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“Why is that white man pointing that thing at me?” Representing the Maasai*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
The feminist anthropologist Henrietta Moore has noted that “the interpretation of ‘other cultures’ has often been likened in the anthropological literature to a process of translation.” If one accepts that interpretation and translation are closely linked (though there may be some subtle distinctions to be drawn between them), then the comparison described by Moore may be illustrated with statements from two of the most prominent of anthropological critics in recent years, Clifford Geertz and James Clifford. In his book The Interpretation of Cultures, first published in 1973, Geertz claimed that:
anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and third ones to boot. (By definition, only a “native” makes first order ones: it's his culture.) They are, thus, fictions, in the sense that they are “something made,” “something fashioned…”
A few years later, in a now similarly influential commentary on figures of and challenges to authority in ethnography, James Clifford declared that “[e]thnography is the interpretation of cultures. Both statements reflect the growing conviction that anthropology is not the objective or even the authoritative science that it once claimed to be. In the essay that follows I want to sketch some of the problems of cultural interpretation and translation in anthropology and to discuss one fascinating attempt to find a responsible solution to the imbalance of power inherent in anthropological representation.
Before I turn to this example, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies' film on the Maasai, Memories and Dreams, I need to outline the main arguments that have been made about the status of anthropology. These have focused on the discipline's complicity with colonialism, its male bias, and the ethnocentrism that underlies the claim of scientific objectivity. I shall take each of these points in turn and, though it is important to outline the arguments about, and proposals for, methods and forms of representation, I will consider them only in brief since they have been often discussed in detail elsewhere. Cumulatively, they have contributed to the recognition that “[c]ulture, and our views of ‘it,’ are produced historically, and are actively contested.”
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1999
Footnotes
*
An earlier and much shorter version of this paper was first tried out at the “Translation and Power” conference at the University of Warwick in July 1997. I am grateful to Susan Bassnett for the invitation to speak and, for some helpful observations, to those who attended the session.
References
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4 This was shown in 1993 on BBC2. I am using the film's spelling of “Maasai” but will retain other variants when quoting from other sources.
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