Literature and Anthropology: Literary Studies in the Era of Globalization of Knowledge

Author: Ye Shuxian / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Since ancient times, in the binary opposition of "sameness" and "difference," value bias has always inclined toward "sameness." Look at Confucius's strong stance on "attacking different views," or Liu Xie's dichotomous evaluation of Qu Yuan's works in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons as "similar to classics" and "different from classics," and it becomes clear that "difference" has always been associated with negative value. Only in the contemporary era, shaped by postmodernism and deconstruction, has "difference" transformed from negative to positive value. Naturally, this corresponds to the simultaneous transformation of "sameness": from an ideal that people aspire to and pursue into a fearsome and avoided shackle. This dramatic shift in the times can be easily grasped from the contrast between the uniform clothing of the past and today's pursuit of individuality and exotic fashion.
Academia has debated for decades around Derrida's concept of différance, which subverts Western philosophical traditions. Among contemporary philosophers and thinkers, Derrida is the most significant contributor to the reversal of the value of "difference." Based on the French word "difference," he coined the term différance, which has become a crucial critical tool in deconstruction. According to Derrida, différance is a (meaning) construction principle that proposes definitions depend not on the entity itself but on its affirmative or negative reference relationships with other texts. Meaning changes over time. In the ultimate sense, the identity of meaning is always deferred, postponed, or delayed. Undoubtedly, the certainty of meaning is a tenet of traditional philosophy, rooted in the ancient Greeks' belief in "logos." Derrida's introduction of the concept of différance essentially aims to end the long dominance of the tenet of meaning certainty, declaring that meaning is uncertain or indeterminate. From the perspective of traditional philosophical thinking, this is tantamount to declaring the end of philosophy. "Logos" refers to both words and reason, and Greek philosophers used this supreme category to bridge "sameness" between knowledge and truth. Today, philosophers have realized that words can lead people from irrationality to rationality, just as they can lead from rationality to irrationality. Rather than believing that the essence of language leads to truth, it is better to believe that the essence of language is play. The belief in truth or "sameness" self-destructs in the face of the "language game," and "difference" thus enjoys its first major liberation after being suppressed for millennia. Together with "uncertainty," it forms a fundamental challenge to the nature of philosophy and science. John Horgan, author of The End of Science, writes: "The 20th century science produced an odd paradox; its extraordinary progress has led to the belief that we can know everything we should know, while also fostering the suspicion that we cannot know anything for certain. If the last Enlightenment was the victory of scientific reason over religious faith, then the current re-enlightenment is the victory of 'difference' over 'consensus.' In short, 'difference' triumphs over 'sameness.'"
In his influential work The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard not only dedicates a chapter (Chapter 13) to explaining how the study of uncertainty is a feature of postmodern science but also criticizes the view that the legitimacy of knowledge lies in "consensus" in the introduction. He states: "Postmodern knowledge is not merely a tool of power. It can enhance our sensitivity to difference and strengthen our tolerance for the incommensurable. Its foundation lies not in the homology of experts but in the misalignment of inventors." Without a doubt, whether in the era of belief in God or in the era of scientific truth, the ability to tolerate the incommensurable has not been cultivated. While people in those times may have had "sensitivity to difference," it was merely an habitual rejection as the opposite of "sameness"—the sensitivity of "attacking different views." Today, whether to tolerate "incommensurable" differences and to what extent is already the new ethical benchmark of postmodernism. Derrida likely never expected that his différance-based interpretive method would be adopted by contemporary feminist philosophers to "turn the tables," compiling a substantial volume titled Jacques Derrida's Feminist Interpretations as part of the "Rereading the Canon" series edited by Nancy Tuana. The eleven authors argue that they, as deconstructionists, stand on the same side as Derrida, while as feminists, they occupy a relative or differential position. Because Derrida's works are neither feminist nor anti-feminist.
The deconstructive différance view is also used to reflect on and critique postcolonial discourse theories that examine colonialism and cultural imperialism, as well as minority discourse theories that critique racism and white supremacy, and various non-mainstream social groups characterized by "difference," such as LGBTQ+ individuals, ecologists and ecofeminists, vegetarians, primitives, and new humans. How is the discipline of anthropology, which first focused on "difference" and is distinguished by the study of "other cultures," faring? What is the difference between healing and health? A healthy person can predict future health, but only the sick need healing. Modern Westerners have realized that modern diseases cannot be treated with traditional medical methods, so they turn to primal rituals, appealing to the "wheel of medicine" of Native Americans, hoping to hear the primal "voice" from distant lands beyond the clamor of secular life. Magical realism novels pursue their goals in fiction through sorcerous thinking, while followers of the New Age movement achieve real effects through Native American rituals. If we can see the common value orientation of primal identification in these two cultural phenomena, then it becomes easier to understand their practical efficacy in combating modernity and saving the souls of those suffering from modernity's ills.
In the eyes of New Age movement adherents, the pathology of modernity extends beyond materialism and money worship to include gender discrimination and oppression, animal cruelty, and environmental destruction. Therefore, feminist movements that oppose gender oppression and green movements that oppose environmental destruction naturally identify with each other, forming the new trend of "eco-feminism" not by chance. Followers of the New Age movement and eco-feminism both resonate with primal Native American culture because it is matriarchal or matricentric. They emphasize aspects of Native American life, such as the corn mother (a grain goddess) and the female elders of the Iroquois Confederacy. In Paula Gunn Allen's words, Native Americans are "the place where most American movements seek their dreams. The main difference is that Native Americans have built their social systems for millennia on a worldview based on ritual, spirituality, and female orientation." For the sake of critical realism, all elements in primal culture that stand in opposition to contemporary society may be "reexamined" and "rediscovered," becoming an inexhaustible source of value. In other words, primitivism becomes the elixir for healing modernity's ills. Various indigenous cultures and tribal societies can become mirrors for contemporary people to project their ideals. Feminists see in this mirror matrilineal cultures and gender equality; environmentalists see interdependence and symbiosis between humans and the plant and animal worlds; seekers of faith see sacred spirituality; those who have lost their values see the primal soul that nourishes life; victims of physical and mental suffering see the hope of healing; and postmodern philosophers see the eternal harmony that solves human dilemmas.
Regarding the relationship between literature and culture, the triple-function model proposed by Greenblatt differs greatly from Frye's three-layer cultural theory. Literature does not stand as the pinnacle of a cultural tower, superior to lifestyles and historical systems, but functions in three interconnected ways within the cultural meaning system: First, as the embodiment of specific behaviors by particular authors, traditional author-biographical literary studies (whether historical or psychological) focus on this aspect. Second, as the representation of literature's encoding of social norms that constitute social standards, ideological literary criticism explores this aspect the most, though its drawback is the risk of becoming a mechanical reflection theory of literature. Third, as a reflective observation of these social norm encodings, this aspect of research approaches sociology, and the result is the risk of losing the essence of literary art and sinking into the "historical background." The proposed research method of "cultural poetics" aims to bridge and coordinate these three discourses, preventing the myopic blindness caused by a single perspective's rigidity, and reconstructing the organic connections between artistic works, authors, and readers within the broader cultural network. Clearly, the interpretive method advocated by New Historicism is more refined and complex than Frye's efforts to integrate literary experiences, even requiring an expanded concept of "literature" to integrate our cultural experiences. (Dolmohler) mentions in literary studies, "How can history and philosophy break free from the role of 'background' they are often assigned and become part of the content and foreground of critique?" Thus, while "cultural poetics" and archetypal criticism share the same direction in restoring the external relations of literature, their theoretical focus has shifted from literature within culture to literature as a cultural text. Therefore, when Greenblatt goes further than Frye, he ironically feels that Frye's work lacks the force of an overall breakthrough. According to Ralph Cohen, editor-in-chief of the New Literary History journal, the distinctive feature of cultural criticism compared to general literary criticism is that critics strive to make readers aware of the ideological frameworks imposed on them by works. By this standard, from Frye to New Historicism, one can see cultural criticism's journey from formalism to self-awareness.
The third is the "literary anthropology" proposed by anthropologists, which differs from the personalized tendencies pursued by literary critics. Anthropologists tend to view literary phenomena as cultural phenomena, focusing on new approaches to understanding the characteristics of literature from the perspectives of communication and semiotics. Boas, in his lengthy paper Literary Anthropology: Toward a New Area of Integration for the 11th International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnology, comprehensively discusses the overall concept, research procedures, and paradigms of literary anthropology. Regarding the research object of literary anthropology, Boas believes it should derive from the intersection of literature and anthropology. Given that current research on human behavior is increasingly interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, the unreasonable gap between literary theory, literary creation, and the various subfields of anthropology stands out. This means that the boundaries for researchers who study human habits and material and spiritual products must be broken. Rich materials and multiple perspectives yet to be explored in poetics and literary theory, especially in the theory of fiction and other narrative forms, depend on interdisciplinary efforts. On the other hand, since anthropology involves multiple approaches to studying humans, anthropologists and literary theorists alike have a responsibility to explore new perspectives and open up new research levels, which will inevitably lead to a deeper and more detailed understanding of the members of culture and the characteristics of each culture. According to Boas's self-account, he first proposed the concept of "literary anthropology" through interdisciplinary research on nonverbal information in narrative works and the transformation processes completed through nonverbal activities between authors and readers. It was the analysis of the nonverbal communication system in texts, particularly the description of paralinguistic activities and body movements in works, that demonstrated the various research possibilities of literary anthropology. Thus, it can be said that the nonverbal communication system forms the foundation of literary anthropology. Through the analysis of such behaviors, we can grasp cultural patterns, including universal patterns and anthropological (anthroponemic) patterns. In 19th-century European literature, the nonverbal system was often an element of realism. In novels like Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, there are detailed portrayals of people's behaviors and environments in the 19th century. In works such as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the role of nonverbal information is sufficient to allow readers to reconstruct the sense of the world in the author's mind. Based on the way nonverbal communication functions, Boas divides realism into six types: physical realism, transformed realism, personalized realism, psychological realism, interactive realism, and documentary realism. The latter may be more valuable for comparative cultural studies of humans.