U]iiilf'ilílf

GAJ 5408251099

34S
.1="12-
2002-

Time and the Other

HOW ANTHROPOLOGY MAKES ITS OBJECT

Johannes Fabian
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY MATTI BUNZL

•
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
 For my parents
And for llona

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 2002, 1983 Columbia University Press

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ISBN: 0-231-12577-1

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Contents

Foreword to ]ohannes Fabian's Time and the Other:

Syntheses of a Critical Anthropology, by Matti Bunzl IX

Preface to the Reprint Edition xxxv

Preface and Acknowledgmen ts XXXIX

Chapter 1: Time and the Emerging Other 1

From Sacred to Secular Time: The Philosophical
Traueler 2
From History to Evolution: The Naturalization of
Time 11
Some Uses ofTime in AnthropologicalDiscourse 21
Taking Stock: Anthropological Discourse and
Denial of Coevalness 25

Chapter 2: Our Time, Their Time, No Time:

Coevalness Denied 37
Circumventing Coevalness: Cultural Relativity 38
Preempting Coevalness: Cultural Taxonomy 52

Chapter 3: Time and Writing About the Other 71

Contradiction: Real or Apparent 72
Temporalization: Means or End? 74
Time and Tense: The Ethnographic Present 80
 viii Contents

In My Time: EthnograPhy and the A utobiographic

Past 87

Politi~s of Time: The Temporal Wolf in Taxonomic Sheep's

Clothzng 97

Chapter 4: The Other and the Eye: Time and the

Rhetoric of Vision 105 Foreword to ]ohannes Fabian's
Method and Vision 106 Time and the Other / Syntheses
Space and Memory 109 of a Critical Anthropology
Logic as Arrangement: Knowledge Visible 114
Vide et Impera: The Other as Object 118 FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1983, ]ohannes Fabian's Time
and the Other ranks among the most widely cited books of a
:'The Syn;bol Belon~s to the Orient": Symbolic AnthropoloO'lJ critical anthropology that has, in the course of the past two
tn Hegel s Aesthetic 123 ó.I
decades, gradually moved into the center ofthe discipline.
The Other as Icon: The Case of "Symbolic But like other canonical texts written in this tradition (cf.
A nthropology " 131 Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986;
Clifford 1988; Rosaldo 1989), Time and the Othercontinues
Chapter 5: Conclusions to hold theoretical relevance, retaining the radical flavor
143
of an urgent polemic. Praised by many as a path-breaking
Retrospect and Summary 144 critique of the anthropological project, while met with
Issues for Debate 152 apprehension by others in light of its uncompromising
epistemological stance, it has become a fixture in the the-
Coevalness:Points of Departure 156 oreticallandscape of contemporary anthropology. The fol-
lowing introduction leads from an exposition of the book's
Notes argument and an analysis of its relation to Fabian's earlier
167
writings to its contextualization in the critical anthropolo-
References Cited gy of the 1970s and early 1980s. The piece concludes with
183
Index a brief overview of anthropological developments in the
199 wake of the initial publication of Time and the Other.

The Argument

Time and the Other is a historical account of the constitutive

function of time in Anglo-American and French anthro-
pology. In contrast to prominent ethnographic accounts of
culturally determined temporal systems (cf. Evans-
 x Foreword
Pritchard 1940; Bourdieu 1977), Fabian 's critical project
opera.t~s on a conceptual level, interrogating and prob-
lematlZIng the deployrnent and uses of time as such. In this
sense, Time and the Other functions both as a meta-analysis
of th~ anth~opologi~al project at large and as a de con-
structlOn of its enablmg temporal formations.
. Fabian 's argument is motivated by a contradiction
mherent to the anthropological discipline: on the one
hand, anthropological knowledge is produced in the
co~rse of fieldwork through the intersubjective communi-
canon between anthropologists and interIocutors; on the
~ther hal1:d,traditiona! fo~ms of ethnographic representa-
tIon. ~eqUlre the .constItutIve suppression of the dialogical
realities generatIng anthropological insights in the first
place. In the objectifying discourses of a scientistic anthro-
pology, "Others" thus never appear as immediate partners
m a cultural excha~ge but as spatially and, more impor-
tantly, temporally distanced groups. Fabian terms this dis-
crepancy between the intersubjective realm of fieldwork
an~ the diachro~ic ~elegati.on of the Other in anthropo-
logical texts the schlzogemc use of Time," and he expli-
cates in the following manner:
!believeit can be shown that the anthropologist
m ~he~eld often employsconceptions of Time
q~.lltedi!ferent from those that inform reports on
hISfindm~s. Furthermore, 1 willargue that a criti-
cal a~~lysIsof the rol~ Time is allowedto playas a
coridition f~r producmg ethnographic knowledge
m ~hepracuce .of fieldworkmay serve as a starting
pomt for a crrtique of anthropological discourse
m general. (21)
.In Time a'!1'dthe Other, the interrogation of the schizo-
gernc use of time represents the beginning of a global cri-
tIque of ~e an~ropological project. For the discrepancy
be.tween llltersubJectIve fieldwork and the distancing rhet-
onc ~f ethnographic discourse leads Fabian to an under-
s~ndmg o.f ~nthropology as an inherently political disci-
p~?e-a dISCIplinethat at once constitutes and demotes its
~rcts th~ou~h their temporal relegation. Fabian refers to
s constItutIve phenomenon as the "denial of coeval-
Foreword Xl
ness"l-a term that becomes the gloss for a situation where
the Other's hierachically distancing localization suppresses
the simultaneity and contemporaneity of the ethnographic
encounter. The temporal structures ~o con.si.tuted t?us
place anthropologists and their readers m a privileged time
frame, while banishing the Other to a stage of.1esserdevel-
opment. This situation is ultimately exemplified ~y the
deployrnent of such essentially temporal categones as
"primitive" to establish and demarcate anthropology's tra-
ditional object.. "
Fabian terms such denial of coevalness the allochro-
nism" of an thropology (32). At once the. pro.duct of an
entrenched ethnocentrism and the enabhng ideology of
traditional discourses about the Other, anthropology's
allochronic orientation emerges as the discipline's central
problematic. Fabian 's .project. i? Time and the Other follows
from this premise, fusmg a cntIc~1genealogy .of allo.chro.n-
ic discourse in anthropology with a polernic agamst its
unreflected reproduction. . .
Fabian presents his critique of allochrom~m m the con-
text of a comprehensive analysis of the function of tempo-
ral systems in Western scien tific discourses. In the firs~chap-
ter of Time and the Other, he traces the transformatI<:)ll.of
time from the initial secularization of the judeo-ChnstIan
notion of history during the Rennaissan~e to its revolution-
ary naturalization in the course of the nineteenth ~e~t~ry.
Anthropology's establishm~nt as an autonomous dlsClP.lme
in the second haIf of the nmeteenth century was predicar-
ed on this transformation. The discipline's evol~ti0r:tary
doctrine-constituted at the intersection of scientism,
Enligh tenmen t belief in progress, and coloni~ly veiled ect:-
nocentrism-in turn codified anthropology s allochronic
orientation. In this manner, contemporary "scientific" cat~-
gorizations like "savage," "barbarie," and ".ci."ilized"Sig~l-
fied stages of historical development. Conceiving gl~bal hl.S-
tory in terms of universal progres~, this allochronic l?gIC
identified and constituted late-nineteenth-century sav-
ages" as "survivals"-inhabitants of more or less ancient
states of cultural development. At the same time, anthro-
pology's allochronism established a "civilized" West as the
 XlI Foreword
Foreword xni
pinnacle of universal human progress, an argument that
helped to legitimize various imperialist projects. k nce however whose undeniable effects
Fabian views anthropology's foundational allochro- fieldwor -a preseduc~ion of ~thnographic knowledge
nism as an ongoing problem. For the onset of antievolu- on t~e ver\ proledged in most anthropological texts.
tionary paradigms in twentieth-century anthropology remam un~c ~?~ncing and objectifying depiction of a
notwithstanding, he regards the relegation of the ethno- Thro~gh t eaf¡S t d Other anthropologists forgo a criti-
graphic object to another time as the constitutive element seemmgly un. ec ~ t would render them a constitutive
cal self-reflection ~ d thus "coeval") dialogue.
of the anthropological project at large. Fabian substanti- f herrneneutic (an '.
ates this thesis in chapter 2 of Time and the Other through part o ':l ,. rro ation of the episternological basis of
the analysis of two dominant theoretical orientations: Fablar: s ~nte ~ returns him to a sweeping analysis of
allochromc dlscourf ditions Byway of astute interpreta-
Anglo-American cultural relativism and Lévi-Straussian Western inte~lectua t~a 1and He elian aesthetics, he iden-
structuralism. In these critical appraisals (followed in
tions of Ramist p~da¡.fSY "as ~e privileged metaphor of
chapter 4 by a similar examination of symbolic anthropol- tifies th~ "~hetonc o vision This sanctioning of the visual
ogy), Fabian identifies the denial of coevalness and ethno- a scientistic anthropollohgy· er rests at the foundation of
graphic intersubjectivity as constitutive elements of an over the aural and or.a, owev ,
anthropology that authorizes itself through the creation of the allochronic predicament, for
global temporal hierarchies.
These deconstructive readings are corroborated in As long as anthropology presents itsh~bj~~~~~-
chapters 3 and 4 by Fabian 's acute analyses of the strategic marily as seen, as lo~g as .~thnolbs~v~~on
forms of representation and the epistemological founda- edge is conceived p.nma:l y as o f odels sym-
ntauon (m terms o m ,
tions of alIochronic discourse. In regard to the representa- and/or represed r th) it is likelyto persist in
bol systems,an so oro Oth (151-152)
tion of the Other, Fabian identifies the "ethnographic denying coevalnessto its er.
present" (the "practice of giving accounts of other cultures
and societies in the present tense" [80]) and the textualIy . l l the political agenda
Such senten~es ~Itlmate y ~~~~ O erating from a crit-
enforced elimination of the anthropologist's autobio- Fabian eSJ?ousesm Tzme and~he ology fn lizht of its histor-
graphical voice as alIochronism's central rhetorical figures. ical premlse that .figure~ an rr~fst do~inati~n, as an inhe:-
As Fabian shows, the ethnographic present indexes a dia-
logic reality-a reality, however, that is only realized in the
ical mterconne~uo:
entIy compromlse.
J? l~t~e 2 Fabian regards allochromc
ISClp t' n domination, reproducing
communicative interaction between the anthropologist discourse
and his readers. The an thropological object remains .. as..a vehllcIbe
g o a°l~Wes
meqm~u~esIn
. this con text, Fabian' s
and legitimizing lozi l allochronism emerges as an
excIuded from this dialogue, despite its constitution ar the critique of. ~thr?po OgIC~ effectively identifying the
intersubjective moment of fieldwork. In this context, overtIy political mterven on, l distancin -such as ethno-
Fabian identifies the ethnographic present as a rhetorical rhetorical elements of tempora "'~itive" or "tradi-
vehicIe that reifies the Other as the inherentIy deindividu- hi d pictions of the Ot h er as pn .
ated object of the anthropologist's observation. grap lC e l of a (neo) colonial project.
tional"-as nd part a¿;~ parc~ to confront this politically pre-
Much like the politicaIly veiled deployment of the
ethnographic present, the suppression of the anthropolo- Time r: th~ t erse~ ~nthro ological project; and, in
carious dlmenslO.n of ~ t l advocates the renunciation
gist's autobiographical voice in scientistic texts constitutes
pa:t of an allochronic pattern. In this connection, Fabian ofthe allochromsm e as 1 e .
J
this manner, Fal;llanhu~m~ ~tified as the constitutive ele-
di course As a poli ti-
points to the anthropologist's manifest presence during ment of traditional anthropologlc~ a~ epist~mologically
cally inflected scholarly act, suc
 xiv Foreword
Foreword xv
groun~ed and textually enacted renunciation
a gthenumelycoeval and veritably dialogical relati~~u~dtwallow overview of the anthropological literature on death that
an ropology. and its object. e een Fabian initially criticized the unreflected tendency to con-
OloIn ~ketchIng the outlines of such a dialectical anthro- struct and instrumentalize anthropological objects as
embodiments of past times. As in his later analysis in Time
fociafp~:c~;a6~r¿~ ¿~~i~n f~cuhseson the di~ension of and the OtOO,Fabian ascribed this tendency to anthropolo-
orr nraví . an, e presents this emphasis gy's evolutionary heritage. Despite the predominance of
. hpraxl~as an eplstemological alternative to the alloch
lCr etonc of visi (th b' ron- antievolutionary currents in twentieth-century anthropolo-
objects as activ:I;'::'tne~~~nY~~figuJ:ng previ.ouslyobserved gy, the ethnography of death continued to understand its
on the other hand he de d thr ropologlCal endeavor); object as a window onto human antiquity:
the notion of raxi man s e conceptual extension of
work itself. In ~is s~:~e ~e ethnographic moment of field- "Primitive"reactions to death may then be con-
textual reflection of fi~ld~o~~t
thus inherently dial . al
~;ly p~opagate.s th.e critical
" an IntersubJecuve-and
sulted for the purpose of illuminating ontogenetic
development with parallels from mari's early his-
1 ogic -acuVIty b t th tory. Or, more frequently,we willfind attempts to
coevally grounded conceptual r' u paves e way to a identify contemporary reactions to death, espe-
ical Self and ethnographic Oth:~~ 19nment of anthropolog- ciallythose that appear irrational, overlyritual
and picturesque, as survivalsof "archaic"forms.
(Fabian 1972:179)
The Prehistory
Even though primarily a critique of the existing anthropo-
Following its original publication in 1983 . logical literature, the article closed with guidelines for a
waspraised as an original and . , Tzme ~~ the Other conceptually progressive anthropology of death. In con-
anthropol . al' lmportant metacnuque ofthe cise propositions, Fabian spoke of the necessity for a com-
1984:597;O~~~f!~oJ~~~~~~~~~~ 1~84:~023-1025; Hanson municative and praxis-based approach to ethnographic
Indeed, Fabian's anal sesoof the ' oc e 1.988:119-124). realities (Fabian 1972:186-188).
suppression of the a~thropol .e~nographlC present, the These demands, in turn, echoed conceptual and
and the rhetoric of vision o OglStdSautob~ographic voice, methodological considerations that had their origin in the
anthropology. But it would [en e new VIstasfor critical critical reflection of his fieldwork. In 1966-1967, Fabian
project Fabian articulated' T.~ wrong to date the critical had undertaken ethnographic dissertation research on the
o~ the book's pUblication~;/~;;d :h~C?therwith the year religious J amaa movemen t in the Shaba region of what was
with the temporal dirnensi ,~ lan. had grappled then Zaire." Initially under the influence of the Parsonian
ethnographic knowledge ;slOn and dlaloglCal quality of systems theory that had dominated his graduate education
the central themes of T: or more than a decade. Many of at the University of Chicago, Fabian quickly rejected reign-
ar:
figured in the theoretic tme d the Ot~er were, in fact, pre- ing anthropological doctrine, embarking on a search for
COurseof the 1970s- al artícles Fabian composed in the new and critical epistemologies. Fabian developed the first
a
eation of the book' . collrpusthat, In turn, allows the delin- formulation of an alternative model in the path-breaking
I thí s Inte ectual aenealogy
n ISmanner, a rudim ~ lvsi . article "Language, History and Anthropology" (1971b), a
allochronism ea b f, ~n y ana ySISof ethnographic text that anticipated the basic stance of Time and the Other
Die-Reflectio n feth°und In the 1972 piece "How Others in central aspects (cf. 164-165).
1972' f ns o e Anthropology of D th" (F b'
,c. Fabian 1991' iii) I ea a ian Fabian's polemic in "Language, History and
.XIII. t was on the occasion of this Anthropology" was directed against a hegemonic "positivist-
 xvi Foreword
Foreword xvn
pragmatist" philosophy of the hurnan sciences (1971b:3).
In Fabian's dictum, that orientation was marked by an . p ossessing unspectacular religious
uncritical, antireflexive posture that, on the one hand, hand, on thelrbunpre f a traditional collective object, as
. .ti s The a sence o li 1 d
derived sociologicaI and anthropologicaI insights frorn acuvi e . . able rituals, symbols, po mea ,an eco-
well as of ascertal~l d Fabian only one means of access-
testable hypotheses and abstractIy generated theoreticaI nomic elements,. a .o~e ation: the linguistic method of
modeIs, and, on the other hand, equated the relevance of ing eth~og~aphlC m ~~~ation' (22-26). " .
such knowledge with its explanatory value vis-a-visdivergent intersubjectíve comm the completion of his dissertatíon,
bodies of data." To Fabian, such an approach was grounded Two years after H' and Anthropology" presented
in a n<üve, pre-Kantian metaphysics that promised the dis- Fabian 's "Language, lsto.ry.ous epistemological basis for a
covery of objective truths through the deployrnent of for- his attempt
maIized and standardized methodologies (3-4). EspeciaIIy . . . to
t create a .icative
ommunlca ve anthropology. In this process,
. d
nonposluvl~ ' c d b the German Positivismusstrezt an
in the context of ethnographic fieldwork, such a mode of Fabian was mfluence bY He based his work further
scientific operation was deeply problematic, requiring the . II b Jürgen Ha ermas. '1 h f
negation of constitutive subjective factors: espeCIa Y Y b ldt's hermeneutic phi osop Y o
on Wilhelm von Hum ~ a lin uistically grounded, inter-
The positivist-pragmatistethos calIsfor a Con- lan~ua~e as a. model fo Abo~e all, contempor~n~ous
scious ascetic withdrawal as the result of which the subjective epI~t~mol~. ology reinforced Fabian s Idea,
scientist should be free frorn any "subjective" trends in linguistic an ll H on the "ethnography of
involvement as well as frorn the commonsense especiall~ pa:pe~~ by ~e e/1~~~). There Fabi.an found an
immediacy of the phenomena. The researcher commurucaüon (cf. ~ b' tive objectivity-e-a model
attains objectivityby surrendering to a "theory," a
set of propositions chosen and interreIated
ethnographic n: odel of:nt~r~u ~~~esses, rather than given
that proposed intersubjectiv p. 1b havior of members of
according to the rules of a super-individual logic, rules or norm~, as the k~y~o SOCIa e .
and by subsuming under this theory those data of a cultu~e ~Fablan 1971b. ~ahian expanded the analy.u~ and
the external world which he can retrieve by means
of the established procedures of his craft. (7) BUlldm~ on Hymes, of intersubjective objeCtlVlo/ t?,
epistemological questl~n "ethnographer and his subject
But such a positivistic premise required the continuous one that cen tered dO~ e thropological fieldwork c~u.ld
supression of a critical epistemology that would recognize (18). He suggeste at an d communicative acuvity
the production of ethnographic knowledge as an inherent- be understood as an alwayAs alreda'nYglyin a radical break
d d· language ccor 1, . kn 1
ly interactive and thus entirely context-dependent activity. groun e m b . d' ethnographic ow-
This problematic appeared in an especially acure form from then-curren tI ulnders~~er~t'ective r~alities. Fabian
d e could rest so e y on m J •
in the ethnographic situation of Fabian 's fieldwork among ~orgmulated this epistemology in two theses.
the members of the Jamaa movement. A positivist
approach would have required a theory capable of organ- • • ns objectivity lies nei-
• (I •

1. In anthropolo&¡c~l mv~~~~:~yO of' a theory, nor in the

izing the observed phenomena. Although Max Weber's ther in the logica con.s h f ndation (Begrnndung)
~harisma theory was available, Fabian noticed early on the givenness of data,. b~t .m(tg ee~uphasesin original)
mherent difficulties of a positivist ethnography of the of human iniersubjeciioity. , '.
Jamaa movement.!i These difficulties rested, on the one . 1investigationsIS attained by
hand, in the ethnic and social diversity of its adherents 2. in anthroPfolog¡;:unicativeinteraction through
Objectivity
(which made it impossible to treat the movement as char- entering a context o com ts and constitutes such a
di which represen
acteristic of a clearly defined group) , and, on the other the one me JUm(12
context: language. , emphases in original)

xviii Foreword
In "Language, History and Anthropology," Fabian had
already begu~ to elu~id~te the wide-ranging consequences
of s.uch an mtersubjec~ve ant:hro~~logic~l epistemology
(WhIChbe carne the. basis of his critique m Time and the
f!ther). The c<:)llc~ptIonof fieldwork as continuing, interac-
tive co~mum.catIo.n thus contained not only the model of
a genumely dialogical anthropology but also the dialectical
element of a theory of self-reflexive ethnographic praxis:
~ nderstanding bas~d O? dialecticalepistemology
IS alwaysproblernatic-critical,for the simple reason
that the very first step in the constitution of knowl-
~dge implies a radical reflection on the student's
involvernentin the communicativecontext to
which the phenomena under investigationbelong
(20) . responsibilities of anthropology arose, partIcularly m
Th~~, a .dialectical anthropology would never claim the
political mnocence of a positivist epistemology. Before the
backdrop of a post- and neocolonial world, anthropology
appeared as a r~ther questionable political act, a circum-
stan~e that only intensified the need for a dialectical con-
ceptIon of ethnogr~phy as intersubjective praxis (27-28).
~he path from Language, History and Anthropology"
to Time an~ the Other was thus sketched out. In between
can:e ~ senes of othe~ theoretical contributions in which
Fabian s analyses of his ethnographic insights anticipated
many of the themes of Time and the Other (Fabian 1974'
J
1975; 979). Since its initial publication the book ha~
some~~es. be en criticized as too abstract' and "unethno-
graphic ; m the c<:>nt~xtof its prehistory, however, it
emerges as a consututive part of Fabian's work on the
Ja~aa movement (cf. Fabian 1990a). In the final analysis
Tzme a;td the Other was part of the dialectical project tha~
found ItStheoretical beginning in "Language History and
Anth
d ropo 1ogy " an d that at the same time " not only
bemanded but also demonstrated the direct connection
etween anthropological theory and ethnographic praxis.
Foreword XIX
The Intellectual Context
Time and the Otherwas notjust the consequence ofFabian's
personal intellectual development. It was also part and
product of a critical anthropology that markedly altered
and reshaped the discipline dun.ng the 1970s. and ea~ly
1980s. This critical anthropology, m turn, had its roots m
reactions to the political and social realities. of th~ late
1960s. The postcolonial in~e~enden~e n:ovements m the
Third World, the neoimpenahst war m VIetnam, as well as
the civil rights ~nd .stude~t .m~)Vements,could .not leave
unaffected a sClentific discipline whose seemmgly self-
evident objects were the Others of a West~rn Self. ~t ~e
conferences of the American Anthropologlcal AssoCl~~on
in the late 1960s, debates about the ethical a~d political
regard to the colonial power structures that. had engen-
dered the discipline in the first pla~e and c~)lltmued to sus-
tain it in the context of neocolomal relatIons (cf. Gou~h
1968; Leclerc 1972; Asad 1973; Weaver 1.973). These dIS-
cussions were subsequently conducted m the pages of
established publications like Curren:t Anthropol?gy and the
Newsletter of the American Anthropolog¿cal Assoczatzon. The fol-
lowing years not only witnessed the forceful call for anthro-
pology's "reinve?tion" \H)'!lles 1972a) but al~o the estab-
lishment of radical penodICals along. the~e lines, such as
Critical Anthropology (1970-1972), Dzalectzcal Anthropology
(1975 ff.), and Critique of Anthropology .(1980 fE). .
However much the positions artIculated m this con-
text differed in their particulars, they nonetheless.shared a
commonopponent: the. assumptions and yractICeS .of a
hegemonic anthropologICal project. Commltte~ .t<:> a hb~r-
al humanism, that project was based on the pos.lt1V~S~ belief
in an unpolitical, unbiased science. ~hose objeCtIVI.ty ~as
ensured through distanced neutrahty. The constltutIVe
analytical instrument of this anthropology.was the founda-
tional concept of a relativism that proclalmed the funda-
mental equality of all cultural manifestations.
The critique of this position, which dominated the cul-
tural orientation of American anthropology, the structural-
 xx Foreword

Foreword xxi
functionalist approach of British social anthropology,
and-with cenain exceptions-the French varieties of 1 . 1 h potheses or as the embodiments of cultural f .
structuralism, was carried out frorn scientific as well as polit- oglca y ti larly questionable form o SCIen-
ical perspectives. Appealing to recen t argumen ts in the his- types) figu:e~ as a p~~ c:anted anthropologists unlimited
tory and philosophy of science, especially Thomas Kuhn 's r d contro 1 over data gained from the
tific imperialism, as 1 g
theses on scientific paradigms (Kuhn 1962), critics like Bob and decontextua.lze ra hic fieldwork. Such a pos-
Scholte argued against the possibility of a neutral and value- intercultural reality of ~thno~ ¡critical reflection on rele-
free anthropology. As a discipline rooted in concrete social itivist approach not o~ ~ eva t~xts but it also denied the
and cultural power structures, anthropology could no more vant
Othercultural andof socla
the status b.c~nwho a~ts and interacts with the
a su ~ec
shut out political influences than any other fields ofinquiry.
In the case of an thropology, however, the situation was par- ethnographer," .. f ethnographic positivism
ticularly precarious given that the relevant political COntext In turn, suc~ cnu~Uee}o~mulation of a new, critical
of its codification was the imperialist expansion of the served as the basis for fthis new anthropology stood
Western world-a reality whose structural Consequences anthropology. At the f·e~1t~~ °relevant, morally responsi?le,
enabled the anthropological production of knowledge, the demand for a P? itica J. tion In place of the objec-
and soci,:,-llyernancipatory dlrecd n~ocolonial oppressions
both in post- and neocolonial situations (Scholte 1970;
1971; 1972). In view of the Continuing repression of anthro- tifying distance that repro vould be a new form of ethno-
pology's traditional "objects," the discipline's distancing of the West's Others, there ~o~in the intersubjective expe-
objectification not only ceased to figure as an unpolitical graphic immane.nce~ gr~~h ethe victims of imperialism
scientific act, but it carne to be seen as pan of an aggressive rience
(Hymes and sohdanty
1972b; Berreman 1972., Scholte 1971, 1972;
colonial project that secured the West's privileges at the 3
costs of its Others, In this sense, the maxims of cultural rel- Weaver 191. ). . 1b . ofsuch a critical anthropolo-
ativism, with its profession of a value-free plurality, were lit- The episternologica aslS. f all as ects of ethno-
gy
tle more than the hypocritical cloaking of a claim to hege- lay in the radical ~elf-reflecSuohnolOte
demtnded not only
. . 1 this sense c . h.
mony that allowed examination of the peoples of the world graphíc praxIS. n. f' thropology's disciphnary IS-
with benevolent condescension while failing to acknowl- the critical reevaluation o oliticall veiled activity, but the
edge or thematize their subjugation by Western powers (cf tory as an always already po 1 ~ ositivist reflexive pro-
Scholte 1971; Diamond 1972; Weaver 1973). formulation of a self-c~msc~~XI:~ ~ produ~tion (Scholte
Alongside criticism of the political dimensions of gram of anthropologIC~k F b·a~ had articulated in
social and cultural anthropology, opposition arose against 1971; 1972). Much 1 e a \ " the core of this pro-
the reigning epistemologies of anthropological knowledge "Language,
g History and AnthroKo ~~dwork as an intersub-
production. Fabian's artide "Language, History and ram was a vision of ethnograP lC le tic praxis Such a
.. h . h ently h ermeneu ..
Anthropology" (an original draft was tellingly entitled jective arrd ence m er f the Western subject,
"Language, History and a New Anthropology") was one of praxis broke the analytic he~emo~y o thropological knowl-
th.e.c.entral texrs of this opposition. Fabian, like Scholte, replacing it ~ith ~ cance~tlOn ~ c~~cretely situated com-
Cntlclzed the positivist focus on anthropological method- edge as the dialogical pro uct od. lectical undertaking, it
ology and the concomitant absence of reflection on the municative understandmg. ~s ':'- la . that not only sus-
discipline's praxis (Fabian 1971b). For both critics, the was thus pan of an íntersubjecríve totality h. Self and a
ready andr seemingly unproblematic objectification of pended the distinction betw~en a ::~~~~Ct~~~scendence.
Others (fo eXample, as experimental objects ofanthropo_ researched Other but sough~ I~ per th ology would fol-
In place of Ob~ectif)rin~drelf~:;n~~~er:t~~d
low an emanClpatory 1 ea and reflected
 xxii Foreword
Foreword xxiii
the insights of ethno ra h .
tools (SchoIte 1972; Fatía~ f97f b)rogreSSlVe and polítical The Consequences
In the wake of the theoreti l' .
1970s, several scholars sou h t t ea manifestos of the early The theoretical and practical effects of Time and the Other
effort to advance the pro'e~t fO ~~act the postulates in an can be traced readily in Fabian's own works, for example
designs as Paul Rabino~' o cntIc~l anthropology. Such in two books from the 1990s-Power and Performance
fieldwork in Morocco as sllsystem~tIc reflections on his (l990b) and Remembering the Present (1996). Both texts are
Crapanzano's attemp~s-:~o ~ Ke~n Dwyer's and Vincent characterized by the attempt to overcome the allochronic
al-to develop a dialo ic th ase on Moroccan materi-
od (Rabinow 1977; J =r 1nog~aphy,date from that perí-
cf. Tedlock 1979) Fab':VY, ;!79, 1982; Crapanzano 1980'
dimension of anthropology. In Pouier and Performance,
Fabian attains ethnographic coevalness through the devel-
.. . Ian s 1 zme and th Oth h ' opment of a performative dialectic: anthropological
posiuon dates back to 1978 e er, w ose corn- knowledge is not only the discursive representation of cul-
and it constituted a semi l' emerged a~ the same moment tural facts; it is also, and more importantly, constructed
th e emerging tradition ma Th , even
b k'defimn . g, co~tn iburi utror¡ to from and within the conditions of fieldwork. Concretely,
of allochronism as a co~stit~t" 00 1s WIde-rangmg criticism Fabian investigates the various dimensions of a theater
cal discourse was both rve e em~nt of anthropologi_ production in 1986--a production that, as Fabian's self-
a
based on the principles ~e~-~nalysIs of the discipline reflexive analysis makes clear, could only take place
díalectic attempt at its AuÍ/t ~ntIc~l anthropology and a because of his own presence. The ethnographic and ana-
a reflexive ethnoO"raphI'cp e . ng t rough the demand for lytic result of this situation underscores the central func-
A o raxis,
t the same time, Fabian li k '. '. tion of an thropological coevalness by portraying observed
allochronism to a po ful m e? hIS mvestIgatIon of reality itself as a constitutive moment of fieldwork.
r~etorical figures. This ;:~_bre:7ualYSIS .o~ the discipline's Fabian pursues a similarly path-breaking ontology of
srve construction of the th ng: cntIq~e of the discur- anthropological knowledge production in Remembering the
emancipat~ry claims ot~ri~~~ologIcal obJect ali~ned the Presento Here too the overcoming of allochronism is the
structural mvestigations into th anthropology. wíth post- central focus, and, as in Potuer and Performance, the accor-
Other. For Fabian Mi h 1 F e representatIon of the dance of coevalness results from the mobilization and rep-
tioned as an irn ~r~t e. oucauír', interventions func- resentation of the ethnographic dialogue as a constitutive
Edward Said's con~urrent ;:~fIr:atIoz:_~ clear parallel to element of cultural production. Here, however, it is not
ilarly focused on the di . ySIfis
of Onen talism" that sirn- actors who converse with the anthropologist and his read-
packaged and fixed IScurSIve
the O . ormati ons that i
at lmagined
lAr' rient as . , ers but rather an artist, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu. In the
~ves~er~ texts (Said 1978). Fabian ~ sIgn of the ?0:r in 1970s, Fabian encouraged him to depict the his~o~y of
ties m mtent [and] method" b hImself noted sImIlari- Zaire. The reproduction of the resulting 101 p~mtmgs,
Much l~ke Orientalism, Time an~n;een the two books (xiii), along with the artist's descriptions of them, constItute the
synthesIs of a politicall ro .he Other represented the main part of the book. In its radical extension of ant~ro-
epístemology with a cJtca/:~~~I~~s and radically ~eflexive pological authority, Remembering the Present thus exemphfi~s
ments of textual production' an~ . ~~ ~e rh~toncal ele- a concrete attempt not only to deconstruct allochromc
eth.n.ography, it constituted ~ cruc~~ Ig t ~f rts focus on methods of representation in anthropology but also to
~~~~~;~:~~e, argua~ly the most influ~~~al°~o!eir~~'~r~~
Marcus 1986; ~f.=~~~:nd ~nthhropOlogy (Clifford and
replace them with constructive alternatives.'
Beyond the expected conclusion that Time and the
Other figured as a conceptual signpost for Fabian's later
n us man 1982; Clifford 1983). work, it is quite difficult to prove the book's concrete influ-
 XXIV Foreword
Foreword xxv
ences on general tendencies in anthropology. Not only are
the origins of individual ideas notoriously difficult to pin .. ar isolation in the southeast of the
Dayaks, ~ho live In ~~rneo In distinction from conven-
down, but their fragmented history precludes any contin- Indonesian ya.rt of . Tsin does not take the rela-
uous delineation (cf. Stocking 1968:94). Such a project tional de~cnptIons, however'a giv!n but rather analyzes its
would also be a contradiction of the argument, developed tive isolatIon of the glr~up aSomplex' interpretation of the
so prominently in Time and the Other, that anthropology is The resu t IS a c f th
structure. . r . the national context o e
both a collective and context-bound project. In this situa- production of margl~~ ity In the cultural existence of the
tion, the central conception of Time and the Other--anthro_ Indonesian state. In ISway, emnant of "primitive"
pology as praxis-offers an essential aid, as it directs atten- D k pears not as a r .
Meratus aya s ap . f national and transnational
tion to the effective production of ethnographic knowl- ways of life but as alu~ct~n ~ing resolutely protests the
edge, "what its practitioners actually do" (Geertz 1973:5). power str.uctures. ~ ee , the Meratus Dayaks are "any-
In this regard, the question of the influence of Time and the allochronic assumptIon that ,,, (Tsing 1993:x); more-
Other may be posed more meaningfully: Has allochronism ' , orary ancestors
be en transcended in anthropological discourse? body s contemp . trive for the constant trans-
over, her rhetorical strat~gles sh the use of innovative nar-
Even a cursory glance at sorne of the more influential mission of coevalness. T r<?ug biosis of analytical and
ethnographies published in the past fifteen years can elu- rative .approaches) (~cr~~t~vc~eslemdi~~~~ical dimensions of
cidate this question. Overwhelmingly, contemporary reflexive elements '. e . Informants thus become
anthropological work follows Time and the Other in the her fieldwork rernam ~cce~lbl~. and to ensure this mode
deployrnent of pertinent methodological and rhetorical complex and ~rounde su ~e~ ~f grammatical ternporali-
conventions. The consistent refusal of the traditional, of representatIon, the quesuo
objectif)ring ethnographic present, for example, is striking, ty takes center-stage:
as is its replacement by the imperfect as the preferred
it n ethnographic
tense in the narrative representation of ethnographic In what tens~ does one :wr~~:tail has considerable
material. The use of the past tense, moreover, OCcurs in ~ccount? ThlS gra~~~~lc~O"nificance.The use of
direct opposition to the danger of allochronic representa- intellectual and I? ~. ti d to a conceptual-
the "ethnographic present IS le . t
tion, signaling instead to contemporary anthopologists' ization of culture as a coherent and pe:slst~n
widespread desire to historicize and particularize their whole. It creates a timeless scene of ~CtIO~(~f
ethnographic encounters. As a result, anthropological which cultural difference can be e~p ore al ~f
knowledge now appears as the product of specifically situ- Strathern 1990·Hastrup 1990). Thís remov iti
ated, dialogical interactions between anthropologists and ethnographic. time
~ from hiISo. t ry has. beeninto
cn exot-
-
informants, further highlighted by the widespread appear- cized for turning ethnographlc. sU?Jec~ ot the
ance of the authorial "l." The constitutive organ of ethno. ic creatures (Fabi~n 1983); their time IS n are
g:raphic intersubjectivity, it is now typically present, func- time of civilized history, Many ethnogr~p hers h. h
thus turning to a historical time frame In w IC
tlOning as the principal carrier of anthropological coeval-
ness and reflexive praxis. action happens in the past tense. . rib-
Yet here too, there are problems In dese
Anna Tsing's In the Realm 01 the Diamond Queen ,
ing an out-of-the-waypace.1 . . . To many readers,
1
(l993)-one of the most widely hailed and emulated
ethno~raphies of the 1990s-i11ustrates these principIes
J
using the past tense about an out-:of-the-way ace
sUO"ests not that people "have:'history but at
paradlgmatical1y. The book is in many respects a "classic" th~~ are history, in the collogUlalse~s~ .. ~ onl
monograph of a srnall indigenous group, the Meratus 1 cannot escape these dilemmas; ea y
maneuver Wl.thiIn th em . In this book, 1 find uses
 xxvi Foreword

for both the historicalpast d h Foreword xxvii

presento1arn inconsistent ~~ t.e ethnographic
In a counter-intuitivestyle·t ;eumes 1use tenses At the turn of the century, the intersubjective coeval-
assumtions.For exam 1 . o ~srupt problematic ness of anthropolgical Self and ethnographic Other is no
entire discussionof M~r~tIn c apter 3, 1put my longer in question. There are indications, however, for an
in the historicalframewor~s1~nder expecta~ons even more lasting Aufhebung of the traditional configura-
the earIy 1980s.1arn . o e~eopments In tions. For scholars like Arjun Appadurai and Ulf Hannerz,
timelessand unmova~orkin~ againsraccounts of the global dimensions of cultural developments are at the
trast in cha e gen er systems.In con-
[Tsi~g'sm pt~r 9, lmyaccounr of Uma Adang's cen ter of anthropological inquiry (Appadurai 1996;
h. ain Inter ocutor's] socialmove Hannerz 1992; 1996), and, as such, their ethnographic
w .IChI.also encountered in the early 198r;;e~t, descriptions require the development of concepts that can
wntten In the present te. S,IS grasp and render the complex coevalness of cultural reali-
what has happened to h nse: sl nce1 do not know
h . er In t he 1990s myg 1 tiesoAppadurai famously identifies five dimensions in this
ere ISto keep open the possib T . ' oa
that her movement stimulate~ 1 lU~Sand dre~ms con text-the "ethnoscapes," "mediascapes," "techno-
emphasisin original) . (TsIng1993:X1V-XV, scapes," "financescapes," and "ideoscapes" that configure
transnational fields and their cultural flows (Appadurai
. From this example of eth . 1996:33-36). Like other anthropologists con cerned with
lmportance of Time and the Other~ogrtphlc reflection, the transnational processes, Appadurai and Hannerz see all of
anthropology become . or ater developments in the world's groups as part of the global integration effect-
choice of grammatical ~eqUIte ~le~r. Tsing's conscious ed by late capitalism, a circumstance that not only renews
epistemology that consta ~porah~ IS based in a reflexive attention to power differentials but necessitates the effec-
graphic knowledge rod n J pro es t?e modes of ethno- tive abandonment of particularized investigations of sup-
relevance whether !sina'~~s~:/~ this sense, it is of less posedly isolated peoples. As Hannerz asserts, there is no
sponds to the specific f~rmula . e pre~ent tense corre- "really distant Other," no "Primitive Man," in the "global
What is I?ore te11ingis the criti~~ts of T~me and the Ot~ ecumene" but only combinations and continuities from
cal and mte11ectual dimensí reflectíon on the polití- "direct and mediated engagements" (Hannerz 1996:11).
11 ensions of ternp 1 h . The allochronic relegation of the Other is challenged
~e as the search for nona11och. or~ r etoric, as
tIve. e~nographic representati:~:'~ strategles ?f affirma- even more fundamentally by the recent emergence of a
Fabla!1~project extremely closel oth of which fo11ow theoretically ambitious, reflexive native anthropology.
Similar statements could not y. While Time and the Other:-as a theoretical reflection on
contemporary monograph b only be culled frorn other Fabian's fieldwork in Mrica-takes the ethnographic real-
th h s, ut they are· id ity of a Western Self vis-a-visa non-Western Other as its
roug out the academic field of An 1 ~n evi erice
pology. And much like in the f g ?-Amencan anthro- operative assumption, the proponents of a critical "native
ethnographic temporality p~::: ~tsT~ng, the question of anthropology" have complicated this situation in radical
g.rarnmatIcal, but also from a .. e not .only from a ways. Formerly produced at the margins of the discipline
Vle~oint. This co11ectivesta~~~~cal and eplstemological, as "indigenous anthropologists," they have thus come to
Fablan's intervention Since T.. IS ~entrally the result of function as an important corrective against the reification
ral depiction of the Oth . tme an the Other, the tempo- of anthropology's Self/Other dyad in terms of the
~s~ect of ethnographic ~~~ ~~/~~er an unp~obl~matic West/non-West dichotomy. Such "native anthropologists"
enon of a critical and reflexi ~r a constItutIve cri- as Kirin arayan and Kath Weston, moreover, have demon-
come to define the mainstrea~I~~ ~ntd~opOl?gy that has strated that anthropological research in one's own cultur-
e ISClplme.8 al field presupposes the negotiation of binary oppositions
 Foreword xxix
xxviii Foreword

i~ ways that are similar to "tradi . " Notes

~ngs ( arayan 1993; Weston 19~7)n~1 ~~mographic set-
ave suggested that all anthro : n t ISmanner, they 1. Fabian deploys the designation "coevalness" in order to merge into one
on forms of intersubiecti pologl.cal fieldwork is based Anglicized terrn the German notion of "Gleichzeitigkeit," a phenomenological
. . J ve communlC u' th
stituuve
. boundaries - a n insizht
" that a on. h at cross con- category that denotes both contemporaneity and synchronicity/simultaneity
practical deconstruction f °th ml~ t lead to the (31) 2.
. As Fabian puts it, "Existentially and politically, critique of anthropology
betwe~n Western, scientifi~ Selfean~ntologlcal distinction
starts with the scandal of domination and exploitation of one part of mankind
graphic ~ther. In takin the ar non-West~rn, ethno-
by another" (Fabian 1983:x). o
Other to its ultimate con~l' ~ment of Tzme and the 3. Fabian earned his doctorate from the niversity of Chicag in 1969 with
struction would be .ithror e result of this decon- a dissertatio entitled Charisma and Cultural Change, which was published in
n
d efime d as the sciencean of
an ropology
W th at IS
. no lonzer re\~sed forrn as a monograph two years later (cf. Fabian 1969; ¡971a).
4. Over the years, Fabian's opposition against a positivist-pragmatist phi-
prog~essively reformed) bu~on- es~er~ ~thers (howe~er losophy of science has turned into a critique of positivism-a reflection of his
sustamed, intersubjective ~s l~ discipline grounded in gradually developed appreciation for certain pragmatist orientations (Fabian
Ferguson 1997). le work (cf. Cupta and
1991:xii).
5. The Jamaa movement was founded by the Belgian missionary Placide
Both the established statu f .. Tempels. The author of "La philosophie bantou" (1945), a book important for
anthropology and the s o a critical, reflexive
ological trends of a "t curre.nt theoretical and method- many African independence movements, Tempels began to preach Christianity
". ransnational" o" . in termS of his "Bantu philosophy" in the 1950s. The message was well received
gy provide hope for an enduri r native anthropolo- among industrial workers in the copper mines of the Shaba region. Anhougb
anthropology. We are t unng e.nd of allochronism in they never broke completely with the Catholic church, Tempels's followers con-
. . no yet to this . .
mentlonmg the political r liti pomt, without even sidered themselves an independent group-the name 'Jamaa" means "family"
~nd the production of kn~~~~~s o~ allochronic rhetoric in Swahili (cf. Fabian 1971b) .
6. In view of this radical redefinition of the anthropological project, the
journalism to macroeco . ge m other areas (from extreme reaction of established anthropology was hardly surprising. Above all,
F b' , .
. a ian s Time and the Otl nomics) . In thilS sense, Johannes the publication of "Reinventing Anthropology" caused enormous controversy
m the history of anthropologicalthe not only a milestone (cf. Scholte 1978). In 1975, Fabian himself became the main target of a
als~ a ve:y timely contributio~l~~ id eory and practice but polemic in the central organ of the anthropological profession Oarvie 1975; cf.
social sciences and in the pu blilC imagmauon.
ea~ of ~e Other in the Fabian 1976).
7. In his recent book Momen/s of Freedom: Anthropology and popular Culuire
(1998), Fabian has extended his project to an even more general investigation
Matti Bunzl of cultural formations, demonstrating how allochronic conceptions have
obscured the contemporaneity of African popular culture. In another recent
book, Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa n
(2000), Fabian returns to a geneaological investigation of Africa's constructio
in the Western imagination, finding surprising traces of intersubjectivity in
texts from the turn of the twentieth century.
8. NUl11:erouscontemporary ethnographies grapple with the question of
the anthropological object's temporal representation, and nearly all of them
reference Time and the Other as the central iext in this regard. A highly incorn-
plete list of important recent ethnographies that are indebted to Fabian's work
in this manner includes: Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative,
Representation, and Pouiet in Modern China (1997); Daphne Berdahl, Where the
World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (1999); John
In its initiaI IOstantiatio
. Borneman, Belonging in the Tuo Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (1992); Fernando
Bunzl 1998). The n, thiIS introduction waswritten and u' .
nal, which was present text IS a revised and slizhtl ex p bhshed 10 German (cf. Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (1997);
translated into English by Amy Blau. y panded version of the origi-
 Foreword XXXI
xxx Foreword
1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics
C orge Marcus, e d s. ., P
Kenneth Ceorge, Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Tiuentieth- CI'fC'ord james an d e . U 'versity of California ress.
Century Headhunting Ritual (1996); Akhil Cupra, Postcolonial Deuelopments: I l' , ph' Berkeley. m . .
nd Politics o/ Ethnogra). . l St te: Nature MoTU!)',and Modernzty In
Agriculture in the Making of Modera India (1998); Matthew Cutmann, The a . 1997. The Magzca a. ,
Coroml, Fernando. . . f Chicago Press. .
Meaning of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (1996); Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of
Venezuela. Chicago: Umverslty o r • portrait o/ a Moroccan. Chicago:
the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (1995); Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Vincent. 1980. Tuham¡.
Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania Crapanzano,
(1995); Rosalind Morris, In Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in U ni'versity of Chicago Press. . QuesLÍon." In Dell Hymes, ed.,
72 "Anthropology m
Thailand (2000); Elizabeth Povinelli, Labor's Lot: The Pouiet; Historv, and Culture . mond Stanley. 19 . York' Pantheon Books.
of Aboriginal Action (1993); Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in DI~nver:ting Anthrapolog)" 4~1-42.9. Nfe~thnol~gy." Dialectical Anthrapology
TI • 1979. "The Dialogíc o
China After Socialism (1999); Mary Steedly, Hanging Without a Rape: Narratiue Dwyer, fi.evm. . Md'
Experience in Colonial and Postcolonial Karoland (1993); Kathleen Stewart, A Space 4(3)205-224. . . Anthrapology in QJiestion. Balumore, ..
on the Side o/ (he Road: Cultural Poetics in an "Other" America (1996). _. 1982. Moroccan Dw.logues. . .
johns Hopkins Universlty Pres~ . A Description of the Modes of L.zvelzhood
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. T~ "": le Oxford: Oxford UniverSlty P~ess.
nd Politicallnstitutions of a Nz~tzc Peap d
Cultural Change. Dissertauon.
Fa:ian, johannes .. 1969. Charlsma an .
University of Chicago- . [' Movement in Katanga. Evanston.
_. 1971a. jamaa: A. Chansma zc .
orthwestern Universlty.Press. d Anthropology." Philosophy ofthe SOCIal
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xxxii Foreword
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__
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 XXXiv
Foreword
Stocking, Ceorge. 1968 Ra
A nthropolo . Chí : ~,Culture, and Evoluti· .
Strathern, :arilynlcaf909'0Un:versity of Chicago Pr: Essa)'s m the History 01
Anth '. Out of C .
Fi" ropology.» In Marc Man anar~ntext: The Persuasive Fictions of
leldwork lo Text, 80-112 Pri g ,.ed., Modernist Anthropolo .
Tedlock, Dennis. 1979.' "~~~eton: Pnnceton University Press. s» From
Emergence of a Dialo!!ical Anthropological Tradition and
~search 35(4): 387-400 o AnthropoJogy." fournal of A lh ~he
Tsm An' 'J n ropologzcal
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M ,. na ~owenhaupt. 1993. In the
argznality In an Out-oflhe-Wa'IJ Pla P f!ealm 01 the Diamond Quem'
Preface to the Reprint Edition
Press. LUce. nnceton' P .
w; J
. nnceton University .
eaver, Thomas ed 197
Issues. Clenvie~ '. 3. Too See Ourselves: Anlhropolo MORE THA TWENTY YEARS AGO, the manuscript
Weston Kath ' III.. Scott, Foresman and Co gy and Modern Social
, . 1997. "The Vir mpany. of this book (completed in 1978) made its rounds among
James Ferguson
.
tual Anthropologist."
, eds., Anlhroholou; l Lo .
In Akhi
11 Cupta and
publishers. Some readers felt that it was too ambitious,
Saence 163-184 B 'r gtca catlons· B dan touching on too many issues without developing them in
, . erkeley: University ofCal.r .. oun TUS of a Field
ttorrna Press. depth, formulating an argument that was often difficult to
follow. One of them thought it carne "perilously close to
denying the possibility of any anthropology." Three press-
es rejected the manuscript. One editor, after a long
process of repeated evaluations, promised acceptance,
provided 1 would make at least some of the revisions that
f
critics had recommended. 1 refused and retracted. Every
one of the essays that were presented as steps of a coherent
I I argument had by then been rewritten at least three times.
This was the best 1 could do. Walter Ong supported my
1 resolve to stick to the text when he wrote (in his report to
I 11 one of the presses): "Because the thinking is so fresh and
111 comprehensive, it demands learning and high intelligence
of the reader. 1 do not believe it can be made notably sim-
pler and still remain effective."
I 1 confess that 1 never felt secure about this attempt to
take on an entire discipline. Often 1 told myself and my
friends that 1 had written Time and the Other more with my
1 guts than with my brain. It was, as one reader observed
1 much later, a en de coeur. An outcry that seems to have been
heard and heeded, 1 feel now (and hope this will not be
dismissed as a sign of conceit), should not and cannot be
"improved" by updating and revisions. Therefore the orig-
mal text remains unchanged in this edition.
By all indications, Time and the Other became a success,
possibly less in anthropology than in several fields that had