Can the Activists Speak in the Academy?
De-centering the Politics of Representation

Maribel Casas-Cortés

“Can we consider reflexivity as resistance?”
Lesley Calihman Alabi

“We are talking then about another level of reflexivity,
where the academy is transformed in a locus of resistance”
Chris Nelson

The intense week of readings “Against Ethnography” in the context of our course on contemporary sociocultural theory inevitably forced some of us to rethink our attraction to a doctoral program in Anthropology. This discipline is about representing, and representation is a political act, embedded in power relations, and the construction of subjectivities. Representation can take different forms. However, being Anthropology the product of the colonial enterprise, its representational practices were shaped by a comfortable hierarchy in writing, welcomed by the positivist character of the academy at the time. Is the discipline condemned to failure in its endeavor of representation? Or are the politics of representation situated, changing over time, and having different epistemological and political consequences?

Through this paper –as an open assignment- I have been driven by a desire to understand the development of the discipline in terms of its relationship with its “objects”. In that sense, this essay explores briefly the shifts in the practices of representation within the discipline. On another level, the readings and the discussions in class have had an inspirational impact, making me think about the anthropology that I want to take part in. In relation to this more reflexive part, I would like to suggest that the developing relationship of Anthropology with social movements opens possibilities of a new politics of representation.

Part I

Epistemologies and practices of representation in Anthropology

Through three texts encountered during core, I will attempt to present the debates around the issue of representation within the discipline.
In Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, the relationship between colonialism and anthropology is eloquently acknowledged and problematized by Talal Asad, denouncing what he points out as a general reluctance among his contemporary professional anthropologists to recognize the influence of the colonial power structure within which this discipline has taken shape (1973:15).

The author argues that the asymmetry of the colonial encounter had profoundly influence the “practicality” of the discipline, since it was at the service of the dominant side. The issues of colonial patronage, powerful funders, European audience, etc were the basis for an epistemology that reinforces the authority of the anthropologist and the objectification of the people studied. The anthropological approach was mainly functionalist trusting “a totalizing method (…) and ethnographic holism” (1973:13). Politically, under a façade of scientific neutrality, anthropological material was not subversive but submissive to the colonial enterprise.

Edward Said, the master of questioning representational practices, takes up this critique in Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors. Said captures the moment of awareness and rage against this colonial legacy, reviewing the different angry traditions –Marxist or anti-imperialist Anthropology; postmodern Anthropology, Andean Studies, etc-. Some times you can feel that the author is subtly calling for “an end of anthropology” (1989:208) or insisting in the “deep sentiment of Kuhnian paradigm-exhaustion” (1989:209) and supporting the field of literature as a more sensitive terrain towards the other. He observes how in these revisionist traditions the problematic of the observer in the production of “inferior Others” (210) is not addressed completely. There is still an authoritative and neutral third person in their texts - “Who speaks?”- asks Said calling for an epistemological shifting that would reverse the concept of observation. Said does not condemn any attempt to talk about difference to failure, but situates the knowledge industry and its epistemological basis under historical constraints, pointing out its political and quotidian consequences.

The series of critiques from outside and from within –that are not developed here- were followed by an intense moment of reflexivity, an attempt to make the ethnographer visible and positioned in the dialogical process of cultural encounters. The experimental excitement in writing -exploring new forms of authority, alternative narratives, and discursive procedures- received the name of “new poetics”. Kathleen Steward’s ethnography on the “other America” would be a perfect example of these new possibilities of representation. The title of her book -A Space on the Side of the Road –refers to the powerful concept of the gap between the signifier and the signified (1996: 5). The reclaiming of that space avoids the essentializing of local narratives –the every day life in W. Virginia- and allows a practical revision of the theory of culture, acknowledging culture as something difficult to grasp, as a “tense, contradictory, dialectical, dialogic, texted, textured, both practical and imaginary [process]” (1996:5).
According to Steward, this epistemological shift is brought up by different traditions: feminist ethnographies; subaltern, postcolonial and minority studies; discourse centered approaches; performance theory; and dialogic, reflexive and deconstructive approaches (1996: 25). The reflexive epistemology is explored thought new understandings of ethnographic work –“as a process of [listening], re-membering and retelling” (1996:7)- and through experimental writing –“ethnopoetic notations” (1996:9). The reader can feel the excitement about the new possibilities and at the same time the author points out that her work is not a final solution to the problem of representation.

New narrative practices and new terminology thus emerged, but what are the political consequences of this reflexive engagement with the text and this recognition of ethnography as a dialogical process? In our class discussions we left this question open- whether or not the epistemological shift was followed by changes in everyday and institutional practices in anthropology more generally. I would like to propose that it is possible to challenge “empire as a way of life” in Anthropology criticized bitterly by Said (1989: 216).

From a ‘New Poetics’ to a New Politics of Writing.

The provocative piece “Can the Subaltern Speak” by Spivak challenged the celebration of new ways of representation. In a brave critique, she attacks “our best prophets of heterogeneity and the Other” as being permeated by uncritical notions of representation, claiming to give voice to the oppressed in the ridiculous roles of “a Maoist” taken by Foucault and “a worker militant” by Deleuze (1988: 67). She is very skeptical of any achievement in the epistemological shift. On the contrary she maintains the persistence of the “epistemic violence” product of the colonial process where Europe is erected as the undetermined Subject holding the explanatory power, and the colonized are relegated to be the Others -the Objects to be explained- whose voice and agency have been stolen.

Foucault and Deleuze call for the end of theory as a signifier, theory is reclaimed as action and not as representation: “A theory is like a box of tools (…) there is no more representation; there is nothing but action” (in Spivak1988: 70). Behind these attractive manifesto-like statements, “a post-representationalist vocabulary hides an essentialist agenda” (1989:80) that portrays subalterns as monolithic collectivities. Spivak argues that these “first-world radical intellectuals” are separating the two constitutive meanings of representation. By focusing on the political meaning, they are attacking the “speaking for” in a superficial way since they are forgetting the economic meaning. Without developing her analysis further, I just want to present Spivak as a reference point in bringing political economy into the debate of representation. The micropolitics are not separated from the macropolitics, so “theories of ideologies” based on interests are necessary to complement notions of power based on desire (1989: 74). The international division of labor has to be acknowledged, recognizing its impact in the current epistemological world order. In this sense, Spivak is performing an uneasy –yet relevant and exciting- marriage between Marxism and Deconstruction.

Going through her text, one has the impression of being called to practice a new “politics” -not merely poetics- of representation. However, her conclusion is drastic, the political economy of representation is not feasible since the subalterns in their very attempt to achieve epistemological status, cannot speak to the risk of being co-opted by the very same violent epistemic framework and their political-economic exploitation reinforced. I would like to ask Spivak a question though: ‘are you not essentializing the subaltern as well by ascribing to them required characteristics such as endemic voicelessness?’
This is the point where I become inspired. What I would like to propose is that subaltern groups such as anti-systemic social movements are speaking -maybe not within the academy though- and they are being heard locally and globally. What are the challenges for a discipline dedicated to representation encountering an object with practices of self-representation?

Conclusions as a work-in-progress:

Anthropology is being more explicit about its interests in resistance and social movements, especially in the global context. At the same time, anthropology as the discipline representing alternatives –with a self-critical approach of its own history- is being perceived as a friendly-ally by movements and activists.
Due to this history of reflexivity within the discipline I consider Anthropology as having the potential to go beyond the conventional Social Movement Literature -studying movements as ‘alter objects’-. Activism could deepen the level of reflexivity proposed by Anthropology in two realms: at the epistemological level, de-centering the production of knowledge and at the political level, politicizing the production of knowledge, where ethnographies are not anymore an instrument of power but a tool of empowerment.

The debate over representation allows the discipline to accept social movements as alternative knowledge producers. If the activist could ‘speak’ in the academy this would imply entering into an intense horizontal dialogue where the ‘discipline’ would be able to give up its privileges of expertise and to consent to be appropriated by other epistemologies that are using ethnographies as claiming tools of self-representation. Through engaging in this new politics towards representation, Anthropology is forced to embrace dialogical and radical practices, itself being transformed into a locus of resistance.

Part II

Can Global Resistance Movements Speak Through Ethnographies?
Reflexivity’s Contribution Towards an Engagement with the Current World

After a year of engaging some of the most referential texts on socio-cultural theory, one can appreciate the multiple instances when the discipline of Anthropology has stopped to rethink itself. Two of the strongest moments that are important to recall are the internal criticism over the impact of the colonial encounter’s heritage in the “practicality” of the discipline (Asad, 1973), and the intense calls to be aware of the situatedness of the knowledge industry-especially the practice of representation instantiated by Anthropology, and its political and quotidian consequences (Said, 1989). Those challenges have been addressed and considered seriously by many, producing a discipline marked by its high degree of reflexivity. The mechanisms of self-criticism, internal debate, healthy distance from the discipline, awareness of author’s positionality, experimental methods and literary devices, all contribute to construct a self-conscious discipline alerted to the interstices of power and knowledge. Anthropology then appears as an academic field where new ways of thinking and doing can be accommodated. This history of reflexivity questions the stipulated objectivism of academic thinking, attempting to create a ‘situated discipline’ that stimulates the rethinking of its own research practices.

It would be inaccurate to portray anthropological practices as merely linked to the colonial endeavor. It is key to remind ourselves of the long involvement by this discipline in social justice issues ranging from its contents (focus on economic, political, and cultural power dynamics) to some of its militant activities. Acknowledging the long history of Anthropology as an overtly politicized space -with renowned as well as more anonymous figures struggling against racism (e.g. Boas), war (e.g. Wolf), the prison industry complex (e.g. Davis), colonialism (e.g. Kenyatta), gender oppression (e.g. Haraway), and more that I would love to know-, the current stage of the discipline allows for yet another ‘politicizing’ of knowledge. My argument is then that the level of reflexivity achieved by this discipline offers the possibility of engaging in resistance through the very practice of ethnographic work.

Anthropology, in trying to overcome Said’s condemnation to failure in its endeavor of representation through the reflexive process, is offering us an important contribution for engaging with one aspect of the actualité. Concretely, Anthropology today provides both analytical and everyday-life tools to work with current global social movements. Exploring reflexivity in three anthropological texts I hope to show how some of their reflexive insights are building up the possibility of a deeper intellectual and political commitment with global resistance/counter power initiatives. This paper explores the reflexive contributions by “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak, 88), “Carne, Carnavales, and Carnivalesque” (Limón, 1994) and “Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference” (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997). The three of them are instantiating practices of representation that embrace listening to the subaltern, appreciate the resistance embedded in Mexican jokes, and realize the consequences of global interconnectedness for the ethnographer. I will try to briefly comment on the interesting affinity that could be traced among these developments in reflexivity and the current debates within some of the global justice movements [1].

Addressing Privileges in Representational Practices

In her provocative piece, Spivak challenged the celebration of new ways of representation by Foucault –presenting himself as “a Maoist”- and by Deleuze –as a “worker militant” (1988, 67). In a brave critique she attacks the limitations of a post-representational rhetoric. Foucault and Deleuze called for the end of theory as a signifier, theory is reclaimed as action and not as representation: “A theory is like a box of tools (…) there is no more representation; there is nothing but action” (Deleuze in Spivak 1988:70) [2] .

Spivak is skeptical of Foucault and Deleuze’s attractive proposal: “a post-representationalist vocabulary hides an essentialist agenda” (1989:80) that portrays subalterns as monolithic collectivities. Spivak argues that these “first-world radical intellectuals” are separating the two constitutive meanings of representation. By focusing on the political meaning, they are attacking the “speaking for” in a superficial way since they are forgetting the economic meaning. Without developing her analysis further, I want to present Spivak as a reference point in bringing political economy into the debate of representation. The micropolitics are not separated from the macropolitics, so “theories of ideologies” based on interests are necessary to complement notions of power based on desire (1989: 74). Spivak is addressing the economic and power privileges of ‘those who represent’. The non-acknowledgement of the political economy of representation has drastic consequences: “the subaltern cannot speak” (1989:104). Spivak, in a later work, points out that this expression “means that even when the subaltern makes an effort [to the death] to speak, she is not able to be heard, and both speaking and hearing, complete the act of speech,” (1996: 272). She is calling to practice a new ‘politics’ –not merely ‘poetics’- of representation. You can only talk about somebody if you have first acknowledged that he/she/they are speaking and then that you are listening. There is no possibility of ‘representation’ -and success in overcoming essentialization- if you have not attempted to engage that person/group as a conscientious protagonist with their own voice. This discourse is found among many activists. If there is no awareness of one’s class, racial, gender, sexual, first/third world ‘situatedness’, one is in dange of falling into supremacist thinking and condescending attitudes virulently condemned by the horizontal spirit of the movement.

Spivak’s call for a deep engagement with the subaltern leads to a strong epistemological shift. She insists on the persistence of the “epistemic violence” product of the colonial process where Europe is erected as the undetermined Subject holding the explanatory power, and the colonized are relegated to be the Others –the Objects waiting to be explained- whose voice and agency have been stolen. Through recognizing the international division of labor and power, one is able to perceive its impact on the current ‘epistemological world order’. She is offering an epistemology that takes the subaltern into account not only as a case study, but as a source of knowledge and ‘expert’ production-the subaltern must be heard. Among global resistance movements in North America and Europe there is a lot of internal discussion about this topic. Mainly due to the mass media, the ‘spearheading role of southern social movements has been obscured, portraying the ‘anti-globalization movement’ as a negligible affair of ‘white-US and European-middle class kids’. However, in much movement discourse there exists an explicit attempt to recognize the role of grassroots communities from ‘poor’ countries as referential examples of movement building –from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, to the unemployed/piqueteros in Argentina, to peasant women in India- showing a similar effort to revert the canons of expertise. In this process, civil society from Europe and the US become the ‘students’ of their southern ‘teachers’ challenging colonial patterns.

Spivak warns us that the process of smashing the epistemological dictatorship is not easy. The subalterns in their very attempt to achieve epistemological status, cannot speak due to the risk of being co-opted by the very same violent epistemic framework. The subaltern’s political-economic exploitation would thus be reinforced. This political economy of representation offers the possibility to Anthropology to be radically reflexive, taking into account economic, political and epistemological privileges.

Writing From Within

Unlike traditional folklore, Limón’s ethnography of the everyday live of a Mexican working-class community at the border is intensively reflexive. As a Mexican-American and a socially committed scholar, Limón’s presence in the text is very distinct. Since the beginning of the chapter he positioned himself at the heart of a barbeque scene. The fact that he is taking part in that intimate and exclusive activity –making tacos and laughing at chingaderas- on top of his continuous use of Spanish illustrates his intent to prove himself as not only an anthropologist but a member of that community as well. He emphasizes his sense of belonging to this subaltern class several times, presenting himself as part of it through stories and explicit terms. However, he is aware that he is not the same due to his educational and professional background as well as other opportunities which “his people” probably did not have. With the same intense feeling of belonging, he is emerged in the academic and intellectual debate showing us his knowledge about the authors and analysis of this particular topic. This tension is revealed throughout the chapter, for example:
“These [particular academic] discourses troubled me then for they did not speak well of these, my people, and perhaps do not speak well of me, for frankly, although with some ambivalent distance, I had a good time that Saturday afternoon” (my italics 1994: 129).

This kind of reflexivity where the author positions himself as a researcher and at the same time as part of that community leads to a more horizontal and informal relationship between the anthropologist and his/her ‘objects’, both of them become interlocutors in a heteroglossic dialogue. This kind of rapport is manifested when Limón refers to his ‘informants’ as as “companeros” (1994:131).

This positionality is key to understanding the goal of this piece which is to disarticulate discourses of misrepresentation and prejudices about the Mexican low-wage workers in the US. Against interpretations of the Mexican language as “crude”, “ordinary” and the Mexican male as “an animal whose ferocious pantomimes are designed to terrify others” (Ramos in Limón, 1994: 124) he is trying to put forward an alternative analysis. Instead of beasts’ roars, Limón find voices of resistance. He wants to rethink them as revolutionary narratives. The marginalized peoples’ jokes, plays and cooking are ways through which the participants are transforming themselves into mastering subjects challenging the norms of a dominant social order. Their activities become ideological devices, antagonistic performances against a hegemonic culture and society. Limón discerns a grammar of insurgency encoded in apparently crass sexual jokes. Similar to Mexican language, the space of the rancho is transform into a “temporary forum of non-alienation” (135), into an interim non-capitalist space.
Limón is alerting us to practices of representation of the ‘dominated’ which reinforce existing power structures (124). Instead of backing up the status quo, he proposes “an archeology of subjugated knowledges and practices [ ] in an effort to demonstrate their power” (125). His ethnography is about presenting the strength of these counter-hegemonic spaces and practices. From his situatedness of explicit affinity Limón is developing a ‘solidarity account’ that empowers the subjugated knowledges to become voices of resistance. In that sense, Limón is ‘listening’ to the subaltern ‘speak’.

This reflexivity of the insider blurs the line between the observed and the observer. In a similar fashion, many of the anthropologists active in global justice movements (Barcelona, Buenos Aires, NYC, …) are embodying a more reflexive position than that of the traditional “participant observer,”. We could call this emergent ethnographic actor ‘the participant who observes’. The goal is to develop accounts of the power of grassroots movements, presenting voices of dissent and alternatives where corporate media sees marginal and unworthy people. Limón’s reflexivity is offering the possibility to envision and conceive of ethnographies of resistance from within.

Problematizing spatial common sense

Gupta and Ferguson call for a reflexivity focused on the politics of space. They offer a self-criticism of a discipline that relies heavily on spatial thinking and practices but has lacked the recognition of the impacts made by that spatiality. Simply said, the main proposal by this reflexive piece is that space matters for representation, and especially in a globalized world. How does it matter? Politics of otherness are intimately linked to politics of space. The anthropological enterprise –historically and recently- has operated under the premise of discontinuous spaces, drawing an equivalence of belonging among a particular culture and a particular place. This spatial conception has implications for ‘the other’ and for ‘the ethnographer’. The exotic is “located elsewhere” and the anthropologist is situated in “our society”.

The opposition established between “there” and “here” naturalized a sense of “them” and “us” that Ferguson and Gupta want to problematize: “Ethnography becomes a link between an unproblematized “home” and “abroad”” (1997:72). The other is “subtly nativized” and “spatially incarcerated” (Appadurai in Gupta and Ferguson, 1997: 72). Even some attempts of experimental ethnographies are denounced for thinking as the other as “a preexisting ontological entity –‘survivors’ not products (still less, producers of history). They are victims, having suffered the deadly contact process with us,” (1997:73). This process of essentialization does not allow the other to speak and less to be heard. Ferguson and Gupta want to destabilize that “topography of power” calling for an awareness that spaces “have always been hierarchically interconnected”, instead of thinking of spaces as lost isolated enclaves “naturally disconnected” (1997: 67). Anthropological training should focus more on processes born from continuous historical contact, rather than in essences drawn from imagined ‘bounded units’.

The “deterritorialization” process of “a world of diaspora” has intensified the interconnectivity and shaken the fixity of clear-cut identities/spaces. The border between “here” and “there” becomes blurred, and “them” and “us” feel closer as well, erasing the gap between the anthropologist and its object. (1997:68-69). The ethnographer loses his/her distinctive position as the lonely traveler in search of the far away. The previous exclusivity of the ethnographer is overshadowed in a moment when everybody moves transnationally, including tourists, ‘terrorists’, company employees, journalists, immigrants, researchers, war prisoners, sweatshop workers…At the same time, the distances persist in terms of power relations, as Gupta and Ferguson point out “a politics of otherness persists that is not reducible to a politics of representation” (74). This emphasis on the “extratextual roots of the problem” connect to Spivak’s political economy of representation. The authors call for the politicization of differences produced as a result of process of domination, this opens the possibility to anthropologists to “changing more than our texts” (74-75).

This historical conjuncture forces the discipline to rethink itself again. Spatial reflexivity and global awareness lead to a recognition that the anthropologist is connected as well, not isolated but part of larger global flows. For example, fieldwork could be rethought not as a remote or distinct place, but as an interconnected network of spaces in which the anthropologist is a node, listening to and speaking with the set of participants in a kind of a ‘networked ethnography’.
A similar sense of being translocal and internationally-connected is shared by global justice movements. Part of the strength of this global network of local struggles comes from highlighting spatial thinking and developing global consciousness amongst diverse communities. Popular slogans that stress this linking are, for example: “we are everywhere” or “our resistance is as global as capital”. Gupta and Ferguson make reference to a transnational public sphere and the creation of forms of solidarity and identity based on this reconceptualization of space, and a more connected reterritorialized experience (1997: 68). The complex interrelations between the ‘globals’ and ‘locals’ has become not only an interesting intellectual exercise but a key project in developing effective political praxis. How exchanges might flow (of information, experiences, ‘technology’, etc.) along multiple axes between ‘historically inteconnected’ places, is then an important point of reflexivity for the ‘globalized and globalizing’ anthropologist.

Concluding remarks

This paper is a work in process. As a follow up on my second essay “Can the Activist Speak in the Academy? Decentering the Politics of Representation” and embracing the feedback provided, this paper attempts to respond to the question of ‘why Anthropology’ (and other disciplines) –is being perceived as a friendly ally by some current global justice activists [3]. This review of two theoretical pieces and a chapter of ethnography can give us a glimpse. The argument is that reflexivity offers a great tool of resistance contributing radical epistemologies, horizontally empowering practices, and networked awareness of global interconnectivity. Reflexive thinking and action can engage in a de-centered, horizontal and networked way with spaces of resistance, and at the same time making ethnographic practice a locus of antagonistic production of knowledge.

References

Part I

Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J. (2002) “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference” in Inda, J.X. and Rosaldo, R (eds.) The Anthropology of Globalization. A Reader, Blackwell Publishing

Limón, J. (1994) Dancing with the Devil. Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas, The University of Wisconsin Press

Spivak, G.C. (1988) “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Williams, P and Chrisman (eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, Columbia University Press

(1996) “Sulatern Talk: An Interview with the Editors” in Laundry, D. and Maclean, G (eds.) The Spivak Reader, Routledge Ed.

Notes from Nowhere (2004) We are Everywhere. The irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism, Verso, http://www.weareeverywhere.org/

References part II

Asad, Talal (1973) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Humanities Press

Said, Edward (1989) “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors” in Critical Inquiry. University of Chicago Press

Spivak, Gayatri (1988) “Can the Subaltern Speak” in Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Macmillan Education

Steward, Kathleen (1996) A Space on the Side of the Road. Cultural Poetics in an “Other America” Princeton University Press