Presence and Representation

 In the article “Presence and Representation: the Other and Anthropological Writing” by Johannes Fabian, he talks about the representation, disjunctions, and the process of othering.

Johannes talks about how the idea of representation implies the prior assumption of a difference between reality and its doubles, by this he means that the word representation already has its own set of meanings behind it, which then brings into focus the already formed relationship between reality and its doubles. This can be also seen as trying to show how there is a preconceived knowledge between the known and the knower. Known and knower, their relationship to each other refers to how the knower is viewed as a viewer and observer whereas the known is seen as being an arbitrary term to refer to something within a culture or society that only people within will be privy to such information. It illustrates how the idea of representation will vary based on different aspects, whether it be within a culture or society, but that in the end it is still implying a relationship between two things.

Johannes also looks at the different disjunctions that exist and how they are implicated in the process of othering. Ethnography acquired its present free-floating character as a result of certain disjunctions that still pose problems and are the reasons why we worry about the meaning of the term in the first place. Five main disjunctions were explored in his writing.

Firstly, ethnography’s innocent meaning would simply be a “description of peoples”, yet by the time the word was coined, ethnoi had lost its innocence as a neutral term and had started taking on an evaluative notion. However, from the beginning ethnoi had a normative slant, suggesting less of the activity of writing than of its products.

Secondly, when writing about people started to become a professional activity, when field research became accepted and required practice, the disjunction of ethnography from writing was so advanced that one could, without flinching, designate observation on the spot as “doing ethnography”. This basically means that the observations and the writing at one point were so disconnected that it became more about observation then it did about actual fieldwork. Early anthropologists took place in armchair research, which encouraged the process of othering, which is referring to people who are not within your culture as people who are not one of us, now this happens less often since fieldwork is not only encouraged but also generally mandatory.

Thirdly, the disjunction between ethnography and writing has always been at the bottom of making a distinction between research and write-up, it has been masked as a sequence but it is in fact a ritual dramatization. This can lead to othering since there is so much leeway between the research and the writing, until this gap has been properly filled there will always be a disjunction between both.

Fourthly, in the 1950’s anthropology reached its peak and two things happened. It became opposed to theory, which in turn became a double-edged sword, because most anthropological work is based primarily on theory. Simultaneously, young anthropologist became inventors of “new ethnography” and as a result ethnography itself was declared a theoretical enterprise. The movement eventually led to anthropological writing becoming itself important.

Finally, the disjunction between ethnography and theory was not just a matter of assigning different hierarchical status to different sort of activities, it was seen as a generic crisis. It also allowed for anthropological writing to go back into a central debate position and allowed for the revival of critical thought.

Othering is cut short when awareness of the political dimension of writing remains limited to insights about the political character of aesthetic standards and rhetorical devices. The other in anthropology is said to be dominated by ethnography, to become a victim it must be written at.

References:

Fabian, J. (1990). Presence and representation: the other and anthropological writing. Critical Inquiry, 16(4), 753-772. doi: 10.1525/can.1992.7.3.02a00030.