15.

A Short review/summary of ‘The Post –Modernist turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist
Perspective’ - Frances E. Mascia- Lees, Patricia Sharpe and Collen Ballerino Cohen

The joint authorial writing – ‘The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology’ by Frances E. Mascia- Lees,
Patricia Sharpe and Collen Ballerino Cohen (collectively feminist theorists) is basically a critique of ‘New
Ethnography’ – a new set of ethnographic approaches as formulated by postmodernists like James
Clifford, George E. Marcus, Paul Rabinow, Michael M. J. Fisher, Talal Asad, Renato Rosaldo among
others. The articles provides a substitutive approach – Feminist theory as opposed to using the post-
modernist –new ethnographic methods like intertextuality, Dialogic mode of representation, self-
reflexivity etc. Throughout the text, referring critically to two books – ‘Anthropology as Cultural Critique:
An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences’ and ‘Writing Culture : The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography’, Marcia-Lees, Sharpe and Cohen present the limitation of New Ethnography as it is still
partial to incorporate the total social representation as it still fails to treat the ethnography through
Feminist Perspective; thus, the authors univocally advocate cautions from a feminist perspective on
Ethnography. In nutshell, it is a recommendation from the authors to carry ethnography through the
Feminist perspective, since, it is not the traditional mode of representation or the new ethnography the
ultimate solution to enhance the holistic wider truth research, and it’s due to the exclusion of female
voice that has led to the catastrophe in Ethnography. So, practitioners seeking to write a genuinely new
ethnography would do better use feminist theory as a model than to draw on postmodern trends in
epistemology and literary criticism.

The Major Arguments are as follows:-

1. Inherent recognition of politics (activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing

power within an organization through inclusiveness ) in Feminism and lack of social inclusive
politics in postmodernism/New Ethnography
-According to authors, Feminist theory is an intellectual system that knows its politics, a politics
directed toward securing recognition that the feminine is as crucial an element of the human as
the masculine, and thus a politics skeptical and critical of traditional ‘universal truths’
concerning human behavior. Unlike Feminists, When anthropologist, basing on self-reflexivity,
they include themselves as characters in ethnographic texts instead of posing as objective
controlling narrators, they expose their biases. Thus, postmodern discourses are all
‘deconstructive’ in that they seek to distance us from and make us skeptical about beliefs
concerning truth, knowledge, power, the self and language, yet, postmodernism is abstract and
philosophical, paradoxically grounded in as a search for a more accurate version of truth.
Although, withstanding to accurate truth is the goal of feminists too, but feminist theory differs
from postmodernism in that it acknowledges its grounding in politics of which the New
Ethnography or post-modernism is unaware of.
2. Critique of New Ethnographic Methods
Postmodernists treat classical ethnography as constructed texts – constructed nature of cultural
accounts. They approach ‘New Ethnography’ as a remedy to it by exploring new forms of writing
or the experimental forms of writing to demystify the anthropologist’s unitary authority and
thus to include the ‘many voices’ clamoring for expression in the ethnographic situation.
However, feminist critique that these new ways of structuring are more subtle and enigmatic
than traditional modes, and actually, they make the new ethnographies more obscure.

3. Critique of Participant- observation methods

As since the beginning of feminist theory, Men in western culture have constituted themselves
as subjects by constructing the woman as ‘other. However, even in the early stage, a crucial
difference existed between traditional anthropology and feminist inquiries. ‘While anthropology
questioned the status of the participant-observer, it spoke from the position of the dominant
and thus for the ‘other’. Feminists speak from the position of the ‘other’. Thus , even now in the
new ethnography, participant observation is confined to male voice only, which claim giving new
meaning which is actually the same meaning grated by prior sinister patriarchy which sees
woman only as seductress or wives , as good or bad mother alone.

4. Critique of Dismissing /underestimating Feminist Theory

Authors allege that Marcus and Fisher merely construe feminism as little more than the
expression of women’s dissatisfactions with a sinister patriarchy. Thus, they still have ignorance
of full spectrum of feminist theory, which may partly explain their dismissal of it. Similarly,
Clifford, in ‘Writing culture’ assert that Feminism has not produced unconventional forms of
writing or developed reflection on ethnographic textuality as such. On rebuttal, Feminists
critique that the male post-modernists prefer to write about feminists rather than inviting them
to write for themselves.

5. Critique of preserving male supremacy in the Academy and Textual Authority

As world politics and economic realities shift global power relations, postmodern theorizing can
be understood as socially constructed itself. And this social construction, is one that potentially
may work to preserve the privileged position of western white males. While postmodernist
anthropologists such as Clifford, Marcus, and Fisher may choose to think that they are
transforming global power relations as well as the discipline of anthropology itself, they may
also be establishing first claim in the new academic territory on which this decade’s battles for
intellectual supremacy and jobs will be waged. The exclusion of feminist voices in Clifford and
 Marcus’s influential volume and Clifford’s defensive, convoluted, and contradictory explanation
for it are strategies that preserve male supremacy in the academy. By returning to
postmodernism, they may instead be reinforcing such power relations and preserving their
status as anthropologists, as authoritative speakers.

6. Critique of Literary Discourse and Allegory

Furthermore, the new ethnography’s shift from a scientific to a more literary discourse may
constitute a masking and empowering of western bias rather than diffusing of it. As authors who
experiment with point of view, it presents a seeming jumble of perspectives and subjectivities in
a varied voices, may well be writing no more open texts than classic works in which all action is
mediated by a unitary narrative voice. The literary techniques of fragmentation, metaphor, and
verbal echo, repetition and juxtaposition, which the new ethnography borrows, are all devices
through which an author manipulates understanding and response. The literary devices, just
entice form, style and aesthetics which constitute trap for the ethnographer as it directs our
attention away from the fact that ethnography is more than ‘writing it up’. These aesthetic
criteria invite the manipulation of narrative devices in polyvocal works, whose apparent
cacophony mirrors the diversity and multiplicity of individual but still inherit partial truths and
obscure power relations. So, those anthropologist sensitive to the power relations in the
ethnographic enterprise who wish to discover ways of confronting them ethically would do
better to turn to feminist theory and practice than to postmodernism.

7. Critique of Postmodernism as another masculine invention

The absence of discussions of sexual difference in writings about post-modernism, as well as the
fact that few women have engaged in the modernism/postmodernism debate, suggest that
postmodernism may be another masculine invention engineered to exclude women. As women
are excluded from direct participation in the feminist dialogue, fearing loss of authority and
masculinity, male critics have preferred to look on feminism as a limited and peripheral
enterprise, not as one that challenges them to rethink their own positions in terms of gender.

In conclusion, the authors imply that postmodern thought has posed the danger for feminists
that in deconstructing categories of meaning, it not only deconstruct patriarchal definitions of
‘womanhood’ and ‘truth’ but also endangered the categories of feminists’ own analysis –
‘women’ and ‘feminism’ and ‘oppression’ . Authors pervade critique of new ethnography and
cautions from a feminist perspective towards the postmodern turn in anthropology. And suggest
that New Ethnographers to employ feminism for exploring wider accurate truth as it not only
provides emphasis on the diversity of women’s experience but also aims for individual freedom
and equanimity between both gender role thus incorporating he full array of truths.

Reviewed and Compiled by Roman Rasaili

August 12, 2020