Fantasia dans la bibliothèque. Les représentations sont des faits sociaux : modernité et post-modernité en anthropologie

摘要

Fantasia in the Library. Representations are social facts: Modernity and Postmodernity in Anthropology. Beginning with a detailed critique of J. Clifford's essay On Ethnographic Authority, the author moved toward a rejection of any kind of « textualist meta-anthropology », however dialogical or polyphonic its emphases. While he acknowledges the critical, genealogical importance of making visible the tropes of ethnographic writing, the author doubts the adequacy of esthetic or literary approaches to do more than analyze a crisis in representation. They cannot effectively generate social diagnosis or political solutions. He directs attention toward concrete, institutional analyses of the dynamics of interpretative communities. If power relations between ethnographers and the people with whom they work are now more visible, the micro-relations among the anthropological interpretative community have been less well studied. This general emphasis, which is explored at length, suggests the need for another approach focusing on the sociology of science and the institutional history of discursive formations.