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Anthropology and HistoricityAuthor(s): Jean-Loup AmselleSource: History and Theory, Vol. 32, No. 4, Beiheft 32: History Making in Africa (Dec., 1993), pp

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ANTHROPOLOGYAND

HISTORICITY

JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE

ABSTRACT

This articletries to assessthe componentof Frenchanthropology nfluencedby the

Marxistparadigm,

while

also

showing

he links

of

Marxism o

functionalism.

With

the

collapse

of the Marxist

problematic

ne

must establish

a

new

anthropology

hat

gives

greaterattention

o

history

n

"primitive"

ocieties.

It

is

also

necessary

o rethink ome

of the centralproblems

onfrontinganthropology:

n

particular,

o

reevaluate he links

between

anthropology

and

development;

o

locate

constructivism

n

the

discipline;

o

measure

he

extentof

phenomena

f

reappropriation

n

exotic

societies;and to examine

the aptness

of

binaryoppositions

uch

as "state"

ersus

"stateless

ocieties,"

and "indi-

vidual" ersus"community." y

thus

questioning ome

of the central magesof

anthro-

pology,one is led to posetheproblemof "primordialyncretism,"hat is, thediffusion

of institutions

spreading

rom a

common

cultural

ground or background,as well as

the

problem

of the links between

universalism nd

culturalism.At the end of this itin-

erary,

and

by

taking

the

example

of

the

pair "people

of

power"versus"people

of the

earth,"

t

is

argued

hat

the

prevalence

f

the

phenomenaof reappropriation

n

exotic

societies

s

explained

by

the

universality f certain

values.

I. INTRODUCTION

Within

the

different

trends that

have

driven

the

history

of

anthropology-

evolutionism,

diffusionism, culturalism, functionalism,

or

structuralism-the

question

of the

historicity

of

"primitive" societies

has served

as

a

reference

point,

whether

positive

or

negative.

To a

great

extent

anthropology

has been

founded

on a

rejection

of

history

and

this

rejection

has

been

consistently

main-

tained since the

beginnings

of

the

discipline.

As

I

belong

to a

generation marked

by

the

independence

of

Africa and

by

the

advent

of

the

Third

World

on the

international stage, I have naturally been inclined to assert the historicity of

African societies

and

to see them as

capable

of

responding

to an

outside envi-

ronment.

This

is

why

I

owe

my

first

debt

to Georges

Balandier

whose

ideas,

as

Emmanuel

Terray

has

observed,' corresponded

with

my generation's

consciousness of the

Third

World;

but

I

did not

truly begin

to work

in the

field

of

anthropology

until

1965

when

Claude

Meillassoux

included

me

in

his

research

team

on

the

1. EmmanuelTerray,

"Presentation " inAfriqueplurielle, Afriqueactuelle,

hommagel

aGeorges

Balandier (Paris, 1986), 9-11.






ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY

13

Systemes economiques africains.

He suggested that

I

begin research

on colonial

slavery,

a

realm

which

was to represent one of the

major lines of his

intellectual

career.2 Having

thus become involved in the

examination of

travel accounts

devoted to Africa, I became passionately interested in the multiple bonds that

societies

form

with each other.

Thus

I

decided to

dedicate myself to the study

of

long-distance

trade, situating myself on the

margins of an

anthropological

profession

which,

since

Malinowski,

had favored

the concept of

closed and

single totalities.

I

preferred,

by

contrast,

to analyze what might be

called "net-

works of

societies."

Having chosen Mali as my

region,

I

decided to

study

a

trading community

from

a historical

and anthropological perspective. I

chose the

Kooroko commu-

nity because it seemed relatively well defined sociologically; I was therefore

free to study it over a long

period,

beginning with

its roots in precolonial times.

However,

my ambition was not

only ethnographic

-in

that,

I

did not escape

my generation

-

but

I

also

hoped

to

formulate

a Marxist

theory

of

long-distance

trade.

At

that

period,

Marxism

represented,

as

Jean-Paul Sartre

said,

the

unsur-

passable

truth

of

our

time.

It is

impossible

to

think

of the

reception

of Marxism

in

France

in

the 1960s without

thinking of

Maurice Godelier and Louis Al-

thusser.

I

took the seminar of

Godelier,

who

was then assembling the texts

that were to be published under the title Rationalite'et irrationalite'eneconomie

(1966). The

study called "Objets et

methodes de I'anthropologie

economique"

fascinated

me

especially

for

its innovations. Both this

study

and

the "Essai

d'interpretation

du

phenomene

economique

dans

les

societies

traditionnelles

d'autosubsistance"

by

Meillassoux3

appeared

to

provide

the

key

to

the

func-

tioning

of

primitive societies

and the means

to

reconcile science and

political

commitment,

logos

and

praxis.

I

have not

been philosophically

trained,

but I

have

always been

intensely

interested in philosophy and philosophers, and I have a lively admiration for

Althusser's works and his school.

I

devoured

the two

volumes

of

Lire le

Capital

(1965) and most

particularly

the

study

"Sur

les concepts fondamentaux du

materialisme

historique" by

Etienne Balibar. And

yet,

without

rewriting history,

I

must admit that

from

that

period

onward

I had

a certain reservation about this

project

for

rehabilitating

and

renewing

Marxism.

My

fundamental

empiricism

prevented

me

from

fully subscribing

to

the

fine

combinative

substantialism of

the master

of

the

Rue

d'Ulm and

his

disciples.

I

did not know all

that Althusser's

thinking owed to Spinoza, but a certain anti-essentialism raised doubts about

a

theory

that seemed

incapable

of

explaining

social

change.

Upon my

return

from Mali

in 1969

it was

within

this Marxist

problematic

-

this

episteme

as

they

then

said

-

that

I

attempted

to

organize my

material from

the

field.

Terray's

book,

Le marxisme devant

les societe's

primitives

(1969),

had

just

been added

to this

theoretical

panoply.

But the

analysis

of

the

object

I

2. Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie

de l'esclavage (Paris, 1986).

3. Meillassoux, "Essai d'interpretation du phdnomene 6conomique dans les societes traditio-

nelles d'autosubsistance," Cahiers

detudes africaines

4

(1960), 38-77.






14

JEAN-LOUP

AMSELLE

had

chosen

to study

-bringing societies in

close

contact

through

long-distance

trade

-proved resistant

to the Marxist

treatment to

which I

wanted to

subject

it.

Marxism

shares with

conventional

sociology its

constant

practice

of always

putting either the "mode of production" or "society" in first place. I, however,

had

chosen to

analyze

relationships

between

societies

-an

approach that

does

not

belong

to

the

usual

realm of

study of

sociology or

anthropology.

Only

structuralism

I

will return to

this

point -claimed

to

give an

account of pro-

found

regularities

that

transcended

cultural

differences,

even if it

constructed

a

purely

hypothetical

closeness as

it compared

societies

which,

in

most

cases,

were

not effectively

linked to one

another.4

In

1972,

I

defended

my doctoral

thesis,

which was

published

in 1977

as

Les

negociants de la savage.5 The theory of the origin of profit in commercial

capitalism,

which

constitutes its

core,

now

seems a

bit outmoded to me

in

light

of

the

political and

economic

evolution

of

the past

few

years,

even

if this

theory

still

has

its

partisans. This book

was the

origin

of

a

series

of

research

studies

on

the

historicity

of

primitive

societies6

and on

the

impact

of

outside

domination

on

African

societies,

notably through

monetary migrations.7 Even

if

this

last

work still

finds a

favorable echo

today8

it seems to

me

that it

stresses

imperialist

domination too

much and does not

grant

enough

importance

to

the

integration

of precolonial African societies into greater totalities such as comprehensive

economic or

political

networks.

It

was to

escape

from

the thesis of

imperialist domination

and

from the

problematic of

the

"mode

of

production"

rigidly

conceived

that I

was

trying

to

define the

dilemmas to

which

a

frozen

conception

of Marxism was

leading.9

The

stress

on

the

relationship

of

forces,

on

conjunctures,

and on

the

production

of

social

relationships

-

to the

detriment of

reproduction

-

undoubtedly

owed

more to

Balandier,

Touraine,

and

Castoriadis

than

to

Marx. It is within

this

problematic that I still situate

my

research

today.

I

am

not

the

only

anthropologist

who

has hesitated between

Balandier

and

Levi-Strauss.10

Throughout

the

course

of

my

studies,

I

have

been

fascinated

by

the

fine

analyses

of

Levi-Strauss,

which

corresponded

perfectly

with

some

of

the

interpretations

Marx,

Althusser,

and Godelier

were

giving

us. What

particularly

attracted me were

Les structures

eilementaires de la

parents'

and

4. Even for societies that probably have a common origin, a structuralanalysis

-that

is to say,

a

transformational one

- is

not without difficulties

as long as exact historical

linkages

have not

been

established between each

unity. See

N.

Thomas,

Out

of Time:

History and Evolution in

Anthropological Discourse

(Cambridge, Eng.,

1989), 109-111 on the

neo-evolutionist presupposi-

tions

of the

structuralist comparativism of Sahlins.

5.

Jean-Loup Amselle, Les

negociants

de la savane (Paris,

1977).

6.

Amselle,

"Sur l'objet de

l'anthropologie,"

Cahiers internationaux de

sociologie

56 (1974),

91-114.

7.

Les

Migrations africaines, ed.

Jean-Loup Amselle (Paris,

1976).

8.

F.

Dureau, Migration

et

urbanisation, le

cas de

la C6te d'Ivoire

(Paris, 1987); C.

Quiminal,

Gens

d'ici, gens d'ailleurs

(Paris, 1991).

9. Amselle,

"Le

fetichisme de la

soci&t6,"L'Homme et la

societte

51-54 (1979),

163-177.

10. Terray,

"Presentation."







15

Anthropologie structurale

which seemed to be the anthropological

counterpart

for

Marx's works

in

economics.

But from

my

first

contact

with field

research,

I was struck by the historicity

of Malian societies. Buffeted by history, inserted

into vast state formations that endlessly rose and fell, invaded by Islam- Malian

societies,

and especially the

Peul, Bambara, and Malinke ethnic

groups,

did

not seem fit for a structural

analysis. I then felt that

Balandier was right in

always stressing

the

profound

dynamism

of

African

societies and the deter-

mining character of the colonial situation.1I

Armed with this resource, I embarked upon my second

research

project,

a

study

of the Wasolon and the surrounding regions. There

too,

not one of the

societies

I

studied in the field seemed to correspond

to what we

had been taught

in our classes at the university. We had been told about the Dogon, the Nuer,

and the Tallensi; about stateless societies and state societies;

about polytheism

and

Islam; about

oral and written cultures.

Yet to

me

none of these

catego-

ries and none of these binary

oppositions seemed to account for the social and

historical fluidity of the region

I

investigated. Instead

of ethnic groups closed

in

upon themselves, instead

of political systems and an

understanding of the

world that were clearly demarcated,

I

found

myself faced

with

hybrid systems

and with crossbred forms of logic (logiques

mitissess),

as

I

called -them

n

my

last book. For me, as for some colleagues, the shock was severe, for one had

to think

"against

the

grain"

and to

find

other

paradigms,

an uncomfortable

predicament since the university

favors the

reproduction

of

prevalent

models

or,

at

best,

controlled

departures

from them. This search for

new

interpretative

models

was

accompanied

by a renewed questioning

of

a

certain

anthropology,

which was defined either

by the excessive valuation of the most "primitive"

societies

or, inversely, by

a

fanatic

denigration

of them.

In the 1970s French

anthropology

underwent a certain

change

of direction

with the appearance of two works, La Paix blanche by Robert Jaulin (1970)

and La Socijte

contre l'Etat

by

Pierre Clastres

(1974).

These two books

appeared

during

the worldwide

distribution

of

the

works

by

Carlos

Castaneda

who had

picked up again

on certain major

themes of

the

ethnology

of colonial

adminis-

trators, namely

the

attempt

at

"metamorphosis"

and at

passing

over to

"the

other

side.""2

t is

in

connection

with these works

that a

group

of

anthropologists,

of

which

I

was

one, gathered

around

Meillassoux

and

produced

a collective

work,

Le

Sauvage

a la

mode, published

in

1979. Conceived

at

the

height

of

the

Marxist

triumph, this work concealed a certain number of ambiguities. Against an

anthropology

it

perceived

as

mundane, "trendy,"

or

"ideological,"

it tried to

oppose

a

"scientific"

anthropology, relying

on the

elucidation

of the relation-

ships

of

production

and class

structures. Rather

than

placing

this book

under

the

sign

of

Marxism,

it

would

have been

preferable

to

bring

to

light

the

presuppo-

sitions of the authors we

criticized.

Especially by deepening

the

objections

made

11. Georges Balandier,

Sociologie actuelle de l'Afrique noire

(Paris,

1955).

12. Jacques

Berque,

"Cent vingt-cinq ans de sociologie maghrebine," Annales (January-

March 1956).






16 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE

to Levi-Strauss by Jacques Derrida

and Pierre

Bourdieu,'3

a

more firmly based

criticism might

have been

produced. Indeed, if our criticism has often been

badly received, it is because it challenged certain fundamental postulates of

anthropology, namely the existence of cold, primitive societies

-

societies

without writing, without

leaders,

and without power. It is exactly on the exis-

tence

of this

separated

domain that the

legitimacy of

our

discipline

rests.

Marxism could not do much to counter the perverse effects of this problem-

atic.

For

Marxism,

like all

sociological

theories,

is based on a radical

opposition

between

"precapitalist

societies"

and

"capitalist

societies,"

and this

is why

in

certain

Marxist

analyses,

for

example

those

concerning hunter-gatherer

socie-

ties,

one can

find

points

in

common with precisely

the

works

this

book

meant

to criticize. Far from constituting a sharpbreak with the rejectedanthropology,

the

very

fact of

isolating hunter-gatherer

societies or

segmentary

societies and

of elaborating "modes

of

production" for

them

actually reinforced

the

deficien-

cies

of that

anthropology. Emphasis

should

rather have been

placed

on the

dependence

of

hunter-gatherer

or

segmentary

societies

on an exterior

environ-

ment,

but that

would

have

radically questioned

Marxist

"discontinuism,"

to

which most of the contributors

to this work adhered.

What lesson can

be

drawn, then,

from this

attempt to overturn anthropology?

Rather than opposing the relationships of production to the supposed intention-

ality

of

a

society ("society against

the

state"),

it

would

undoubtedly

have

been

preferable to reason

in terms

of historicity

and

of encompassing

networks. Yet

this undertaking

did awaken some echoes

among

Americanist

anthropologists

(Descola),'4

who thereafter gave

more

emphasis to the immersion of Native

American

societies

in vast

totalities,

including the precolonial states of the

region.

If

Americanists

are

now involved

in a

deconstruction

of

ethnicity

analo-

gous

to that

of the

Africanists, they

owe

it no doubt

partly

to ventures

such

as Le

Sauvage

a

la

mode.

The

main ideas that

came

forth from this work, the historicity of primitive

societies

on the one hand and the existence of

encompassing

networks

on the

other, however,

recalled one of the

major

themes

of

Balandier's

book,

that

of

the

opposition

between internal and external

dynamism.

As

the

deconstruction

of

ethnicity

was

launched,

researchers had

available to them

works

by

another

precursor,

Paul

Mercier, whose analyses

ran counter to certain received ideas

of anthropology. A student of the Somba of northern Benin, Mercier had

realized

that the classical definition

of

ethnicity

could not

be

applied

to this

group."5Drawing upon

the

Anglo-Saxon

tradition and

especially

the works of

Max Gluckman

and

Siegfried

Nadel,

Mercier

stressed the

historicity

of

ethnicity

13. Jacques Derrida, De

la grammatologie (Paris, 1967); Pierre Bourdieu, Choses dites

(Paris, 1987).

14. P. Descola, "La chefferie amrrindienne dans F'anthropologie

politique," Revue francaise

de science politique 38 (1988),

818-827.

15. Paul Mercier, Tradition, changement, histoire, les "Somba" du Dahomey septentrional

(Paris, 1968).






ANTHROPOLOGY AND

HISTORICITY

1.7

by shedding light on a radical difference

between the ethnicity of

precolonial

and colonial

periods.

Armed with this theoretical

arsenal,

this small group of researchers plunged

into the work of dismantling the notion of the ethnic group. Some ethnologists

in

the early 1980s were exasperated by the journalistic

failing,

then and now,

of

recounting an event in Africa in terms

of "tribalconflict" or "ethnic struggle."

If

in journalistic fiction the Arab world

is the realm of fundamentalism and

that of India the world of

caste,

then

Africa is par excellence the chosen land

of

ethnic antagonisms.

Think,

for

example,

of the media treatment and the

political utilization of conflicts in

Liberia,

Ruanda, and South Africa. These

researchers, then,

did not want to deny that ethnicities existed in Africa, but

to show that present ethnicities, to which social players think they belong, are

products of history. Thus constructivist was placed in the foreground at the

expense

of

primordialism. By showing that

one

could not

assign

one

single

meaning to

a

given

ethnicity,

the

relativity

of

ethnic memberships

was

empha-

sized without

denying

individuals the

right

to claim the

identity

of their choice,

The result of this long collective

effort,

begun

in

the early

1980s,

was published

in

1985

in

a collection entitled Au coeur

de l'ethnie.16This book became

the

object

of

discussions rendered more passionate

by misunderstanding. Ap-

pearing right after the demise of the regionalist movements of the 1970s, it ran

head on into some of the facts of the

ready-made thinking of the

era,

notably

that of

the

leftist-ecological

movement. But

beyond violating

the

sensitivity

of

the

1970s,

it also undermined the

foundations

of

an anthropology

in

danger

of

losing

its

privileged

framework

of

analysis,

the

ethnic group.

If

the

ethnic

group does

not

exist, the anthropologists

implicitly

said,

what

do

we have left

to

study?

There was

no

question

of

making

the

anthropological object disap-

pear,

but

simply

of

casting

it

in

a new

light.

It

seemed obvious that postwar

French anthropology, dominated by structuralism, had granted the name of

the

group being

studied-the

ethnonym

-the status

of

stable

referent,

while

sociolinguistics

and

pragmatism,

launched at

the

expense

of

structural

linguist

tics,

stressed the sociohistoric

fluidity

of this same referent.

The focus

on

"networks of

societies";

the precolonial African "world

economy"

and

"colonial

spaces";

the

distinction between

"encompassing"

and

"encompassed societies";

and

the

display

of the

performative

character

of the

ethnonyms

were used

together

to

sketch

out an

anthropology

different

from

the one that was then stage front in France. The contributors to Au coeur de

l'ethnie thus seemed to be

drifting

from

their

specialty

and

drawing

nearer

to

history. Perhaps they gave the impression

of

abandoning

the

necessity

of struc-

ture for the benefit

of

the

contingency

of the event.

However,

this

is,

I

believe,

a

false debate.

I,

for

one,

have not renounced all

nomological preoccupations,

or

attempts

to discover

regularities

or

identify

systems,

even

if

the available

schemes do not

always satisfy

me.

16. Au coeur de l'ethnie, ethnies, tribalisme et Etat en Afrique, ed. Jean-Loup Amselle and

E. M'Bokolo (Paris, 1985).







Rather than conceiving of ethnicities as closed

universes,

side by

side,

of

political systems as neatly separated

entities,

of religious conceptions as clearly

defined

worlds,

or of types of economy as distinct regimes, I choose to study the

interrelationships, the overlaps, the intertwinings among them. In this regard,

Meillassoux17used the notion of ensemble symlectique, but in contrast with

him

I do not see in this phenomenon the simple effect of the domination of

an economic

system-slavery-but

rather a characteristic of the totality

of

West African societies. Thereby

I

join the positions of Ronald Cohen and

Igor

Kopytoff,8

who each stressed "center-periphery" relationships and the

"frontier" as matrices of African political formations.

II. ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

In

the French tradition, and to a lesser extent in the Anglo-Saxon, it is not

always good

form

for an

anthropologist

to become involved

in

development.

This situation is undoubtedly linked to the quasi-exclusive domination

over

French anthropology by structuralism on the one hand, and by the school of

Griaule on the

other. The emphasis these schools placed

on

structures

and on

the

study of cosmogonies respectively has discredited all preoccupation

with

the history of exotic societies. While in an earlier period Durkheim had used

the works of

Hanoteau

and

Letourneux, while Mauss had

read and commented

upon

those

of

Delafosse

and

Montagne,

and while Delafosse in turn had

partici-

pated

in the

creation

of the

Institut

d'Ethnologie

and the Institut International

Africain, by the 1950s the communication between university ethnologists and

colonial administrative

ethnologists

had

been broken. The divorce

between

practitioners of development and anthropologists dates back to this period, as

does the emergence of an autonomous field of academic anthropology.

From

an epistemological and archeological (in the Foucauldian sense) perspective, it

is

interesting to show

how,

from its very

beginnings,

ethnology

was indissociable

from a development project. The binary oppositions ethnos versus

polls,

seg-

mentary societies versus state

society,

or

community

versus

society,

seem

to

reflect an

implicit

value

judgment

about

the

best

form of

social

life.

By partici-

pating

in

evaluations

of

development projects

and

by mingling

with

experts,

anthropologists may

rediscover the

very

essence of

ethnology.

Research

within

the framework

of

projects

and

"intermittent

attention" to

the views of

expert colleagues

constitute a

precious

resource

for

ethnologists.

The

"development" perspective

forces

one

to

grant greater importance

to eco-

nornic

and

social-regional

history,

aspects

too often

lacking

in

ethnological

monographs. Anthropological

studies most

frequently

are reduced

to the de-

scription

of a few

villages,

taken

out

of

their

context,

and

compared

to units

17.

Meillassoux,

Anthropologie de l'esclavage.

18. "State Foundations: A Controlled Comparison," in Origins of the State, ed.

Ronald Cohen

and Elman Service (Philadelphia, 1978), 141-160; The African Frontier, ed. Igor Kopytoff

(Bloomington,

Ind., 1987).






ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORICITY 19

of the same type hundreds or thousands of kilometers

away. In

contrast,

re-

search done

with

development in mind constrains the anthropologist to give

precise answers to questions about the totality of a given

region and the web

of the different societies within it.

This rehabilitation of research centered on

development ought not to make

one

forget

that the

ethnology

of the

development experts compares badly with

that of the colonial administrators. While the latter were

in the region for long

periods,

the modern experts are often satisfied with

"instant

anthropology,"

which generally is no more than an interview with a few

farmers. This weakness

in participatory observation, linked to the essentially

macroscopic perspective

of the experts, generally

is

increased twofold by a complete lack of

knowledge

of regional history, even if some of them are by conviction inclined to overesti-

mate the impact of colonialization.

In

this context,

anthropologists therefore

have an important role

to

play,

especially

if

they have the

chance to intervene

in

a development operation

in

the region they are already studying. Of course

researchers,

by their mere presence, cannot modify the course of events. Moti-

vated by scientific considerations, they must limit their

participation

to

under-

standing

the

transformations that affect their field. Indeed,

if

development

activities

have

heuristic

value,

it

is

because

they

concern the

totality

of

present-

day Africa. In this regard, two villages, one on the edge of a development

project and the other located

in

its

vicinity,

will

experience on the

whole

the

same evolution. Anthropologists therefore

have much to learn about the

phe-

nomena of development, and

their

intervention poses no problems of legitimacy

as far as it

occurs

in their own

area.

On the other

hand, "ethnographic au-

thority"'9ceases

when

the researcher participates

in

development projects

out-

side

his or her

zone

of

inquiry. Thus

two

cases have to be

distinguished.

In

the same cultural

area

the

anthropologist

is

justified

in

intervening, for,

apart

from some micro-differences revealed by ethnography, profound similarities

exist that

give a

familiar

feeling

to an entire

region.

For

example,

in the

totality

of the Sudanese-Sahelian zone of

West

Africa,

one can

identify

some

grand

common

characteristics,

such as the

presence

of

Islam;

the role of

warfare,

slavery,

and

commerce;

or

the

opposition

between

people

of

power

and

people

of

the

earth.20

In

a

milieu

close to

their

area

of

study, anthropologists

will

thus

quickly identify

those

elements

that resonate

with those

they

normally

encounter. For this

reason,

a delocalization

of the

knowledge

of

the

anthropolo-

gist is positive: by resituating the village or the district into a larger whole, one

escapes

from

ethnological

fetishism and one

grasps

more

firmly

the relative

distinctiveness

of

one's

object

of

research.

However,

outside

of

the cultural area under

study,

one's

"ethnographic

au-

thority"

is

no

longer

valid. The

anthropologist's

work is then

equivalent

to

that of an

expert,

that

is,

it is

superficial. Anthropology

can

only

suffer

by

19. James Clifford, "On

Ethnographic Authority,"

in The Predicament of

Culture

(Cambridge,

Mass., 1988), 21-54.

20. Siegfried F.

Nadel, Byzance noire (Paris,

1971).






20

JEANLOUP AMSELLE

withdrawing into

the warm

comfort of its traditional object of

research. It

should, instead,

reintegrate the

developmentalist

logic which gave birth to an-

thropology and from

which it should never have been

separated. Every

science,

like every identity, is constructed, and as such it attempts to forget its origins

and

to propagate the idea that it was

born fully

armed with the attributes that

confer

legitimacy

upon it. Yet the birth of all

the

scientific,

and

of course

humanistic,

disciplines is linked

to eminently

practical concerns

which,

far

from discrediting

them,

should

guarantee their

legitimacy. By returning to the

practical

preoccupations that accompanied its

emergence,

and by

understanding

the history of its

separation

from

these

concerns,

anthropology

will

make a

new leap forward

and escape the

criticisms directed against it. By

returning to

the practical ethnology of the colonial administrators, anthropology will per-

haps also address one of the major

challenges of our

era: the opposition between

human rights and cultural

relativism.

This plea

for

research that is

not

cut off from

development

corresponds to

one of my main

preoccupations, that

of

rejecting

an

ethnological

reason

that

splits up

sociocultural continue

and

proceeds by

comparative

straddling.2'

Eth-

nology,

in

fact, supposes

a lodestar

by

which one can

judge

the whole

of

past

and present

societies, just as it

supposes

an

implicit

value

judgment

about

certain societies deemed to have remained backward.

Thus against ethnology

I

oppose

anthropology,

that

science

of

humankind

rather than of societies. But unlike

the

structuralists,

I

judge it impossible to

grasp

the

activity

of

humankind

from

a limited series

of

unconscious

structures.

At its

root,

structuralism

postulates

that societies make certain choices within

a

restricted number of

possible

combinations.

But the

idea

that

different human

societies

possess

a

kind

of free

will

collides

with

the

fact

that the

planet's

cultures,

far

from

being

simply juxtaposed

in

space,

are

inserted

in

multiple

hierarchies.

In

this

regard,

one

should

reevaluate

one of the

central postulates

of

anthro-

pology:

cultural

relativism.

By

simply comparing

Western

society

to a

contem-

porary "primitive"

ociety

or

to

a

society

that has

disappeared,

it

is

impossible

to

overcome the

comparativist

aporia,

since

the

approach

proceeds by arbitrarily

juxtaposing

societies distant from one another

in time

and

space. Only

by taking

account of a

regional

sub-group

-

the

cultures

of

Sudanese-Sahelian West

Af-

rica,

for example

can one

compare these societies and rank them

in

a hier-

archy. 1

can

legitimately compare the Peul, Bambara, Malinke, Senufo, and

Minyanka

cultures,

because

they

are

historically linked,

but it is

very

difficult

to

compare,

even

from

the

angle

of

their

differences,

the French

and

Bambara

cultures since

they

never had

any

interaction before

colonialization.

The

refusal

to

compare

French

culture

and Bambara culture

under

the

pretext

that

they

have

no

common

value scale

is

devoid of

any basis,

and

it

is

only by arbitrarily

setting apart

one element or another

(excision)

from the core of a

given group

21. Jean-Loup Amselle, Logiques metisses. Anthopologie de l'identite en Afrique et ailleurs

(Paris, 1990).






ANTHROPOLOGY AND

HISTORICITY

21

(such

as Soninke society)

that one

circumscribes the space within

which

partisans

of

human rights and

defenders

of

respect

for

cultures clash.

The analysis

of the

relationship between

human rights and

cultural relativism

is at the very root of the thematics of identity. By studying colonial ventures

after the

Age

of

Enlightenment and

by

demonstrating their

concern to respect

indigenous

cultures, sometimes to

the point of

inventing

them,

one

is led to

favor a

constructivist

approach to identity.22

ILL.

CONSTRUCTIVISM

If

French

sociology is the heir of

Rousseau (The Social

Contract), it was

also

shaped by the reactionary theories of Maistre and Bonald, who felt a nostalgia

for

the

Middle

Ages and valorized the

"community"'at the

expense

of

the

"society."23

This

problematic

of the

"community"

was

born

in

Germany

in

the

heart of the

Romantic reaction

(Herder,

Fichte,

T6nnies), but it also

developed

in

France

in

authors such as

Fustel

de Coulanges

and

Durkheirn.

Durkheim

was

particularly

obsessed

with

social

bonding,

doubtless from a concern

to

substitute

a form

of

republican cohesion for the mechanical

solidarity

of

the

Ancien Regime

and

the anomie of the

market.

This

approach

consists

of

empha-

sizing, in an organicist perspective inspired by Spencer, the "collective con-

science"'

as

well

as,

in

a

general

way,

the monism and

the monadism of so-

cial

objects.

Closely

related are the works of

Halbwachs and

numerous other

French

sociologists,

who

tend to

make

of

every

social

group

a

given

"already

there,"

a

given

to which

they assign

a

conscience or a

memory.

In

France,

this

sociological

naturalism has been

reinforced by

Hegelian

Marxism,

which

quite

naturally

transplanted

itself

into

this

Durkheimian

problematic.

Indeed,

both

in

Hegel

and in Marx, groups first exist "in themselves," then at a later stage acquire a

consciousness of

themselves.

This

objectivist

sociology

cannot be conceived of

independently from a

philosophy

of

history:

a

teleology

is

necessary

in

order

to

construct a

sociology,

and the

existence

of

social classes cannot be

postulated

apart from an

"end of

history"

when

these classes

will be

abolished.

This socio-

logical

eschatology

is

not without

epistemological consequences.

First,

a

critique

of

it can

equally

be

directed

to

a

concept

such as "nation"

or

any

other

collective

term

which,

by

the

very

fact of

being

used,

makes

the

group

it

designates

exist (the performative character of social objects). As such, nationalism, like

46classism,"

is

merely

a

strategy

of

accrediting

a social

group:

class

struggle

often consists

purely

and

simply

of

having

the

existence

of the

different

classes

recognized.24

Contrary

to

sociological objectivism

are constructivism and

methodological

individualism.

If

there

are no

groups

in

themselves,

then

there are

only

con-

22. Ibid.

23. Robert Nisbet, The Sociological

Tradition

[19661

(New

Brunswick, N.J., 1993).

24. Bogumil Jewsiewicki, "Triomphe ou fin de 1'Occidenten Afrique," Cahiers d'etudes afri-

caines 114 (1989),

289-291.






22

JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE

structed groups, each group consisting of the conglomeration of

a collection

of individuals who succeed

in forming an alliance to have their

existence recog-

nized. Here we recognize

Sartre's approach25and his

sociohistorical itinerary

that makes the group pass from seriality to fusion, to organization, to institu-

tion.26 Under the

influence

of

Sartre's ideas,

I

grant a

preponderant place to

rarity and to exteriority in

the constitution of groups, but with

this difference:

I

believe that the rarity in

question is not of a material order but of symbols

available for

constituting social

groups.

The strategy of constituting groups is therefore essentially

political,

so that

their existence cannot be

analyzed independently from the

discourses uttered

by

their

representatives.

One

could go so far as to maintain that

the life

of

groups is inseparable from the discourse of their representatives. It is also

wrong to separate the sphere

of representation from that of

"social reality":

different

social groups only perpetuate themselves inasmuch as

they

have

suc-

ceeded

in

emerging

onto the

political

field.

This political strategy of

recognition

and accreditation utilizes

the methods

of

production

of

truth current

in

the

scientific

domain:

notably

the

"hardening

of facts."

In

this

sense,

the

famous

Machiavellian maxim, "to govern is to make

[them] believe," is

equally true

in

sociology

and

history.

The lot of

the French working class is indissolubly

linked to that of its representatives, and the slow death of the PCF (Parti

Communiste

Francais)

and of

the CGT

(Confederation

Generale

des

Tra-

vailleurs) doubtlessly means

the end of

their constituents.28Thus

the

approach

of the

sociologists who

investigate

the

disappearance

of the

working

class

in

terms

of

the techno-economic

changes,

such

as the

crisis

in

Fordism,

is ulti-

mately pointless:

the

identity sign

is

mostly arbitrary, it is the result of the

application

of an

"onomastic emblem" to a

collection

of

individuals.29

Conse-

quently, the

whole

genius of

sociologists

is

to arrive at having the models

which

they make of social reality recognized30and, from that point of view, their

talent is

not

very

different

from

that

of

politicians:

in

both

cases,

one

anticipates

the

expectations

of social actors.

Thus there

seems

to be a

conjunction

between

sociology

and

anthropology

which,

in

their

respective

domains, try

to

emphasize

the social construction

of

identities.

The

history

of

the

social sciences

of the

past

two decades

could

therefore be

analyzed

as the

passage

from

sociologism

and

objectivism

to indi-

vidualism,

interactionism,

and

phenomenology.

Within this new

paradigm,

one

trains one's sights on the individual and, particularly, on the outside individual

who creates

the

group.

As

we

already noted,

this

change

of

perspective

also

25. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris, 1960).

26. Emmanuel Terray, "Marxisme annees 60," Les Temps Modernes

531-533 (1990), 86-98.

27. Luc Boltanski, Les cadres (Paris, 1982).

28. Philippe Corcuff, "Le categories, le professionnel et la classe:

usages contemporains de

formes

historiques," Geneses

3

(1991),

55-72.

29. Jacques Berque, "Qu'est-ce qu'une 'tribu' nord-africaine?" in Maghreb, Histoire et societes

(Paris, 1974), 22-34.

30. Bourdieu,

Choses

dites.






ANTHROPOLOGY AND

HISTORICITY 23

has to be related to the decline of structural linguistics and to the rise of

sociolin-

guistics and pragmatics

(Austin, Benveniste, Searle).

In

this new space, identity

becomes the result of a

"negotiation" among all the players

participating in the

definition of social bonds. The social contract is no longer defined once and

for all, but becomes the

"agreement

on

the very object

of

the disagreement."

Yet,

constructivism and

interactionism

are

themselves not safe from all

communitary

presuppositions.

In

the

classical work of constructivist thinking, The Social

Construction of Reality,31

Peter

Berger and

Thomas

Luckmann thus

put

forth

a

way of thinking from which the

imputation

of

community is

not absent.

Similarly,

one of the theoreticians who has interactionism most in

view, John

Gumperz32

s not

free of

every

ethnicist

or culturalist

presupposition.

Furthermore, it is to be feared that an individualist and phenomenological

drift may result from the aporias

of

postmodernism.

In

the

wake

of

George

Marcus and Michael Fischer33

n

entire North-American

current,

in

a

tradition

marked by cultural

relativism,

is

emphasizing anthropology

as

"text,"

that is

to

say

that the vision of

populations studied

by

the

ethnologist

is

the

sum

of

the number

of views

brought to

bear

upon

them.34

This

current tends to sanction

the idea that the

totality

of

descriptions

elaborated

by anthropologists

regarding

a

given society

are

all equally

"true"

and that the

great

works of

anthropology

(The Nuer by Evans-Pritchard, Dieu d'eau by Griaule, and so on) are of greater

value because of their authors' talent

rather

than

because

of their

read-out of

the

subject

matter. This relativist

conception

of

anthropology may

be

criticized,

like all relativist

conceptions, by turning

the

relativist argument against its

authors: relativism is,

in

fact,

but

one

of the

points

of view it is

possible to

have regarding

a

given

society.

The

agreement

or

even the

disagreement

of

anthropologists

about the structures of this

or that

society clearly

shows that

an

object

exists -if

not a

"reality"

about

which

observers

argue.

Whether this

object is constructed or contested takes nothing from the materiality of its

existence.

The

representation

is not

less real

than the

reality

which it is

meant

to

represent

and

that is

why

all

the

paradigms

of "invention" and

of

"creation"9

are,

in

a

sense,

nothing

but

the

reverse of

the

objectivism they

claim

to

denounce.

I

also

found

myself

to be

in

opposition

to

any

form of

postmodernism.

I

have

no

intention

of

formulating a

philosophical interrogation

on the

impossibility

of

reaching reality,

but

I

do intend

to

propose

a

new

paradigm.

The

venture of

re-elaboration

which

I

have

undertaken

simply

aims to

grasp

sociologically,

historically, and geographically the meaning of words by carrying out a sort

of

onomastic

simulation. But the

absence

of

a

fixed link

between

the term

and

31.

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden

City,

N.Y.,

1966).

32. John Gumperz, Engager

la

conversation

(Paris, 1989).

33. George

E. Marcus and

Michael M.

J.

Fischer, Anthropology

as Cultural

Critique (Chi-

cago, 1986).

34. Cf. Writing Culture, ed. James Clifford and

George

E.

Marcus

(Berkeley, 1986); Clifford,

The Predicament of Culture; Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author

(Cambridge, Eng., 1988).






24 JEAN-LOUP

AMSELLE

its referent does

not mean that groups do

not exist. In the work of disassembling

the notion

of

the

ethnic group some were willing to see an attempt

at negating

the existence of groups.

On the contrary, the construction of

groups, far from

being proof of their non-facticity, in fact strengthens their existence. One need

only note what is

presently happening in Africa to be convinced

of this. For

example,

in

Liberia, confrontations

between ethnic

groups

often hide conflicts

of

another origin,

notably religious ones.

The deconstruction of ethnicities, of

peoples

or of

nations, does

not

aim to deny

their

existence,

but simply to

demonstrate their relativity and, consequently,

to question a fundamentalism

that

in

its different

transformations-ethnic,

cultural, or religious-is one of

the most

dangerous

phenomena

of

our era.

IV. "REAPPROPRIATION"

Linked to this constructivist

problematic is the question of

"reappropriation,"

defined as

the

phenomenon

of

feedback

of "etic"

statements

upon social actors

themselves.

The term thus concerns the production

of local identities from what

V.

Y. Mudimbe calls

the "colonial library."35

rom this

perspective,

indigenous

peoples' perceptions

of themselves are affected

by

the feedback

of

colonial

and

postcolonial ethnological texts on their consciousness. In a general fashion,

this

"reappropriation"

s inscribed

in

the

greater

realm

of

relationships between

literacy and orality.

Indeed,

in

the

"oral" cultures, the diffusion of literacy

authenticates the claims

of social

agents

and sanctifies social

relationships

in

some

way.

Here one

will

recognize

the

analysis

of

Jack

Goody36

as

well as its

limitations.

In

West African societies,

influenced by writing

for centuries, and

especially by

an Arabic

literature

transmitting representations

from

the

Old

Testament,

how

can one be certain that

the materials gathered in the field by

the ethnologist do not bear traces of concepts imported before the colonial

conquest?

The schema that

opposes people

of

power

to

people

of

the

earth,

for

example,

is

presented

by anthropologists

as

a cultural

trait characteristic

of numerous societies

of the West African savanna

(Bambara,

Mossi,

Gur-

mance,

and so

on).

But this trait

may

be conceived as

the

product

of

the

incorpo-

ration

of

the totality

of these

political

formations

into

a

common

cultural area

that includes North Africa. The recurring

use of divination

is doubtless ex-

plained

on

the same

principle.

Two consequences spring from these reflections. First, the emphasis on ethnic

specificity

and the

comparativism

it induces

obliterate this

phenomenon

of

incorporation.

Second,

the facts

of

reappropriation

and

reworking

of

ideas,

to

which historians draw the

attention

of

other

social

scientists,

and

which

are

beginning

to ruffle the self-assurance

of

anthropologists,

may

be assimilated

to

an

encounter

between

an

"already

there"

included

in

a

grouping

that

goes

far

beyond

the

local

society

under

study

with an

imported

literature.

In

the

35. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (Bloomington, Ind., 1988).

36. Jack

Goody, La raison

graphique

(Paris,

1979).






ANTHROPOLOGY AND

HISTORICITY

25

political anthropology of West

Africa,

for

example,

the "local"

theories of

power cannot

be reduced to a simple

creation of colonialism but result from

an accord

between people of power and

people of the earth

-

a pairing infiltrated

by Islam and by the colonial theory of conquest. For, in order for that reappro-

priation to take

place, one surely has to assume the existence of a

support that

on

the whole possesses the same

characteristics as the elements that

come to

be added to the

structure. The data brought by the anthropologist

would then

be the product of the accretion of a series

of strata, causing the idea

of an

indigenous layer

of population to regress to

infinity. Anthropologists find them-

selves

in

such

a

state of dizziness whenever

they

ask

themselves about the first

origin of the

institutions they are studying. The loss

of

the conditions

under

which utterances were produced allows them to apprehend as structuresthose

classifications that exist in the local society

only

in

an

unstable form.

These

classifications take on the

power

of

law

only through

the

magic

of

writing.

V. STATE

AND

STATELESS SOCIETIES

To refuse to

ratify the distinction between

state and stateless societies is not

equivalent

to

taking refuge

in

a

kind

of formalism

in

which all cows are black.

If the opposition between people of power and people of the earth is apparent

in

segmentary

societies, the same is also true

in

societies with a central

political

power.

The

hesitation

with which

the first European travelers described the

nature of power

in

coastal African

societies

(chief,

prince, king,

and

so on)

shows clearly

that

the classification of this

or that

society

in

the

categories

distinguished by Fortes

and

Evans-Pritchard

in

African

Political

Systems

(1940)

is

largely arbitrary. To a great extent, political

anthropology

was as much a

projection of the preoccupations of the

outside observers

as

it

was a

pure

description of the

societies studied. To see

in

any

one

system

of

organization

a

stateless

society

or

a

society

with

a

state

thus would

depend greatly

on

the

angle

of

vision,

but

also

on the

attitude

of the

observers

to their

own

society.

Eighteenth-century writings

on

"civil

society"

have

had an

impact

on

the

way

in

which anthropologists

have

classified

African

political systems.

From the

philosopher' effort to define an autonomous

"public space"

as

a bulwark

against

absolutism

arose a

populist

vision

of

society

that

resembles

the

underlying

notion of segmentary society.37One must stress that state and segmentarysocie-

ties,

far

from

corresponding

to two

types

of

societies,

are

nothing

but

the

two

poles

of an

oscillating process.38

Thus civil

society

and

segmentary society

are

not

opposed

to the

state,

but rather

represent

what

is left

of the state when it

has been forgotten. This model explains at the

same

time

the existence of a

"public space"

in

the two forms of

society.

37. Henrika Kuklick, "TribalExemplars: Images

of Political Authority in British

Anthropology,

1895-1945" in Functionalism Historicized, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison, Wisc., 1984).

38. Amselle, Logiques meitisses.







By public space must be understood a space that, in a privileged

manner,

serves for the practice of external politics. With the aid of an example from the

Peul,

Bambara, and Malinke societies of southwestern Mali and of northeastern

Guinea, I would like to try and show that "public space" is common to societies

with

a state and segmentary societies.

In

these societies

this public space exists

independently from the ethnic affiliation of the rulers

and from the political

form of

the societies.

In

the states,

in

chieftainships,

and in the village communi-

ties, there are places where politicians, that is to say people who represent their

community to the outside world, officiate. The households (du)

of this region

include a certain number of huts connected together

by a surrounding wall,

and

this

grouping, generally

circular

in

form,

does not communicate

with

the

outside except through a hut with two openings, one turned inward and one

outward. This

hut, called a "vestibule" (bolon),

is

primarily

meant to deal with

the

external relationships

of the

community and as such

appears as the favored

place of politics. It is

in

the vestibule that the head

of the family (dutigi),

also called "chief of the

vestibule" (bolontigi),

receives strangers

and thus the

contacts between the family

as a

political

community

and the outside

world

are established. It should be

noted, however,

that

political authority

is not

randomly distributed among the whole of the society;

it is, on the contrary,

tightly linked to the possession of a certain social status. Only men of nobility

(horon, tontigi)

are named

to be

"chief

of the

vestibule,"

and neither slaves

nor women can claim this title.

In

this ethnographic description political

is

identified with "common wealth" and exteriority.

Indeed, this definition puts the external relationships

of the communities

in

the

foreground, and,

in

this regard, it is difficult

to

imagine

a

society completely

turned

in

upon itself,

one that would not

grant any space,

no matter

how

minimal,

to

a

stranger.

If

such

a

society

did

exist,

I would

reserve the

name

apolitical for it. But the model of "the war of each against each" (Hobbes) or

of the "state of

nature"

(Locke, Rousseau),

even

though

based

upon

concrete

Amerindian

societies,39

is a convenient fiction

that allows

political philosophy

to

elaborate

the

other fictions

of contract and

civil society.

If

no

purely warfaring

society

has ever existed

except

for

a

very

short

period,40

hen the

"civil

society"

which

is its inversion would

also

lose

its

operative

value.

With the same

blow,

39. "It may peradventure be thought,

there was never such a time, nor condition

of warre as

this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places,

where

they live so

now.

For the savage people

in

many places

of

America, except

the

government

of

small Families, the concord whereof dependeth

on naturall

lust,

have no

government

at all;

and

live at this day in that brutish manner,

as I said before" (Hobbes, Leviathan [1651],

ed. C. B.

MacPherson [Harmondsworth, Eng.,

1968], 187.) It is in the writings of J. Acosta, a Peruvian

Jesuit

that Locke finds his illustrations of the "state of

nature." "There are

great

and

apparent

conjectures," says he,

"that

these

men

[speaking of those

of

Peru]

for a

long

time had neither

kings nor commonwealths, but lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida-the

Cheriquanas,

those of Brazil,

and

many other nations,

which have no certain kings, but, as occasion is offered

in

peace or war, they choose their captains

as they please." (Locke, Two Treatises of

Civil Govern-

ment [1690] [London, 1924], 167.)

40. For example

in

Wasolon; cf.

Amselle, Logiques

mitisses,

212.







27

associated anthropological notions (segmentary society, society against the

state) become null and void, as does the contrast between

state and stateless

society. Every society has a "public space" to be managed,

every society is

directly political. It is by denying the political side, by refusing to recognize

an exteriority in different societies, that ethnological reason, a faithful continu-

ator of a certain political philosophy, has won its renown.

VI. INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY

Another way to locate certain societies in a radical alterity is to deny them the

possibility

of

reserving

a

place for the

individual.

In

contrast, to begin the

analysis with the individual is doubtless one of the best ways to escape from

any

form of

exclusion, stigmatization,

and racism.

This

is so even

if

that proce-

dure

flies in the

face of sociological and anthropological tradition that empha-

sizes

the communitary

and

collective

aspect

of

"primitive"

societies and

ethnic

minorities (Durkheim, Thnnies,

L.

Dumont).

What one

might

call

the "imputa-

tion

of community" is one of

the

favored ways

of advancing racist discourse:

it is by assigning a "singular plural" the Jew, the Arab, the Bambara, the

homosexual -and thus

by

the

negation

of

individuality

that

all

forms

of

rejec-

tion are practiced. To recognize the individual status of an Other is to recognize

him

or her as an alter ego, as a participant

in

the same humanity and the same

contemporaneity.

In

that sense racism

is

in no

way peculiar

to Western societies:

when Europeans make general statements about the Peul or the Bambara, their

attitude is completely symmetrical

to

that of Malians

who

are incapable

of

seeing

the individual

in

the

European.

Racism is therefore as much the act of

the

dominated as of those who

dominate;

it

results

from a

holistic misreading

that consists

of

reasoning

in

culturalist or communitarian

terms.

Every society

is at once holistic and individualistic: it is holistic when observed from the

outside,

and individualistic

when

one becomes one

with it.

From

this

perspec-

tive,

racism is not linked to

ignorance

of

the Other but to failure to

recognize

the Other as

an individual. The belief

in

the existence of

"corporate groups"-

lineage, clan, people,

civil

society-that is,

as

organs

that have a

claim to

sovereignty,

constitutes

in

a sense

the most

elementary

form of

racism.

Sartre

is,

as has

already

been

mentioned,

one of

the

rare authors

who has

tried to

safeguard

the essence

of

Marxism

by relying

on

a

methodological

indi-

vidualism.41The intersubjective approach, for which he was denounced by

the

structuralist Marxists,

seems

to constitute the

main contribution

of his

approach.

The

priority

he

gave

to the

aims and

projects

of

individuals,

and

thus

to a

phenomenological grasp

of the

social, reinvigorated

what

in

Marxism

had become

congealed,

both

in

its Stalinist and

its structural

version. But

if

one cannot

but

subscribe to

the

way

in

which Sartre

proceeds

with

the ideal

construction

of

social

groups (serial groups, groups

in

fusion, organized groups,

institutionalized groups),

it is still

the

case

that

his

individualist

sociology

and

41. Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique.






28

JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE

theoretical humanism

drew on

the deficiency of the majority of social theories,

namely a sharp opposition between

primitive and

other societies. In

fact,

when

Sartre puts

individual praxis

in the center of his approach, he conceives

of its

role only in the framework of historical societies, while the "primitive"societies

remain fixed

within the repetition

of the Same and owe their modifications

only

to

external influences.42

In

that

sense,

Sartre finds

himself

in

the same place

as

Levi-Strauss

who has frequently

contrasted "cold" and "hot"

societies.43

In

short,

it

seems

as

if

all

sociology,

no matter how

individualist,

needs

an exterior

referent or an implicit ethnology

in

order to affirm

its validity. Grant me the

primacy of individualism in historical

societies,

the sociologist seems to

say,

and

I will

leave you

the

non-historicity

of

exotic societies.

This

is

why

Sartre,

despite his profession of a progressive or Marxist faith, should definitely be

placed

in

the

mainstream of liberal

thinking.

Like Sartre, Luc Boltanski

makes a categorical

distinction between "critical

societies" (ours)

and

traditional

societies.44

Different

from traditional

societies,

critical societies

are supposedly characterized by the existence of several

"cities,"

thereby

allowing

the

actors to

pass alternatively

from

one world into the other.

What makes Boltanski's

approach

so interesting for anthropologists

is that it

permits a circumvention

of the opposition between

individual and collective

action. By introducing the notion of "agent" nto the analysis of denunciation,

Boltanski

manages

to substitute the dyad "singular versus general"

for the dyad

"individual versus collective"

and thereby gives

prominence to what he

calls

continual

variations

of

size.

In

aim this

approach

is

thus

totally comparable

to that

of

Evans-Pritchard

when,

for

example,

he

analyzes

the

phenomena

of

fusion and

fission

in

segmentary

African

societies.

There, too,

a movement

is

at

work

in

which

groups

of

increasing

size

are embraced

(individuals,

segments,

lineages,

clans).

The alternation

of phases

of

political

contraction

and expansion

may be clearly observed at the outbreak of a conflict that is at first purely local

but that

progressively

involves larger

units. Let us take

for

example

the

late

nineteenth-century conflict

known

in

Wasolon (Mali)

under

the

name

of the

"Peul War." On the occasion of

a

funeral,

the Jalo of Lontola sent

a

challenge

to

Chief

Namakoro

Jakite,

who

responded

with another

challenge

and

asked

42. Ibid.,

124, n. 1: "Il ne faudrait

pas definir l'homme

par

l'historicit6-puisqu'il

y a des

societes

sans histoire

-

mais par

la

possibility

permanent de vivre

historiquement les ruptures qui

bouleversent parfois les societes

de repetition.

Cette definition est necessairement

a

posteriori,

c'est-A-dire qu'elle nait au sein d'une sociWte

historique

et

qu'elle

est en elle-meme le

resultat de

transformations

sociales. Mais elle revient

s'appliquer

sur les societes sans histoire

de la meme

maniere que

l'Histoire elle-meme revient

sur celles-ci pour

les transformer

-

d'abord par

l'exterieur

et ensuite

dans et par

l'interiorisation de l'exteriorite."

43. Claude Levi-Strauss,

La

pensee sauvage

(Paris, 1962), 328-329.

He clearly perceived

the

difficulties inherent

in

Sartre's position,

but the solution

he proposes -history unfolds

the

fan of

societies

in

time, ethnology

in

space (339)-reintroduces

a

split

between ethnology

and

sociology.

Either every society is historical

or no

society

is, and it is not so much

the option

chosen that

counts

as the fact of

initiating

or not

initiating

a rift between several

types

of

societies.

Nevertheless,

as

far as

methodology goes,

it

is true that the technique, consisting

of varying the variables

within

the same cultural area, is often the only way to grasp the meaning of an institution.

44. Boltanski,

Les cadres.






ANTHROPOLOGY AND

HISTORICITY 29

a neighboring

chief, Kunjan Jemori Sako, to

help

him

subdue the Jalo. Kunjan

Jemori Sako's

army went to Lontola, pillaged the

village, and went home, but

failed to hand over

part of the booty to Namakoro

Jakite. During

a

conflict

with another local chief, Namakoro Jakite tried to take revenge on Kunjan

Jemori Sako and

succeeded

in

bringing into the war a

large number

of

regional

chieftainships,

as well as the king of Wojene. After a reversal of

alliances,

customary

in

such situations, all the Peul regrouped against the forces

of the

king of Wojene, thus constraining the

commander-in-chief to take flight.

But

this

confederation against the King of Wojene, with its ethnic character,

had

only an ephemeral

existence.

A

short

time afterwards the region fell back

into

a

phase of

segmentation,

that is to

say of

wars of one

against all.

In this example, it appears that purely local and segmentary clashes, which

frequently

originate in conflicts among individuals, can trigger wars

involving

states, through

an

enlargement

of the

scope

of conflict.

Conversely,

the

interven-

tions of the state

are often very

brief

and quickly give way to the feuds and

vendettas that

are the usual form of violence

in

the region. In

reference to

Hume's analysis of

the relationship between paganism and Christianity,45one

may deem these conflicts to be rooted

in

the

political oscillation

whose

trace

is also

observable

in

ethnic identity changes.

Thus, critical societies are not the only ones to possess a plurality of "cities":

exotic

societies can

equally

move back

and

forth

between several worlds.

By

passing

from

segmentarity

to the

state,

the societies

of

southern

Mali,

for ex-

ample, also pass

from

the

singular

to

the

general

through

a

kind of

ascent to

the extremes.

Here, then,

the state and

the

segmentary

constitute

two

possible

modalities of the

public space.

VII. PRIMORDIAL SYNCRETISM

In

regard

to the

Peul, Bambara,

and

Malinke populations of Mali and

Guinea,

I

have defended

the idea of mixture

or

primordial

syncretism.46

Edwin

Wilmsen

and

James

Denbow

developed

the same idea

in

their

analysis

of the

Khoi,

San,

Tswana,

and Herero

populations

of

the

Kalahari, thereby rendering

the

vision

of

the

Bushman as

eternal

hunter-gatherer

null and void.47

n

fact,

these

different

populations

are

involved

in

a

plurality

of economic activities:

foraging, hunting,

gathering,

cattle

breeding, agriculture, trade,

and

craftsmanship.

Over a

long

historical period, they simultaneously or alternately practiced all of these activi-

ties and

entered into

a constant network

of interaction. The

very object

of

research

must thus

be

organized by

the articulation

of

these social formations

and

is

not limited itself to each

entity

taken

in

isolation. At the end of the

nineteenth

century,

under the

influence

of merchants and

European

mission-

45. David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects,

4

vols. (London, 1753-1754).

46. Amselle, Logiques

mitisses.

47. Edwin N. Wilmsen and James R. Denbow, "ParadigmaticHistory of San-speaking Peoples

and Current Attempts

at

Revision," Current Anthropology

31

(1990), 489-524.







aries, this network of overlapping relationships was dismembered and gave

birth to societies and cultures circumscribed and reified by colonial administra-

tors. The Bushmen of the Kalahari are thus neither the living relics of the period

preceding the neolithic, nor the emblematic representatives of a "mode of a

foraging production" whose roots supposedly go back to prehistoric times. The

Bushmen and the San are categories invented by colonial thinking just as the

representation of the people of the Kalahari as foragers is invented. In fact, this

representation has been extracted from a whole series of subsistence strategies in

which the totality of the rural populations of Botswana was involved. Thus

from a syncretic situation, societies, cultures, indeed "modes of production"48

have emerged under the pressure of colonialism and of the European gaze.

By postulating a primordial syncretism, I wanted to advance the idea of a

multiplicity,

a

plurality

of

belonging at the beginning, which seemed to me to

be the main characteristic of precolonial Africa. By showing that only fuzzy

groupings prevailed before the European conquest, I simply wanted to underline

that changes

in

identity were the

rule

and that, consequently, categories such

as

those of culture

and

society could not appear.

In

fact,

in

order for African

cultures to exist as

such,

it

was

necessary

that

the

European

cultures

had been

hypostatized and that the idea of them had been projected onto exotic realities.

On this condition, a filtering process and a disarticulation of the "networks of

society"

can be made

operative,

a

process

that

gives

birth to a

representation

of

Africa as the land of welcome

for

a multitude of cultures or ethnicities.

Thus, the debate on the autonomy of hunter-gatherer societies ties

in

with

the

debate

on

ethnicity. Indeed,

a common naturalist and

typological inspiration

propels the

definition both of

pure types

of societies

and

of immutable ethnici-

ties.

Jan Vansina

thus

points out,

in

reference to Wilmsen and Denbow's

article,

that such research undermines the foundations

of all

comparative anthropology

by relying on a sociocultural approach of the evolutionist type and, conse-

quently,

that it

is

necessary

to

change paradigms.49

This

kind of work

does,

indeed, force researchersto redefine the premises

on

which

an

adequate compar-

ative

anthropology

can henceforth

be constructed.

In

defining

cultures or

types

of

societies, ethnologists quite frequently employ

ideological representations

that

mirror

in

reverse

their

own

society.

If the

topos

of

the

hunter-gatherer,

for

example,

has

so

effectively

taken root

in

our

imagina-

tion,

it

is because

it

constitutes

an

identity

referent

indispensable

to the func-

tioning

of our

civilization.50

This

civilization,

like the

sociological

theories that

account

for

it, presuppose,

as we have

seen,

an

implicit ethnology.

From this

perspective,

the

relationship

between

anthropology

and

history

appears very

different

from

what it was

at

the start.

Distorted

by

the debate

48. Richard

B.

Lee, The

Kung San: Men, Women

and Work in a

Foraging Society (Cambridge,

Eng., 1979).

49.

Jan Vansina, "Comments

on Wilmsen

and Denbow," CurrentAnthropology

31(1990), 516.

50. Edwin N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (Chi-

cago, 1989).






ANTHROPOLOGY

AND

HISTORICITY

31

between

functionalism and evolutionism,

the

question of historicity could

not

have been

satisfactorily broached

until a true

history of exotic societies

was

established;

that

is,

until historians began

to be interested

in

the past

of these

societies. Then the contemporaneity

of the latter could

be postulated

as

well

as the different phenomena

accompanying

it: feedback of

literacy

over orality

and

the

weight of imported representations

on indigenous consciousness.

But

the

coexistence

of a

plurality of systems (indigenous

and imported) equally

forces one

to question

oneself on the compatibility

of

these

schemas

with

one

another. Thus,

for

example,

rather

than detecting the result

of foreign

influences

(Islam or

colonization) in West

African binary

oppositions like the people

of

power versus the people

of the

earth, would it

not be appropriate

to

see in

them

a universal

characteristic?

If

such is

the

case,

the

question

of

historicity

would refer back to that

of

universalism,

that

is

to say

to a favoring

of

resem-

blances over cultural

relativism.

Two possibilities,

in short, are

offered to the anthropologist:

to start by

positing differences

in

order then

to find

resemblances or,

on the contrary, to

hypothesize similarities

in order,

later, to appreciate the

full extent

of

dis-

cordance.

I

prefer

the

second

solution.

EHESS, Centre

d'Etudes Africaines

Paris

TRANSLATED

BY

MARJOLIJN

DE JAGER

amselle - anthro and historicity

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