A Theoretical Frame
There is a sense in which this work is part of a much wider project and it is important to understand that larger project in order to fully understand what I am trying to achieve within this book. My starting point is post-modernism, or perhaps a caricature of post-modernism, that was common in the nineteen nineties. At that point, at the height of post-modern criticism in many different disciplines, the whole post-modern project appeared to be one of deconstruction, of taking the grand narratives apart, laying out the different elements that were revealed and reconstructing them in a series of entirely random ways; what has been described as playing in the ruins of the past. What this suggests is, at one level, that there is no ultimate truth, simply a variety of perspectives each of which is of equal validity with the others, and at another level, and implied in the first, that there is no sense of future, nowhere to go apart from more playing and more and more fanciful reconstructions of the parts (past).
There was a great deal in the post-modern moment that was important and needed to come in order to take the wider academic discussion forward. Anthropology, among many other disciplines, found the space within post-modernism, to offer a significant critique of its most precious assumptions and all disciplines learnt not to take themselves too seriously as part of the critical discussion. It was the sense of collapse, however, the denial of any significant future that ultimately saw post-modernism as an intellectual dead end. Some have tried to pretend that it has never happened. Some took it as the opportunity to turn back to the pre-modern and to restate older truths and grand narratives in new and more or less original ways. Others have learnt the lessons, stated their own perspective and carried on much as they had before, although in a perhaps more knowing way. Very few people, so far as I can see, have asked what we really need to do with all the different perspectives, deconstructed elements and ruins that we were left with at the end of the post-modern critique.
It is here that I really want to begin. I want to acknowledge that there is no single grand narrative that we can use to make sense of the world, even those narratives of critical theory such as orientalism and post-colonialism, they all have their limitations, they can all be approached, deconstructed and challenged. That does not mean, however, that we are left merely with ruins. What we are left with, I would suggest, are multiple strands, what might be called ‘complexity’. It is not that there is no truth, nor quite that there are multiple truths, each equally valid. What we are confronted with in most human sciences (and perhaps in the arts and humanities more generally) are highly complex truths, truths that cannot be reduced to single narratives or snappy formulae. It is that complexity that I would suggest we need to begin to recognise, accept and explore, and that is part of what I am trying to achieve in this work.
In order to achieve this reconstruction of complexity we have to acknowledge that there are many different ways of seeing and engaging with any single object or idea. To try and grasp the full range of possible perspectives will, of course, always be impossible. Even to get close probably takes many different scholars from many different disciplines. What I can do here, however, is to show, in some small way, how this might play out. I have in mind the possibility of beginning with a specific object, let us say a Black Monkey Mask from among the Dogon. From here it is possible to ask so many different questions and to listen to so many different narratives. There is the story of its construction, its role, and the place of the carver, within the political and social structure of the Dogon. We can ask about those who wear the mask, the rest of the outfit, the dances, the rituals, where it is kept when it is not being worn, is it inherited, placed in a cave, or simply left to rot and so on. At another level we have the question of the symbolism, what does the mask mean, why does it have this shape, what are the artistic conventions that determine what it is. There are stories related to the myths in which the Black Monkey has a role, their part in the wider mythic and religious world of the Dogon, both in the past and in the much more complex interreligious contexts of the present. When was it danced, does it make any difference whether it was danced just for the Dogon, did it ever have any role within the dances put on for tourists, and if so how did the meaning of the mask, the dance and the myths behind the dance change.
Once we move out from the Dogon themselves, this mask, at some point in its history, left Mali and came to Europe. Here it was given a new name, and does ‘black monkey’ really say what it is? It was caught up in the art market, the meanings it held for its owners began to change, its value was based on other, quite different, factors. It was sold to a collector, perhaps had a place at some time in its life within an exhibition or within the vaults of a museum, so initiating a whole new set of questions, understandings and narratives. Eventually I bought it through a dealer in Paris and it now sits on a shelf in my home. My own engagement with the mask is at once that of a collector, an anthropologist, one who has travelled as a tourist to Mali and as one who was born in Africa (albeit a very different part of the continent). These are all highly complex questions. They all engage a range of narratives and are immersed in their own distinct scholarly discourses. There is no single truth here, but truth has a role – this mask is not modelled, despite the obvious similarity in shape, on the helmet of some ancient astronaut from another solar system. However, a full understanding will demand that attention is given to all these questions, and perhaps to many more that I cannot begin to think about here, or to address within this text.
It is my contention, within this wider framework, that it is probably anthropology, drawing on and incorporating so many other disciplines, that will provide the appropriate academic home for such an analysis. So many of these questions have, in fact, been addressed within the anthropological literature (although many others from other disciplines have contributed and anthropologists have always drawn on the insights of others). There is something about the holistic approach of anthropology, its failure to recognise the normative discourses of its home society (or even its home discipline) that makes it an ideal scholarly context within which to embark on this kind of quest. One text, in particular, has helped me to see the possibilities of such an approach, and inspired me to begin to write this book, and that is Michael Taussig’s What Color is the Sacred? (2009). In this work Taussig begins with a very simple observation, from the work of Goethe, that Europeans see vivid colour as being exotic and ‘other’, and uses this as the spring board to range over wide spans of history and geography in his search for the meaning and uses of indigo, its involvement in colonial, and even Nazi, discourses, and its place within so many different histories and narratives. The book may not have a simple conclusion, it raises far more questions than it answers, but it achieves a depth of connection and completeness that very few other texts, whether within anthropology or beyond, ever achieve. I do not have the literary talent that Taussig displays, the way I put ideas together will always be very different from him, but I am hoping that this book, as an illustration of the wider theoretical frame of post-post-modernism, will also encourage others to think and to ask their own questions of so many other objects, ideas, narratives and people.
