In Search of the Grand Narrative -- A Review of Marcus and Fisher
It is apparent George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer’s opening dialogue in their book, Anthropology as cultural critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (1987, 1996) are in search of new dynamic to explain the trend toward which anthropology was headed in the 1980’s and later revisited in the second addition in the 1990s. According to the authors, the “grand theory” of anthropology has dissolved into fragmentary representations, and has been besieged by the over interpretation of ethnographic data.
Simply, the discourse of the human experience has been marginalized and saturated with political and social agendas of the abstract post modern ideals, instead of the essentialism[1] of the inductive data analysis from the collected data so that a more deductive process of testing empirically of culture paradigm could be obtained. In so being that, the fragmentation of theoretical perspective led to the disarray, or more aptly put, the chaos of “post” knowledge designations in its wake, such as “post-modernism, post-structuralism, or post-Marxism,” to name a few (Marcus and Fischer, 1986).
Marcus and Fischer refer to this as a “crisis of representation,” in that there seems to be “no certainty,” or lack of better term, direction to the course of the social sciences. Everything is “suspect” and the viewing of post-World War II paradigms have failed. One can say that the dynamics of post-war colonialism played a role in the fragmentation of theoretical and led to the shifting of the “grand theory” to the more problematic representation of individualized ethnography. One of those problematic theoretical was that of Talcott Parsons, which took hold, in part, in the 1960’s, but later was decimated due to the political upheaval of the time. They say in reference to Talcott Parsons’s influence and politicization,
The understanding of culture should be the primary dynamic within anthropology instead of the politicization of it. With that stated, Marcus and Fischer opening treatment tried to make sense of the fragmentation within anthropology and move beyond the “post” dramatic hypersensitive nature of the political extremes of blame and political correctness. The crisis in representation therefore eventuates to“everything has to be deconstructed to its elemental components."Moreover, reductionists views of culture contributes to this fragmentation. The narrative of the individual supplants the greater universal archetypes and have the authors searching for a replacement of the “grand theory,” they say
The display of academia's view of cultural diversity in itself has led to public backlash. An observer of the last three presidential election cycles within the United States in regards to what has been called the “culture wars,” and one begins to understand the frustration of the crisis of representation discourse. But, putting that aside for the moment, Marcus and Fischer are simply reporting the fragmentary discourse that has led anthropology away from “grand theory” to the eventuation of interpretative individualistic ethnographies—or what they call “interpretative anthropology” and again, are looking for a unifying dialectic to supplant the chaos of individualism, or at the very least, the uncertainty of it. The variability of the individual psyche within anthropology has disrupted its overall purpose—and that is the studying of culture.
In sum, culture (as a collective phenomenon) en masse makes up of individuals certainly, but measured as a group that is shared and is sharing with one another to form a consensus of societal rules are learned and distributed. This does not mean that individual has no role within overriding culture at large, but the examination of the individual aspects of it is like a dog chasing after its tail and unable to catch it, or asking which came first the chicken or the egg, it is ineffable[2] to apply individualism to culture at large. Because the infrastructure, structure, superstructure (Harris) in which the individual influences the societal narrative cannot be measured to a certainty. And, there are those who believe that the individual are not part of the nexus of history, but are part of its greater currents of the historical narrative (Marx) of which they take hold of.
Nevertheless, dynamic nature of individualism, interpretative anthropology, which has been expressed by way of the ethnography, by such greats as Clifford Geertz, has created or had created post-modernistic malaise in which one’s culture has become shunted to the realm of relativistic obscurity and the “irony of history.” As Marcus and Fisher believe, the crisis of representation has left anthropology in the search of an unifying force for a "grand narrative."
[1] Some would not equate essentialism with inductive or deductive reasoning but more with reductionistic grand theory.
[2] Some would disagree with this perspective, and argue that culture is less ineffable when viewed as a phenomenon of its order (Durkheim) versus a collection of individual acts or behavior.
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| Image of 1996 Book Cover |
Marcus and Fischer refer to this as a “crisis of representation,” in that there seems to be “no certainty,” or lack of better term, direction to the course of the social sciences. Everything is “suspect” and the viewing of post-World War II paradigms have failed. One can say that the dynamics of post-war colonialism played a role in the fragmentation of theoretical and led to the shifting of the “grand theory” to the more problematic representation of individualized ethnography. One of those problematic theoretical was that of Talcott Parsons, which took hold, in part, in the 1960’s, but later was decimated due to the political upheaval of the time. They say in reference to Talcott Parsons’s influence and politicization,
…Those times were sufficiently dominated by the hopes for (or reactions to) images of massive, revolutionary transformations of society that grand, abstract theoretical visions themselves remained in vogue. While retaining its politicized dimension as a legacy of the 1960’s, social thought in the years since has grown more suspicious of the ability of encompassing paradigms… Consequently, the most interesting theoretical debates in a number of fields have shifted to the level of method, to problems of epistemology, interpretation, and discursive forms of representation themselves, employed by social thinkers (p 9)...In other words, the fragmentation of theory led to the inculcation of disillusionment from reality encompassing “grand theory” to the individualized paradigms (or narratives). Thus, the “crisis of representation” has been the fragmentation of the narrative. Instead of finding a pathway to the archetype of existence, an overemphasis of blame on the structure of how culture has been recapitulated and revitalized (Wallace, 1962) itself versus simply understanding the nature of culture.
The understanding of culture should be the primary dynamic within anthropology instead of the politicization of it. With that stated, Marcus and Fischer opening treatment tried to make sense of the fragmentation within anthropology and move beyond the “post” dramatic hypersensitive nature of the political extremes of blame and political correctness. The crisis in representation therefore eventuates to“everything has to be deconstructed to its elemental components."Moreover, reductionists views of culture contributes to this fragmentation. The narrative of the individual supplants the greater universal archetypes and have the authors searching for a replacement of the “grand theory,” they say
Within anthropology itself, the current absence of paradigmatic authority is registered by the fact that there are presently many anthropologies: efforts to revitalize old programs such as ethnosemantics, British functionalism, French structuralism, cultural ecology, and psychological anthropology; efforts to synthesize Marxist approach to structuralism, semiotics, and other forms of symbolic analysis; efforts to establish more encompassing frameworks of explanation such as sociobiology to achieve the aim of a more fully ‘scientific’ anthropology; efforts to merge the influential study of language with the concerns of social theory. All of these have merits and problems in different measures; yet, all are inspired by and inspire the practice of ethnography as a common denominator in a very fragmented period (p 16).Thus, “anthropological writing” and the crisis of representation has been affecting other disciplines, and this in turn, has “transform[ed] the way cultural diversity is displayed.”
The display of academia's view of cultural diversity in itself has led to public backlash. An observer of the last three presidential election cycles within the United States in regards to what has been called the “culture wars,” and one begins to understand the frustration of the crisis of representation discourse. But, putting that aside for the moment, Marcus and Fischer are simply reporting the fragmentary discourse that has led anthropology away from “grand theory” to the eventuation of interpretative individualistic ethnographies—or what they call “interpretative anthropology” and again, are looking for a unifying dialectic to supplant the chaos of individualism, or at the very least, the uncertainty of it. The variability of the individual psyche within anthropology has disrupted its overall purpose—and that is the studying of culture.
In sum, culture (as a collective phenomenon) en masse makes up of individuals certainly, but measured as a group that is shared and is sharing with one another to form a consensus of societal rules are learned and distributed. This does not mean that individual has no role within overriding culture at large, but the examination of the individual aspects of it is like a dog chasing after its tail and unable to catch it, or asking which came first the chicken or the egg, it is ineffable[2] to apply individualism to culture at large. Because the infrastructure, structure, superstructure (Harris) in which the individual influences the societal narrative cannot be measured to a certainty. And, there are those who believe that the individual are not part of the nexus of history, but are part of its greater currents of the historical narrative (Marx) of which they take hold of.
Nevertheless, dynamic nature of individualism, interpretative anthropology, which has been expressed by way of the ethnography, by such greats as Clifford Geertz, has created or had created post-modernistic malaise in which one’s culture has become shunted to the realm of relativistic obscurity and the “irony of history.” As Marcus and Fisher believe, the crisis of representation has left anthropology in the search of an unifying force for a "grand narrative."
[1] Some would not equate essentialism with inductive or deductive reasoning but more with reductionistic grand theory.
[2] Some would disagree with this perspective, and argue that culture is less ineffable when viewed as a phenomenon of its order (Durkheim) versus a collection of individual acts or behavior.
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