オセアニア人類学と歴史記述

その他

Anthropology keeps on criticising itself since "Orientalism" proposed by Said, so we cannot easily talk about "Others". Said points out that discourses on Orient by Western (scholars) essentialize the Orient as residual category of the Occident. This paper discusses the problem of how anthropology can represent "Others". To overcome this critical theory, many anthropologists prescribe many answers. For example, some suggest that it is "objectification of culture", which is to say that "Others" recreate their culture consciously. Others argue that it is "strategic essentialism", which means a deliberate adoption of "essentialism". However, these cannot solve the problem as it asumes "ranked Others" like "Orientalism". "Others" with which anthropology deals is not "Others" which is entangled in ranked dichotomies as seen in "Orientalism" which invents "Orient/Occident" or in "objectification of culture" that implies "Self (as Colonizer) / Others (as Colonized)". Instead we must think "Others" as "tout-autre". They are "tout-autre" because they are living in "polyphonic realism" which involve "ambiguity" and "inconsistency". Yet, we researchers who regard "rationality" and "consistency" as important use the knowledge called "monophonic realism". And there is divergence between the two as Bourdieu points out; i.e. we can feel them in the daily life, but cannot represent them entirely. To think "tout-autre" in "monophonic" knowledge is to keep thinking the position of statment for anthropologist himself. "What kind of word or logic that cannot represent them entirely?" "Who am I that use such words or logics?" Anthropologist must write ethnographies and describe their history while questioning such problems.