Page 114 - Prathima Volume 12

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When one attempts to understand representation in anthropology, he or she will have
to look at how domination, ethnocentrism, inequality, and power relations have played
a crucial role in defining culture and society. Following up on a line of thought that can
be traced back to Du Bois (1994) and Trouillo (2003), Marcus and Fisher (2013)
observed that human sciences and social sciences are facing a crisis of representation,
which turns around a loss and confusion in theories and paradigm coupled with a
problem of legitimacy and authority. These disciplines are facing internal changes that
complicate and affect the description of social reality and the explanation of
phenomena. This is where the crisis is located. In this context, we need to look at Du
Bois' (1994) work and how he discusses “the problem of the twentieth century bring
the problem of the color line.” He used the phrase “life behind the veil of race” to
demonstrate the position of African American people in the twentieth century. Racism
or race was a central issue during his time. It is all about how Black community was
treated during that time and experience against racial injustice. Du Bois' (1994) insight
on how racism works in the US can be extended to help explaining how essentializing
power works elsewhere. When Tamil people feel uncomfortable in Sri Lanka, surely,
they also experience the “veil”; in the sense that they too must feel as if they are not
being looked at as individuals but as representatives of their whole community. That is,
when Tamil people were attacked in July 1983, individuals were attacked not because
of what they had done or said but because, they were looked at through the veil by
Sinhalese attackers, and they were all just Tamil. Over here, being reflexive means
realizing what veil one might be using when looking at others.

Like Du Bois, Trouillot (2003) urged anthropologists to create a more reflexive kind of
anthropology that should “contextualize the Western meta-narrative and read
critically the place of the discipline” (2003, p.13). Other than as a critique of
anthropology as a discipline, he analyzes the multi-faceted concept of utopia: “Just as
utopia itself can be offered as a promise or as a dangerous illusion, the savage can be
noble, wise, barbaric, victim, or aggressive, depending on the debate and the aims of
the interlocutors” (Trouillot, 2003, p. 23). Thus, what I understand him to be meaning
is that non-Western people, for Westerners, were treated as metaphors (rather than
people in and of themselves); that is, metaphors of the strange. Then, how do we study
anthropology? As a result, old frameworks still prevail, and anthropologists note the
emergence of some paradigms in social sciences; for example, Parsonian sociology
which is considered as a broad framework for different disciplines. Further, Parson
tried to put together Weberian and Structural-Functionalist social theory into one big
theory. This is a totalizing theory that attempts in embracing all the social sciences.
However, it lost its legitimacy and remained only a reference. Another totalizing
paradigm is Marxism that includes the political and intellectual inputs.

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