Student
Work-Reviews
While
the New Emerges, the Old Is Not Left Unthought
--Margaret
Lisa Stevenson
Death of the Father: An
Anthropology of Closure in Political Authority is a website
that pushes the boundaries of both anthropology and the possibilities
of representing anthropology on the web. Anthropologist John
Borneman and media artist Linda Fisher experiment with the
use of image, sound and text in an attempt to produce an anthropology
of the present that does not simply reproduce the limitations
and conceits of the standard anthropological monograph–prompting
this (re)viewer to ask over and over again: "Is this
anthropology?"
The question of how anthropology
should present its subject is a persistent one. This
is not surprising: as a problematic representation is complexly
entangled in the question of what anthropology is, and so
weighs heavily on those who practice its arts. Yet in thinking
through representation it is often easier to state what was
done badly and what well, what worked and what didn’t,
what was ethical and what wasn’t, than it is to imagine
new paradigms, new mediums, new forms. But the sweet irony
is that the imagination necessary to experiment is often born
of critique: something new emerges from the old as long as
the old is not left unthought. As Borneman has said elsewhere,
an anthropology of the present is opposed to an anthropology
of repetition.
Death of the Father is
a pioneering example of anthropology being practiced on the
web (and here I reveal my bias; I do believe this is
anthropology). John Borneman is willing to test the limits
of what anthropology is while taking the old question of form
versus content very seriously. Yet while Death of the Father
plays creatively with anthropology’s possible forms,
in order to avoid falling into repetition it is up to the
(re)viewer to say what worked and what didn’t.
The opening page of Death
of the Father confronts the (re)viewer with a list of
various 20th century totalitarian leaders (Mussolini,
Hitler, Hirohito, Ceausescu, Stalin, Tito) and asks the following
questions: "How did they die? Why is it important?"
Borneman and his collaborators are interested in understanding
the significance of how the deaths of these deposed leaders
were symbolized–and what effect the symbolization had
on the form of national authority that followed. A page is
devoted to each leader and each page is laid out in the same
way. Each photograph is given a caption, has a corresponding
sound image and some brief text. The images are clustered
under three successive headings: 1) Form of Authority, 2)
Death and Transition and 3) Consequences. But if the collaborators
wanted to describe a causal link between certain forms of
symbolization and certain kinds of regimes to follow, none
jumps out at this (re)viewer. Rather what becomes obvious
is the need to symbolize the leader’s death and
the desire for that symbolization to be a public affair.
Is it possible that it is more difficult to answer "why"
questions using this synoptic form?
One of the critiques of Death
of the Father is that the level of interpretation of regime
change is "too quick" or even at times "facile."
I would argue that such a critique is itself too facile, and
rests on the dubious presumption that anthropology must always
complexify issues and muddy the waters. Great skill is required
to pare down analysis without being reductionistic,: John
Borneman walks this tightrope with finesse. He is not attempting
to bring closure to the subject of regime change; instead
he is writing an anthropology of the present which requires
the wedding of the journalist’s quick wit and the anthropologist’s
studied interpretations.
Borneman is particularly interested
the possibilities of sound and image which do not replicate
those of text. It is evident that the multiple ways that a
National Anthem resonates is hard to capture in words. What
is harder to do is to harness those resonant meanings in the
production of anthropology. What happens when we are
stirred by the rousing notes of the "official Nazi anthem"
while gazing at a photograph of two women gazing adoringly
at the image of their Fuhrer? The juxtaposition of dissonant
images, sounds as well as the use of captions in Death
of the Father point towards submerged and often inchoate
layers of meaning. These web pages provoke reactions in the
(re)viewer that are uncomfortable precisely because they are
visceral and often contradict entrenched intellectual beliefs.
In this way Death of the Father succeeds in jarring
the (re)viewer out of intellectual complacency, and away from
repetition.
Since the fixity of sequence
and series becomes moot on the web, I will now attempt to
run through one possible experience of one set of image/sound/caption/text
to describe how it "works." Keep in mind that I
am tracing, one possible movement through the site, and the
way it worked on me.
Upon entering the site the
(re)viewer encounters head shots of Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito,
Ceausescu, Stalin and Tito; by clicking on one of them the
(re)viewer enters the page dedicated to his regime. I initially
chose the image of Hitler and was transported to a page with
four images: Hitler giving a speech in a packed stadium, two
women unrolling a poster of Hitler, a set of teeth and the
remains of the Berlin wall. I clicked on the grinning image
of Hitler’s teeth under the title Death and Transition.
The image expands to almost
fill the page, and above it, as a caption, are the words,
What remains. Clicking on an icon of an ear, I am surrounded
by the sounds of Twilight of the Gods by Wagner and
a line of text explains that this was what was played over
the radio when Hitler’s death was announced.
Initially the music evoked
a kind of melancholy and a sense of mourning or regret while
the teeth inspired a kind of morbid fascination. This was
followed by a sense of revulsion and even guilt that I could
feel such a thing for Hitler, our present day exemplar of
evil. So I, the (re)viewer, have a visceral experience of
regret that confronts and even contradicts the horror and
banality of Hitler’s teeth–or perhaps the horror
of the banality. Then came a sense of peevish resistance:
"I will not mourn for Hitler!" But the fact that
thousands of people did mourn for Hitler is all the
more galling to this (re)viewer precisely because I was almost
caught up by the emotion myself. The boundaries between the
self (as (re)viewer) and other (as what is viewed) are blurred.
On another level there is
the resonance the teeth have with the remains of millions
of Holocaust victims. And so there is a further sense of horror,
that the remains of the killer might resemble the remains
of the victim. The idea that Hitler had a body much like ours
is unsettling; our own relationship to the Holocaust surfaces.
It is not enough to cast Hitler as a psychopath and somehow
unreal–he was also human, also had a body very much like
our own.
But after all, the teeth are
also absurd in their banality, and they remind us of the absurdity
of our hatred of those teeth, they way the teeth pall before
the weapons of destruction that Hitler unleashed. And finally
there is a sense of irony, that the teeth are not really ‘what
remains’ at all. The memory of the horror remains, the
fact of millions of death remains, and so we are brought finally
to the contrast between the tangible and intangible remains
of the Holocaust, and the caption ‘what remains’
becomes depressingly ironic. The teeth are not what remains,
but what does remain is so hard to pin down that we grasp
for something tangible, like teeth, to pin our horror to.
There is no "dumbing
down" going on here. If the analysis seems too thin,
it is because the viewer has not moved into the mode of (re)viewer
and is expecting meaning to be laid out in all its finery.
But as with all forms of representation, the (re)viewer must
engage and challenge what is being presented. In this case,
however, more work is being required of the (re)viewer than
in the standard anthropological analysis, where excellence
is often equated with explicitness. Here answers are not presented
to us. We are required to think, and think hard, about the
nature of physical evidence and the symbolism of the horror
of the holocaust.
Focusing on a group of modern
western societies, Death of the Father foregrounds
the relevance of anthropology of the self and the present
rather than the fetishized and timeless other. Thus Borneman
presents us with a unfamiliar anthropological object through
a medium of presentation unfamiliar to anthropology. This
is not standard anthropology to be sure; occasionally it may
seem more akin to art than to the austerity of a kinship diagram.
But its potential to stir virtual audiences should not be
underestimated.
Margaret Lisa Stevenson
May 1999
