence
of
social classes cannot be
postulated
apart from an
"end of
history"
when
these classes
will be
abolished.
This socio-
logical
eschatology
is
not without
epistemological consequences.
First,
a
critique
of
it can
equally
be
directed
to
a
concept
such as "nation"
or
any
other
collective
term
which,
by
the
very
fact of
being
used,
makes
the
group
it
designates
exist (the performative character of social objects). As such, nationalism, like
46classism,"
is
merely
a
strategy
of
accrediting
a social
group:
class
struggle
often consists
purely
and
simply
of
having
the
existence
of the
different
classes
recognized.24
Contrary
to
sociological objectivism
are constructivism and
methodological
individualism.
If
there
are no
groups
in
themselves,
then
there are
only
con-
22. Ibid.
23. Robert Nisbet, The Sociological
Tradition
[19661
(New
Brunswick, N.J., 1993).
24. Bogumil Jewsiewicki, "Triomphe ou fin de 1'Occidenten Afrique," Cahiers d'etudes afri-
caines 114 (1989),
289-291.
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22
JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
structed groups, each group consisting of the conglomeration of
a collection
of individuals who succeed
in forming an alliance to have their
existence recog-
nized. Here we recognize
Sartre's approach25and his
sociohistorical itinerary
that makes the group pass from seriality to fusion, to organization, to institu-
tion.26 Under the
influence
of
Sartre's ideas,
I
grant a
preponderant place to
rarity and to exteriority in
the constitution of groups, but with
this difference:
I
believe that the rarity in
question is not of a material order but of symbols
available for
constituting social
groups.
The strategy of constituting groups is therefore essentially
political,
so that
their existence cannot be
analyzed independently from the
discourses uttered
by
their
representatives.
One
could go so far as to maintain that
the life
of
groups is inseparable from the discourse of their representatives. It is also
wrong to separate the sphere
of representation from that of
"social reality":
different
social groups only perpetuate themselves inasmuch as
they
have
suc-
ceeded
in
emerging
onto the
political
field.
This political strategy of
recognition
and accreditation utilizes
the methods
of
production
of
truth current
in
the
scientific
domain:
notably
the
"hardening
of facts."
In
this
sense,
the
famous
Machiavellian maxim, "to govern is to make
[them] believe," is
equally true
in
sociology
and
history.
The lot of
the French working class is indissolubly
linked to that of its representatives, and the slow death of the PCF (Parti
Communiste
Francais)
and of
the CGT
(Confederation
Generale
des
Tra-
vailleurs) doubtlessly means
the end of
their constituents.28Thus
the
approach
of the
sociologists who
investigate
the
disappearance
of the
working
class
in
terms
of
the techno-economic
changes,
such
as the
crisis
in
Fordism,
is ulti-
mately pointless:
the
identity sign
is
mostly arbitrary, it is the result of the
application
of an
"onomastic emblem" to a
collection
of
individuals.29
Conse-
quently, the
whole
genius of
sociologists
is
to arrive at having the models
which
they make of social reality recognized30and, from that point of view, their
talent is
not
very
different
from
that
of
politicians:
in
both
cases,
one
anticipates
the
expectations
of social actors.
Thus there
seems
to be a
conjunction
between
sociology
and
anthropology
which,
in
their
respective
domains, try
to
emphasize
the social construction
of
identities.
The
history
of
the
social sciences
of the
past
two decades
could
therefore be
analyzed
as the
passage
from
sociologism
and
objectivism
to indi-
vidualism,
interactionism,
and
phenomenology.
Within this new
paradigm,
one
trains one's sights on the individual and, particularly, on the outside individual
who creates
the
group.
As
we
already noted,
this
change
of
perspective
also
25. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris, 1960).
26. Emmanuel Terray, "Marxisme annees 60," Les Temps Modernes
531-533 (1990), 86-98.
27. Luc Boltanski, Les cadres (Paris, 1982).
28. Philippe Corcuff, "Le categories, le professionnel et la classe:
usages contemporains de
formes
historiques," Geneses
3
(1991),
55-72.
29. Jacques Berque, "Qu'est-ce qu'une 'tribu' nord-africaine?" in Maghreb, Histoire et societes
(Paris, 1974), 22-34.
30. Bourdieu,
Choses
dites.
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
HISTORICITY 23
has to be related to the decline of structural linguistics and to the rise of
sociolin-
guistics and pragmatics
(Austin, Benveniste, Searle).
In
this new space, identity
becomes the result of a
"negotiation" among all the players
participating in the
definition of social bonds. The social contract is no longer defined once and
for all, but becomes the
"agreement
on
the very object
of
the disagreement."
Yet,
constructivism and
interactionism
are
themselves not safe from all
communitary
presuppositions.
In
the
classical work of constructivist thinking, The Social
Construction of Reality,31
Peter
Berger and
Thomas
Luckmann thus
put
forth
a
way of thinking from which the
imputation
of
community is
not absent.
Similarly,
one of the theoreticians who has interactionism most in
view, John
Gumperz32
s not
free of
every
ethnicist
or culturalist
presupposition.
Furthermore, it is to be feared that an individualist and phenomenological
drift may result from the aporias
of
postmodernism.
In
the
wake
of
George
Marcus and Michael Fischer33
n
entire North-American
current,
in
a
tradition
marked by cultural
relativism,
is
emphasizing anthropology
as
"text,"
that is
to
say
that the vision of
populations studied
by
the
ethnologist
is
the
sum
of
the number
of views
brought to
bear
upon
them.34
This
current tends to sanction
the idea that the
totality
of
descriptions
elaborated
by anthropologists
regarding
a
given society
are
all equally
"true"
and that the
great
works of
anthropology
(The Nuer by Evans-Pritchard, Dieu d'eau by Griaule, and so on) are of greater
value because of their authors' talent
rather
than
because
of their
read-out of
the
subject
matter. This relativist
conception
of
anthropology may
be
criticized,
like all relativist
conceptions, by turning
the
relativist argument against its
authors: relativism is,
in
fact,
but
one
of the
points
of view it is
possible to
have regarding
a
given
society.
The
agreement
or
even the
disagreement
of
anthropologists
about the structures of this
or that
society clearly
shows that
an
object
exists -if
not a
"reality"
about
which
observers
argue.
Whether this
object is constructed or contested takes nothing from the materiality of its
existence.
The
representation
is not
less real
than the
reality
which it is
meant
to
represent
and
that is
why
all
the
paradigms
of "invention" and
of
"creation"9
are,
in
a
sense,
nothing
but
the
reverse of
the
objectivism they
claim
to
denounce.
I
also
found
myself
to be
in
opposition
to
any
form of
postmodernism.
I
have
no
intention
of
formulating a
philosophical interrogation
on the
impossibility
of
reaching reality,
but
I
do intend
to
propose
a
new
paradigm.
The
venture of
re-elaboration
which
I
have
undertaken
simply
aims to
grasp
sociologically,
historically, and geographically the meaning of words by carrying out a sort
of
onomastic
simulation. But the
absence
of
a
fixed link
between
the term
and
31.
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden
City,
N.Y.,
1966).
32. John Gumperz, Engager
la
conversation
(Paris, 1989).
33. George
E. Marcus and
Michael M.
J.
Fischer, Anthropology
as Cultural
Critique (Chi-
cago, 1986).
34. Cf. Writing Culture, ed. James Clifford and
George
E.
Marcus
(Berkeley, 1986); Clifford,
The Predicament of Culture; Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author
(Cambridge, Eng., 1988).
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24 JEAN-LOUP
AMSELLE
its referent does
not mean that groups do
not exist. In the work of disassembling
the notion
of
the
ethnic group some were willing to see an attempt
at negating
the existence of groups.
On the contrary, the construction of
groups, far from
being proof of their non-facticity, in fact strengthens their existence. One need
only note what is
presently happening in Africa to be convinced
of this. For
example,
in
Liberia, confrontations
between ethnic
groups
often hide conflicts
of
another origin,
notably religious ones.
The deconstruction of ethnicities, of
peoples
or of
nations, does
not
aim to deny
their
existence,
but simply to
demonstrate their relativity and, consequently,
to question a fundamentalism
that
in
its different
transformations-ethnic,
cultural, or religious-is one of
the most
dangerous
phenomena
of
our era.
IV. "REAPPROPRIATION"
Linked to this constructivist
problematic is the question of
"reappropriation,"
defined as
the
phenomenon
of
feedback
of "etic"
statements
upon social actors
themselves.
The term thus concerns the production
of local identities from what
V.
Y. Mudimbe calls
the "colonial library."35
rom this
perspective,
indigenous
peoples' perceptions
of themselves are affected
by
the feedback
of
colonial
and
postcolonial ethnological texts on their consciousness. In a general fashion,
this
"reappropriation"
s inscribed
in
the
greater
realm
of
relationships between
literacy and orality.
Indeed,
in
the
"oral" cultures, the diffusion of literacy
authenticates the claims
of social
agents
and sanctifies social
relationships
in
some
way.
Here one
will
recognize
the
analysis
of
Jack
Goody36
as
well as its
limitations.
In
West African societies,
influenced by writing
for centuries, and
especially by
an Arabic
literature
transmitting representations
from
the
Old
Testament,
how
can one be certain that
the materials gathered in the field by
the ethnologist do not bear traces of concepts imported before the colonial
conquest?
The schema that
opposes people
of
power
to
people
of
the
earth,
for
example,
is
presented
by anthropologists
as
a cultural
trait characteristic
of numerous societies
of the West African savanna
(Bambara,
Mossi,
Gur-
mance,
and so
on).
But this trait
may
be conceived as
the
product
of
the
incorpo-
ration
of
the totality
of these
political
formations
into
a
common
cultural area
that includes North Africa. The recurring
use of divination
is doubtless ex-
plained
on
the same
principle.
Two consequences spring from these reflections. First, the emphasis on ethnic
specificity
and the
comparativism
it induces
obliterate this
phenomenon
of
incorporation.
Second,
the facts
of
reappropriation
and
reworking
of
ideas,
to
which historians draw the
attention
of
other
social
scientists,
and
which
are
beginning
to ruffle the self-assurance
of
anthropologists,
may
be assimilated
to
an
encounter
between
an
"already
there"
included
in
a
grouping
that
goes
far
beyond
the
local
society
under
study
with an
imported
literature.
In
the
35. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (Bloomington, Ind., 1988).
36. Jack
Goody, La raison
graphique
(Paris,
1979).
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
HISTORICITY
25
political anthropology of West
Africa,
for
example,
the "local"
theories of
power cannot
be reduced to a simple
creation of colonialism but result from
an accord
between people of power and
people of the earth
-
a pairing infiltrated
by Islam and by the colonial theory of conquest. For, in order for that reappro-
priation to take
place, one surely has to assume the existence of a
support that
on
the whole possesses the same
characteristics as the elements that
come to
be added to the
structure. The data brought by the anthropologist
would then
be the product of the accretion of a series
of strata, causing the idea
of an
indigenous layer
of population to regress to
infinity. Anthropologists find them-
selves
in
such
a
state of dizziness whenever
they
ask
themselves about the first
origin of the
institutions they are studying. The loss
of
the conditions
under
which utterances were produced allows them to apprehend as structuresthose
classifications that exist in the local society
only
in
an
unstable form.
These
classifications take on the
power
of
law
only through
the
magic
of
writing.
V. STATE
AND
STATELESS SOCIETIES
To refuse to
ratify the distinction between
state and stateless societies is not
equivalent
to
taking refuge
in
a
kind
of formalism
in
which all cows are black.
If the opposition between people of power and people of the earth is apparent
in
segmentary
societies, the same is also true
in
societies with a central
political
power.
The
hesitation
with which
the first European travelers described the
nature of power
in
coastal African
societies
(chief,
prince, king,
and
so on)
shows clearly
that
the classification of this
or that
society
in
the
categories
distinguished by Fortes
and
Evans-Pritchard
in
African
Political
Systems
(1940)
is
largely arbitrary. To a great extent, political
anthropology
was as much a
projection of the preoccupations of the
outside observers
as
it
was a
pure
description of the
societies studied. To see
in
any
one
system
of
organization
a
stateless
society
or
a
society
with
a
state
thus would
depend greatly
on
the
angle
of
vision,
but
also
on the
attitude
of the
observers
to their
own
society.
Eighteenth-century writings
on
"civil
society"
have
had an
impact
on
the
way
in
which anthropologists
have
classified
African
political systems.
From the
philosopher' effort to define an autonomous
"public space"
as
a bulwark
against
absolutism
arose a
populist
vision
of
society
that
resembles
the
underlying
notion of segmentary society.37One must stress that state and segmentarysocie-
ties,
far
from
corresponding
to two
types
of
societies,
are
nothing
but
the
two
poles
of an
oscillating process.38
Thus civil
society
and
segmentary society
are
not
opposed
to the
state,
but rather
represent
what
is left
of the state when it
has been forgotten. This model explains at the
same
time
the existence of a
"public space"
in
the two forms of
society.
37. Henrika Kuklick, "TribalExemplars: Images
of Political Authority in British
Anthropology,
1895-1945" in Functionalism Historicized, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison, Wisc., 1984).
38. Amselle, Logiques meitisses.
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26 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
By public space must be understood a space that, in a privileged
manner,
serves for the practice of external politics. With the aid of an example from the
Peul,
Bambara, and Malinke societies of southwestern Mali and of northeastern
Guinea, I would like to try and show that "public space" is common to societies
with
a state and segmentary societies.
In
these societies
this public space exists
independently from the ethnic affiliation of the rulers
and from the political
form of
the societies.
In
the states,
in
chieftainships,
and in the village communi-
ties, there are places where politicians, that is to say people who represent their
community to the outside world, officiate. The households (du)
of this region
include a certain number of huts connected together
by a surrounding wall,
and
this
grouping, generally
circular
in
form,
does not communicate
with
the
outside except through a hut with two openings, one turned inward and one
outward. This
hut, called a "vestibule" (bolon),
is
primarily
meant to deal with
the
external relationships
of the
community and as such
appears as the favored
place of politics. It is
in
the vestibule that the head
of the family (dutigi),
also called "chief of the
vestibule" (bolontigi),
receives strangers
and thus the
contacts between the family
as a
political
community
and the outside
world
are established. It should be
noted, however,
that
political authority
is not
randomly distributed among the whole of the society;
it is, on the contrary,
tightly linked to the possession of a certain social status. Only men of nobility
(horon, tontigi)
are named
to be
"chief
of the
vestibule,"
and neither slaves
nor women can claim this title.
In
this ethnographic description political
is
identified with "common wealth" and exteriority.
Indeed, this definition puts the external relationships
of the communities
in
the
foreground, and,
in
this regard, it is difficult
to
imagine
a
society completely
turned
in
upon itself,
one that would not
grant any space,
no matter
how
minimal,
to
a
stranger.
If
such
a
society
did
exist,
I would
reserve the
name
apolitical for it. But the model of "the war of each against each" (Hobbes) or
of the "state of
nature"
(Locke, Rousseau),
even
though
based
upon
concrete
Amerindian
societies,39
is a convenient fiction
that allows
political philosophy
to
elaborate
the
other fictions
of contract and
civil society.
If
no
purely warfaring
society
has ever existed
except
for
a
very
short
period,40
hen the
"civil
society"
which
is its inversion would
also
lose
its
operative
value.
With the same
blow,
39. "It may peradventure be thought,
there was never such a time, nor condition
of warre as
this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places,
where
they live so
now.
For the savage people
in
many places
of
America, except
the
government
of
small Families, the concord whereof dependeth
on naturall
lust,
have no
government
at all;
and
live at this day in that brutish manner,
as I said before" (Hobbes, Leviathan [1651],
ed. C. B.
MacPherson [Harmondsworth, Eng.,
1968], 187.) It is in the writings of J. Acosta, a Peruvian
Jesuit
that Locke finds his illustrations of the "state of
nature." "There are
great
and
apparent
conjectures," says he,
"that
these
men
[speaking of those
of
Peru]
for a
long
time had neither
kings nor commonwealths, but lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida-the
Cheriquanas,
those of Brazil,
and
many other nations,
which have no certain kings, but, as occasion is offered
in
peace or war, they choose their captains
as they please." (Locke, Two Treatises of
Civil Govern-
ment [1690] [London, 1924], 167.)
40. For example
in
Wasolon; cf.
Amselle, Logiques
mitisses,
212.
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY
27
associated anthropological notions (segmentary society, society against the
state) become null and void, as does the contrast between
state and stateless
society. Every society has a "public space" to be managed,
every society is
directly political. It is by denying the political side, by refusing to recognize
an exteriority in different societies, that ethnological reason, a faithful continu-
ator of a certain political philosophy, has won its renown.
VI. INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY
Another way to locate certain societies in a radical alterity is to deny them the
possibility
of
reserving
a
place for the
individual.
In
contrast, to begin the
analysis with the individual is doubtless one of the best ways to escape from
any
form of
exclusion, stigmatization,
and racism.
This
is so even
if
that proce-
dure
flies in the
face of sociological and anthropological tradition that empha-
sizes
the communitary
and
collective
aspect
of
"primitive"
societies and
ethnic
minorities (Durkheim, Thnnies,
L.
Dumont).
What one
might
call
the "imputa-
tion
of community" is one of
the
favored ways
of advancing racist discourse:
it is by assigning a "singular plural" the Jew, the Arab, the Bambara, the
homosexual -and thus
by
the
negation
of
individuality
that
all
forms
of
rejec-
tion are practiced. To recognize the individual status of an Other is to recognize
him
or her as an alter ego, as a participant
in
the same humanity and the same
contemporaneity.
In
that sense racism
is
in no
way peculiar
to Western societies:
when Europeans make general statements about the Peul or the Bambara, their
attitude is completely symmetrical
to
that of Malians
who
are incapable
of
seeing
the individual
in
the
European.
Racism is therefore as much the act of
the
dominated as of those who
dominate;
it
results
from a
holistic misreading
that consists
of
reasoning
in
culturalist or communitarian
terms.
Every society
is at once holistic and individualistic: it is holistic when observed from the
outside,
and individualistic
when
one becomes one
with it.
From
this
perspec-
tive,
racism is not linked to
ignorance
of
the Other but to failure to
recognize
the Other as
an individual. The belief
in
the existence of
"corporate groups"-
lineage, clan, people,
civil
society-that is,
as
organs
that have a
claim to
sovereignty,
constitutes
in
a sense
the most
elementary
form of
racism.
Sartre
is,
as has
already
been
mentioned,
one of
the
rare authors
who has
tried to
safeguard
the essence
of
Marxism
by relying
on
a
methodological
indi-
vidualism.41The intersubjective approach, for which he was denounced by
the
structuralist Marxists,
seems
to constitute the
main contribution
of his
approach.
The
priority
he
gave
to the
aims and
projects
of
individuals,
and
thus
to a
phenomenological grasp
of the
social, reinvigorated
what
in
Marxism
had become
congealed,
both
in
its Stalinist and
its structural
version. But
if
one cannot
but
subscribe to
the
way
in
which Sartre
proceeds
with
the ideal
construction
of
social
groups (serial groups, groups
in
fusion, organized groups,
institutionalized groups),
it is still
the
case
that
his
individualist
sociology
and
41. Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique.
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28
JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
theoretical humanism
drew on
the deficiency of the majority of social theories,
namely a sharp opposition between
primitive and
other societies. In
fact,
when
Sartre puts
individual praxis
in the center of his approach, he conceives
of its
role only in the framework of historical societies, while the "primitive"societies
remain fixed
within the repetition
of the Same and owe their modifications
only
to
external influences.42
In
that
sense,
Sartre finds
himself
in
the same place
as
Levi-Strauss
who has frequently
contrasted "cold" and "hot"
societies.43
In
short,
it
seems
as
if
all
sociology,
no matter how
individualist,
needs
an exterior
referent or an implicit ethnology
in
order to affirm
its validity. Grant me the
primacy of individualism in historical
societies,
the sociologist seems to
say,
and
I will
leave you
the
non-historicity
of
exotic societies.
This
is
why
Sartre,
despite his profession of a progressive or Marxist faith, should definitely be
placed
in
the
mainstream of liberal
thinking.
Like Sartre, Luc Boltanski
makes a categorical
distinction between "critical
societies" (ours)
and
traditional
societies.44
Different
from traditional
societies,
critical societies
are supposedly characterized by the existence of several
"cities,"
thereby
allowing
the
actors to
pass alternatively
from
one world into the other.
What makes Boltanski's
approach
so interesting for anthropologists
is that it
permits a circumvention
of the opposition between
individual and collective
action. By introducing the notion of "agent" nto the analysis of denunciation,
Boltanski
manages
to substitute the dyad "singular versus general"
for the dyad
"individual versus collective"
and thereby gives
prominence to what he
calls
continual
variations
of
size.
In
aim this
approach
is
thus
totally comparable
to that
of
Evans-Pritchard
when,
for
example,
he
analyzes
the
phenomena
of
fusion and
fission
in
segmentary
African
societies.
There, too,
a movement
is
at
work
in
which
groups
of
increasing
size
are embraced
(individuals,
segments,
lineages,
clans).
The alternation
of phases
of
political
contraction
and expansion
may be clearly observed at the outbreak of a conflict that is at first purely local
but that
progressively
involves larger
units. Let us take
for
example
the
late
nineteenth-century conflict
known
in
Wasolon (Mali)
under
the
name
of the
"Peul War." On the occasion of
a
funeral,
the Jalo of Lontola sent
a
challenge
to
Chief
Namakoro
Jakite,
who
responded
with another
challenge
and
asked
42. Ibid.,
124, n. 1: "Il ne faudrait
pas definir l'homme
par
l'historicit6-puisqu'il
y a des
societes
sans histoire
-
mais par
la
possibility
permanent de vivre
historiquement les ruptures qui
bouleversent parfois les societes
de repetition.
Cette definition est necessairement
a
posteriori,
c'est-A-dire qu'elle nait au sein d'une sociWte
historique
et
qu'elle
est en elle-meme le
resultat de
transformations
sociales. Mais elle revient
s'appliquer
sur les societes sans histoire
de la meme
maniere que
l'Histoire elle-meme revient
sur celles-ci pour
les transformer
-
d'abord par
l'exterieur
et ensuite
dans et par
l'interiorisation de l'exteriorite."
43. Claude Levi-Strauss,
La
pensee sauvage
(Paris, 1962), 328-329.
He clearly perceived
the
difficulties inherent
in
Sartre's position,
but the solution
he proposes -history unfolds
the
fan of
societies
in
time, ethnology
in
space (339)-reintroduces
a
split
between ethnology
and
sociology.
Either every society is historical
or no
society
is, and it is not so much
the option
chosen that
counts
as the fact of
initiating
or not
initiating
a rift between several
types
of
societies.
Nevertheless,
as
far as
methodology goes,
it
is true that the technique, consisting
of varying the variables
within
the same cultural area, is often the only way to grasp the meaning of an institution.
44. Boltanski,
Les cadres.
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
HISTORICITY 29
a neighboring
chief, Kunjan Jemori Sako, to
help
him
subdue the Jalo. Kunjan
Jemori Sako's
army went to Lontola, pillaged the
village, and went home, but
failed to hand over
part of the booty to Namakoro
Jakite. During
a
conflict
with another local chief, Namakoro Jakite tried to take revenge on Kunjan
Jemori Sako and
succeeded
in
bringing into the war a
large number
of
regional
chieftainships,
as well as the king of Wojene. After a reversal of
alliances,
customary
in
such situations, all the Peul regrouped against the forces
of the
king of Wojene, thus constraining the
commander-in-chief to take flight.
But
this
confederation against the King of Wojene, with its ethnic character,
had
only an ephemeral
existence.
A
short
time afterwards the region fell back
into
a
phase of
segmentation,
that is to
say of
wars of one
against all.
In this example, it appears that purely local and segmentary clashes, which
frequently
originate in conflicts among individuals, can trigger wars
involving
states, through
an
enlargement
of the
scope
of conflict.
Conversely,
the
interven-
tions of the state
are often very
brief
and quickly give way to the feuds and
vendettas that
are the usual form of violence
in
the region. In
reference to
Hume's analysis of
the relationship between paganism and Christianity,45one
may deem these conflicts to be rooted
in
the
political oscillation
whose
trace
is also
observable
in
ethnic identity changes.
Thus, critical societies are not the only ones to possess a plurality of "cities":
exotic
societies can
equally
move back
and
forth
between several worlds.
By
passing
from
segmentarity
to the
state,
the societies
of
southern
Mali,
for ex-
ample, also pass
from
the
singular
to
the
general
through
a
kind of
ascent to
the extremes.
Here, then,
the state and
the
segmentary
constitute
two
possible
modalities of the
public space.
VII. PRIMORDIAL SYNCRETISM
In
regard
to the
Peul, Bambara,
and
Malinke populations of Mali and
Guinea,
I
have defended
the idea of mixture
or
primordial
syncretism.46
Edwin
Wilmsen
and
James
Denbow
developed
the same idea
in
their
analysis
of the
Khoi,
San,
Tswana,
and Herero
populations
of
the
Kalahari, thereby rendering
the
vision
of
the
Bushman as
eternal
hunter-gatherer
null and void.47
n
fact,
these
different
populations
are
involved
in
a
plurality
of economic activities:
foraging, hunting,
gathering,
cattle
breeding, agriculture, trade,
and
craftsmanship.
Over a
long
historical period, they simultaneously or alternately practiced all of these activi-
ties and
entered into
a constant network
of interaction. The
very object
of
research
must thus
be
organized by
the articulation
of
these social formations
and
is
not limited itself to each
entity
taken
in
isolation. At the end of the
nineteenth
century,
under the
influence
of merchants and
European
mission-
45. David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects,
4
vols. (London, 1753-1754).
46. Amselle, Logiques
mitisses.
47. Edwin N. Wilmsen and James R. Denbow, "ParadigmaticHistory of San-speaking Peoples
and Current Attempts
at
Revision," Current Anthropology
31
(1990), 489-524.
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30 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE
aries, this network of overlapping relationships was dismembered and gave
birth to societies and cultures circumscribed and reified by colonial administra-
tors. The Bushmen of the Kalahari are thus neither the living relics of the period
preceding the neolithic, nor the emblematic representatives of a "mode of a
foraging production" whose roots supposedly go back to prehistoric times. The
Bushmen and the San are categories invented by colonial thinking just as the
representation of the people of the Kalahari as foragers is invented. In fact, this
representation has been extracted from a whole series of subsistence strategies in
which the totality of the rural populations of Botswana was involved. Thus
from a syncretic situation, societies, cultures, indeed "modes of production"48
have emerged under the pressure of colonialism and of the European gaze.
By postulating a primordial syncretism, I wanted to advance the idea of a
multiplicity,
a
plurality
of
belonging at the beginning, which seemed to me to
be the main characteristic of precolonial Africa. By showing that only fuzzy
groupings prevailed before the European conquest, I simply wanted to underline
that changes
in
identity were the
rule
and that, consequently, categories such
as
those of culture
and
society could not appear.
In
fact,
in
order for African
cultures to exist as
such,
it
was
necessary
that
the
European
cultures
had been
hypostatized and that the idea of them had been projected onto exotic realities.
On this condition, a filtering process and a disarticulation of the "networks of
society"
can be made
operative,
a
process
that
gives
birth to a
representation
of
Africa as the land of welcome
for
a multitude of cultures or ethnicities.
Thus, the debate on the autonomy of hunter-gatherer societies ties
in
with
the
debate
on
ethnicity. Indeed,
a common naturalist and
typological inspiration
propels the
definition both of
pure types
of societies
and
of immutable ethnici-
ties.
Jan Vansina
thus
points out,
in
reference to Wilmsen and Denbow's
article,
that such research undermines the foundations
of all
comparative anthropology
by relying on a sociocultural approach of the evolutionist type and, conse-
quently,
that it
is
necessary
to
change paradigms.49
This
kind of work
does,
indeed, force researchersto redefine the premises
on
which
an
adequate compar-
ative
anthropology
can henceforth
be constructed.
In
defining
cultures or
types
of
societies, ethnologists quite frequently employ
ideological representations
that
mirror
in
reverse
their
own
society.
If the
topos
of
the
hunter-gatherer,
for
example,
has
so
effectively
taken root
in
our
imagina-
tion,
it
is because
it
constitutes
an
identity
referent
indispensable
to the func-
tioning
of our
civilization.50
This
civilization,
like the
sociological
theories that
account
for
it, presuppose,
as we have
seen,
an
implicit ethnology.
From this
perspective,
the
relationship
between
anthropology
and
history
appears very
different
from
what it was
at
the start.
Distorted
by
the debate
48. Richard
B.
Lee, The
Kung San: Men, Women
and Work in a
Foraging Society (Cambridge,
Eng., 1979).
49.
Jan Vansina, "Comments
on Wilmsen
and Denbow," CurrentAnthropology
31(1990), 516.
50. Edwin N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (Chi-
cago, 1989).
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ANTHROPOLOGY
AND
HISTORICITY
31
between
functionalism and evolutionism,
the
question of historicity could
not
have been
satisfactorily broached
until a true
history of exotic societies
was
established;
that
is,
until historians began
to be interested
in
the past
of these
societies. Then the contemporaneity
of the latter could
be postulated
as
well
as the different phenomena
accompanying
it: feedback of
literacy
over orality
and
the
weight of imported representations
on indigenous consciousness.
But
the
coexistence
of a
plurality of systems (indigenous
and imported) equally
forces one
to question
oneself on the compatibility
of
these
schemas
with
one
another. Thus,
for
example,
rather
than detecting the result
of foreign
influences
(Islam or
colonization) in West
African binary
oppositions like the people
of
power versus the people
of the
earth, would it
not be appropriate
to
see in
them
a universal
characteristic?
If
such is
the
case,
the
question
of
historicity
would refer back to that
of
universalism,
that
is
to say
to a favoring
of
resem-
blances over cultural
relativism.
Two possibilities,
in short, are
offered to the anthropologist:
to start by
positing differences
in
order then
to find
resemblances or,
on the contrary, to
hypothesize similarities
in order,
later, to appreciate the
full extent
of
dis-
cordance.
I
prefer
the
second
solution.
EHESS, Centre
d'Etudes Africaines
Paris
TRANSLATED
BY
MARJOLIJN
DE JAGER