TEN
The Artist as Ethnographer?
Hal Foster
My title is meant to evoke "The Author as Producer," the text of which Walter
Benjamin first presented at the Institute for the Study ofFascism in Paris in April
1934. There, under the influence of Berthold Brecht and Russian revolutionary
culture, Benjamin (1978) called on the artist on the left "to side with the proletariat."l
In vanguard Paris in April 1934 this call was not radical; the approach,
however, was. For Benjamin urged the "advanced" artist to intervene, like the revolutionary
worker, in the means of artistic production-to change the "techniques"
oftraditional media, to transform the "apparatus" ofbourgeois culture. A
correct "tendency" was not enough; that was to assume a place "beside the proletariat."
And "what kind ofplace is that?" Benjamin asked, in lines that still scathe.
"That ofa benefactor, of an ideological patron-an impossible place."
Today there is a related paradigm in advanced art on the left: the artist as
ethnographer. The object of contestation remains, at least in part, the bourgeois
institution of autonomous art, its exclusionary definitions of art, audience, identity.
But the subject ofassociation has changed: it is now the cultural and!or ethnic
other in whose name the artist often struggles. And yet, despite this shift, basic
assumptions with the old productivist model persist in the new quasi-anthropological
paradigm. First, there is the assumption that the site ofartistic transformation
is the site ofpolitical transformation, and, more, that this site is always located
elsewhere, in the field of the other: in the productivist model, with the social other,
the exploited proletariat; in the quasi-anthropological model, with the cultural
other, the oppressed postcolonial, subaltern, or subcultural. Second, there is the
assumption that this other is always outsideJ and, more, that this alterity is the primary
point ofsubversion ofdominant culture. Third, there is the assumption that
if the invoked artist is not perceived as socially and!or culturally other, he or she
has but limited access to this transformative alterity, and, more, that ifhe or she is
perceived as other, he or she has automatic access to it. Taken together, these three
302
TI
THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER?
assumptions lead to another point ofconnection with the Be~amin account ofthe
author as producer: the danger, for the artist as ethnographer, of "ideological
patronage."2
A strict Marxist might question this quasi-anthropological paradigm in art
because it tends to displace the problematic ofclass and capitalist exploitation with
that ofrace and colonialist oppression. A strict poststructuralist would question it
for the opposite reason: because it does not displace this productivist problematic
enough, that is, because it tends to preserve its structure ofthe political-to retain
the notion of a sullject of history, to define this position in terms of truthJ and to
locate this truth in terms ofalterif)!. From this perspective the quasi-anthropological
paradigm, like the productivist one, fails to reflect on its realist assumption: that the
other, here postcolonial, there proletarian, is in the real, not in the ideological,
because he or she is socially oppressed, politically transformative, and!or materially
productive.3
Often this realist assumption is compounded by aprimitivistfonta.v':
that the other has access to primal psychic and social processes from which the
white (petit) bourgeois subject is blocked.4
Now, I do not dispute that, in certain
conjunctures the realist assumption is proper and the primitivist fantasy is subversive.
But I do dispute the automatic coding ofapparent difference as manifest identity
and ofotherness as outsideness. This coding has long enabled a cultural politics
of marginalif)!. Today, however, it may disable a cultural politics of immanenceJ
and this politics may well be more pertinent to a postcolonial situation of multinational
capitalism in which geopolitical models ofcenter and periphery no longer
hold.s
The primitivist fantasy was active in two precedents of the quasi-anthropological
paradigm in contemporary art: the dissident Surrealism associated with
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris in the late 1920S and early '30s, and the nigritude
movement associated with Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire in the late 1940S
and early '50S. In different ways both movements connected the transgressive
potentiality of the unconscious with the radical alterity ofthe cultural other. And
yet, both movements came to be limited by this very primitivist association.Just as
dissident surrealism explored cultural otherness only in part to indulge in a ritual of
self-othering, so the negritude movement naturalized cultural otherness only in part
to be constrained by this second nature. In quasi-anthropological art today this
primitivist fantasy is only residual. However, the realist assumption-that the other
is dans Ie vrai--remains strong, and often its effect, now as then, is to detour the artist.
What I mean is simpler than it sounds.Just as the productivist sought to stand in
the reality of the proletariat only in part to sit in the place of the patron, so the
quasi-anthropological artist today may seek to work with sited communities with
the best motives of political engagement and institutional transgression, only in
part to have this work recoded by its sponsors as social outreach, economic development,
public relations ... or art.
This is not the facile complaint ofpersonal co-option or institutional recuperation:
that the artist is only tactical in a careerist sense, or that the museum and the
TEN
The Artist as Ethnographer?
Hal Foster
My title is meant to evoke "The Author as Producer," the text of which Walter
Benjamin first presented at the Institute for the Study ofFascism in Paris in April
1934. There, under the influence of Berthold Brecht and Russian revolutionary
culture, Benjamin (1978) called on the artist on the left "to side with the proletariat."l
In vanguard Paris in April 1934 this call was not radical; the approach,
however, was. For Benjamin urged the "advanced" artist to intervene, like the revolutionary
worker, in the means of artistic production-to change the "techniques"
oftraditional media, to transform the "apparatus" ofbourgeois culture. A
correct "tendency" was not enough; that was to assume a place "beside the proletariat."
And "what kind ofplace is that?" Benjamin asked, in lines that still scathe.
"That ofa benefactor, of an ideological patron-an impossible place."
Today there is a related paradigm in advanced art on the left: the artist as
ethnographer. The object of contestation remains, at least in part, the bourgeois
institution of autonomous art, its exclusionary definitions of art, audience, identity.
But the subject ofassociation has changed: it is now the cultural and!or ethnic
other in whose name the artist often struggles. And yet, despite this shift, basic
assumptions with the old productivist model persist in the new quasi-anthropological
paradigm. First, there is the assumption that the site ofartistic transformation
is the site ofpolitical transformation, and, more, that this site is always located
elsewhere, in the field of the other: in the productivist model, with the social other,
the exploited proletariat; in the quasi-anthropological model, with the cultural
other, the oppressed postcolonial, subaltern, or subcultural. Second, there is the
assumption that this other is always outsideJ and, more, that this alterity is the primary
point ofsubversion ofdominant culture. Third, there is the assumption that
if the invoked artist is not perceived as socially and!or culturally other, he or she
has but limited access to this transformative alterity, and, more, that ifhe or she is
perceived as other, he or she has automatic access to it. Taken together, these three
302
TI
THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER?
assumptions lead to another point ofconnection with the Be~amin account ofthe
author as producer: the danger, for the artist as ethnographer, of "ideological
patronage."2
A strict Marxist might question this quasi-anthropological paradigm in art
because it tends to displace the problematic ofclass and capitalist exploitation with
that ofrace and colonialist oppression. A strict poststructuralist would question it
for the opposite reason: because it does not displace this productivist problematic
enough, that is, because it tends to preserve its structure ofthe political-to retain
the notion of a sullject of history, to define this position in terms of truthJ and to
locate this truth in terms ofalterif)!. From this perspective the quasi-anthropological
paradigm, like the productivist one, fails to reflect on its realist assumption: that the
other, here postcolonial, there proletarian, is in the real, not in the ideological,
because he or she is socially oppressed, politically transformative, and!or materially
productive.3
Often this realist assumption is compounded by aprimitivistfonta.v':
that the other has access to primal psychic and social processes from which the
white (petit) bourgeois subject is blocked.4
Now, I do not dispute that, in certain
conjunctures the realist assumption is proper and the primitivist fantasy is subversive.
But I do dispute the automatic coding ofapparent difference as manifest identity
and ofotherness as outsideness. This coding has long enabled a cultural politics
of marginalif)!. Today, however, it may disable a cultural politics of immanenceJ
and this politics may well be more pertinent to a postcolonial situation of multinational
capitalism in which geopolitical models ofcenter and periphery no longer
hold.s
The primitivist fantasy was active in two precedents of the quasi-anthropological
paradigm in contemporary art: the dissident Surrealism associated with
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris in the late 1920S and early '30s, and the nigritude
movement associated with Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire in the late 1940S
and early '50S. In different ways both movements connected the transgressive
potentiality of the unconscious with the radical alterity ofthe cultural other. And
yet, both movements came to be limited by this very primitivist association.Just as
dissident surrealism explored cultural otherness only in part to indulge in a ritual of
self-othering, so the negritude movement naturalized cultural otherness only in part
to be constrained by this second nature. In quasi-anthropological art today this
primitivist fantasy is only residual. However, the realist assumption-that the other
is dans Ie vrai--remains strong, and often its effect, now as then, is to detour the artist.
What I mean is simpler than it sounds.Just as the productivist sought to stand in
the reality of the proletariat only in part to sit in the place of the patron, so the
quasi-anthropological artist today may seek to work with sited communities with
the best motives of political engagement and institutional transgression, only in
part to have this work recoded by its sponsors as social outreach, economic development,
public relations ... or art.
This is not the facile complaint ofpersonal co-option or institutional recuperation:
that the artist is only tactical in a careerist sense, or that the museum and the
HAL FOSTER
media absorb everything in pure malevolence (indeed we know they cannot).
Rather my concern is with the structural dfects ofthe realist assumption in political,
here quasi-anthropological, art, in particular with its siting of political truth in a
projected alterity. I mentioned the problem ofautomatic coding ofartists vis-a-vis
alterity, but there are additional problems here as well: first, that this projection of
politics as other and outside may detract from a politics ofhere and now. And second,
since it is in part a projection, this outside is not other in any simple sense.
Let me take these two problems one at a time. First, the assumption ofoutsideness.
Ifit is true that we live today in a near-global economy, then a pure outside
can no longer be presupposed. This recognition does not totalize the world system;
instead, it specifies resistance to it as an immanent relation rather than a transcendental
one. And, again, a strategic sense ofcomplex imbrication is more pertinent
to our postcolonial situation than a romantic proposal ofsimple opposition.6
Second, the projection ofalterity. As this alterity becomes always imbricated with
our own unconscious, its effect may be to "other" the self more than to "selve"
the other. Now it may be, as many critics claim today, that this self-othering is
crucial to a revised understanding ofanthropology and politics alike; or, more circumspectly,
that in conjunctures such as the surrealist one the troping of anthropology
as auto-analysis (as in Leiris) or social critique (as in Bataille) is culturally
transgressive, even politically significant. But there are obvious dangers here as
well. Then as now such self-othering easily passes into self-absorption, in which
the project of"ethnographic self-fashioning" becomes the practice ofphilosophical
narcissism.7
To be sure, such reflexivity has done much to disturb reflex assumptions
about subject positions, but it has also done much to promote a masquerade
of the same: a vogue for confessional testimony in theory that is sometimes sensibility
criticism come again, and a vogue for pseudoethnographic reports in art that
are sometimes disguised travelogues from the world art market. Who in the academy
or the art world has not witnessed these new forms ofjlanerie?
What has happened here? What misrecognitions have passed between anthropology
and art and other discourses? One can point to a whole circuit ofprojections
and reflections over the last decade at least. First, some critics of anthropology
developed a kind of artist-envy (the enthusiasm ofJames Clifford for the
juxtapositions of"ethnographic surrealism" is an influential instance).8 In this envy
the artist becomes a paragon offormal reflexivity, sensitive to difference and open
to chance, a self-aware reader of culture understood as text. But is the artist the
exemplar here, or is this figure not a projection of a particular ideal ego-of the
anthropologist as collagist, semiologist, avant-gardist?9 In other words, might this
artist-envy be a self-idealization? Rarely does this projection stop there, in anthropology
and art, or, for that matter, in cultural studies or new historicism. Often it
extends to the objectofthese investigations, the cultural other, who also reflects an
ideal image ofthe anthropologist, artist, critic, or historian. To be sure, this proTHE
ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 305
jection is not new to anthropology: some classics of the discipline (e.g., Patterns qf
Culture by Ruth Benedict) presented whole cultures as collective artists or read
them as aesthetic "patterns" ofsymbolic practices. But they did so openly; current
critics ofanthropology persist in this projection, only they call it demystification. 10
Today this envy has begun to run the other way too: a kind of ethnographerenvy
consumes artists. Here as well they share this envy with critics, especially in
cultural studies and new historicism, who assume the role ofethnographer, usually
in disguised form-the cultural-studies ethnographer dressed down as a fellow fan
(for reasons of political solidarity-but with what social anxieties!); the new-historicist
ethnographer dressed up as a master archivist (for reasons of scholarly
respectability-to outhistorian the historians).11 But why the particular prestige of
anthropology in contemporary art? Again, there are precedents of this engagement:
in Surrealism, where the other was figured as the unconscious; in art brut,
where the other represented the anticivilizational; in Abstract Expressionism,
where the other stood for the primal artist; and variously in the art of the 1960s
and '70S (the Primitivism ofearthworks, the art world as anthropological site, and
so on). But what is particular about the present turn? First, anthropology is prized
as the science ofalteritJI; in this regard it is second only to psychoanalysis as a lingua
franca in artistic practice and critical discourse alike.'2 Second, it is the discipline
that takes culture as its object, and it is this expanded field of reference that postmodernist
art and criticism have long sought to make their own. Third, ethnography
is considered contextual, the rote demand for which contemporary artists share
with many other practitioners today, some of whom aspire to fieldwork in the
everyday. Fourth, anthropology is thought to arbitrate the interdisciplinary, ailOther
rote value in contemporary art and theory.'3 Finally, fifth, it is the self-critique of
anthropology that renders it so attractive, for this critical ethnography invites a
reflexivity at the center even as it preserves a romanticism of the margins. For all
these reasons rogue investigations ofanthropology, like queer critiques ofpsychoanalysis,
possess vanguard status today: it is along these lines that the critical edge
is felt to cut most incisively.
This turn to the ethnographic, it is important to see, is not only an external
seduction; it is also driven by forces immanent to advanced art, at least in AngloAmerican
metropoles, forces I can only sketch here. Pluralists notwithstanding,
this art has a trajectory over the last thirty-five years, which consists of a sequence
ofinvestigations: from the objective constituents of the art work first to its spatial
conditions of perception, then to the corporeal bases of this perception-shifts
remarked in minimalist work in the early 1960s through conceptual art, performance,
body art, and site-specific work in the early '70S. Along the way the institution
ofart could no longer be described simply in terms ofphysical space (studio,
gallery, museum, and so on): it was also a discursive network of other practices
and institutions, other subjectivities and communities. Nor could the observer of
art be delimited only phenomenologically: he or she was also a social subject
defined in various languages and marked by multiple differences (sexual, ethnic,
HAL FOSTER
media absorb everything in pure malevolence (indeed we know they cannot).
Rather my concern is with the structural dfects ofthe realist assumption in political,
here quasi-anthropological, art, in particular with its siting of political truth in a
projected alterity. I mentioned the problem ofautomatic coding ofartists vis-a-vis
alterity, but there are additional problems here as well: first, that this projection of
politics as other and outside may detract from a politics ofhere and now. And second,
since it is in part a projection, this outside is not other in any simple sense.
Let me take these two problems one at a time. First, the assumption ofoutsideness.
Ifit is true that we live today in a near-global economy, then a pure outside
can no longer be presupposed. This recognition does not totalize the world system;
instead, it specifies resistance to it as an immanent relation rather than a transcendental
one. And, again, a strategic sense ofcomplex imbrication is more pertinent
to our postcolonial situation than a romantic proposal ofsimple opposition.6
Second, the projection ofalterity. As this alterity becomes always imbricated with
our own unconscious, its effect may be to "other" the self more than to "selve"
the other. Now it may be, as many critics claim today, that this self-othering is
crucial to a revised understanding ofanthropology and politics alike; or, more circumspectly,
that in conjunctures such as the surrealist one the troping of anthropology
as auto-analysis (as in Leiris) or social critique (as in Bataille) is culturally
transgressive, even politically significant. But there are obvious dangers here as
well. Then as now such self-othering easily passes into self-absorption, in which
the project of"ethnographic self-fashioning" becomes the practice ofphilosophical
narcissism.7
To be sure, such reflexivity has done much to disturb reflex assumptions
about subject positions, but it has also done much to promote a masquerade
of the same: a vogue for confessional testimony in theory that is sometimes sensibility
criticism come again, and a vogue for pseudoethnographic reports in art that
are sometimes disguised travelogues from the world art market. Who in the academy
or the art world has not witnessed these new forms ofjlanerie?
What has happened here? What misrecognitions have passed between anthropology
and art and other discourses? One can point to a whole circuit ofprojections
and reflections over the last decade at least. First, some critics of anthropology
developed a kind of artist-envy (the enthusiasm ofJames Clifford for the
juxtapositions of"ethnographic surrealism" is an influential instance).8 In this envy
the artist becomes a paragon offormal reflexivity, sensitive to difference and open
to chance, a self-aware reader of culture understood as text. But is the artist the
exemplar here, or is this figure not a projection of a particular ideal ego-of the
anthropologist as collagist, semiologist, avant-gardist?9 In other words, might this
artist-envy be a self-idealization? Rarely does this projection stop there, in anthropology
and art, or, for that matter, in cultural studies or new historicism. Often it
extends to the objectofthese investigations, the cultural other, who also reflects an
ideal image ofthe anthropologist, artist, critic, or historian. To be sure, this proTHE
ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 305
jection is not new to anthropology: some classics of the discipline (e.g., Patterns qf
Culture by Ruth Benedict) presented whole cultures as collective artists or read
them as aesthetic "patterns" ofsymbolic practices. But they did so openly; current
critics ofanthropology persist in this projection, only they call it demystification. 10
Today this envy has begun to run the other way too: a kind of ethnographerenvy
consumes artists. Here as well they share this envy with critics, especially in
cultural studies and new historicism, who assume the role ofethnographer, usually
in disguised form-the cultural-studies ethnographer dressed down as a fellow fan
(for reasons of political solidarity-but with what social anxieties!); the new-historicist
ethnographer dressed up as a master archivist (for reasons of scholarly
respectability-to outhistorian the historians).11 But why the particular prestige of
anthropology in contemporary art? Again, there are precedents of this engagement:
in Surrealism, where the other was figured as the unconscious; in art brut,
where the other represented the anticivilizational; in Abstract Expressionism,
where the other stood for the primal artist; and variously in the art of the 1960s
and '70S (the Primitivism ofearthworks, the art world as anthropological site, and
so on). But what is particular about the present turn? First, anthropology is prized
as the science ofalteritJI; in this regard it is second only to psychoanalysis as a lingua
franca in artistic practice and critical discourse alike.'2 Second, it is the discipline
that takes culture as its object, and it is this expanded field of reference that postmodernist
art and criticism have long sought to make their own. Third, ethnography
is considered contextual, the rote demand for which contemporary artists share
with many other practitioners today, some of whom aspire to fieldwork in the
everyday. Fourth, anthropology is thought to arbitrate the interdisciplinary, ailOther
rote value in contemporary art and theory.'3 Finally, fifth, it is the self-critique of
anthropology that renders it so attractive, for this critical ethnography invites a
reflexivity at the center even as it preserves a romanticism of the margins. For all
these reasons rogue investigations ofanthropology, like queer critiques ofpsychoanalysis,
possess vanguard status today: it is along these lines that the critical edge
is felt to cut most incisively.
This turn to the ethnographic, it is important to see, is not only an external
seduction; it is also driven by forces immanent to advanced art, at least in AngloAmerican
metropoles, forces I can only sketch here. Pluralists notwithstanding,
this art has a trajectory over the last thirty-five years, which consists of a sequence
ofinvestigations: from the objective constituents of the art work first to its spatial
conditions of perception, then to the corporeal bases of this perception-shifts
remarked in minimalist work in the early 1960s through conceptual art, performance,
body art, and site-specific work in the early '70S. Along the way the institution
ofart could no longer be described simply in terms ofphysical space (studio,
gallery, museum, and so on): it was also a discursive network of other practices
and institutions, other subjectivities and communities. Nor could the observer of
art be delimited only phenomenologically: he or she was also a social subject
defined in various languages and marked by multiple differences (sexual, ethnic,
306 HAL FOSTER
and so on). Ofcourse these recognitions were not strictly internal to art. Also crucial
were different social movements (feminism above all) as well as diverse theoretical
developments (the convergence offeminism, psychoanalysis, and film; the
recovery ofGramsci; the application ofAlthusser; the influence ofFoucault; and so
on). The important point is that art thus passed into the expanded field ofculture
that anthropology is thought to survey.
And what are the results? One is that the ethnographic mapping ofa given institution
or a related community is a primary form that site-specific art now assumes.
This is all to the good, but it is important to remember that these pseudoethnographic
critiques are very often commissioned, indeed franchised.Just as appropriation
art became an aesthetic genre, new site-specific work threatens to become a
museum category, one in which the institution imports critique for purposes ofinoculation
(against an immanent critique, one undertaken by the institution, within
the institution). This is an irony inside the institution; other ironies arise as sitespecific
work is sponsored outside the institution, often in collaboration with local
groups. Here, values like authenticity, originality, and singularity, banished under
critical taboo from postmodernist art, return as properties of the site, neighborhood,
or community engaged by the artist. There is nothing intrinsically wrong
with this displacement, but here too it is important to remember that the sponsor
may regard these "properties" as just that-as sited values to develop.14 Ofcourse
the institution may also exploit such site-specific work in order to expand its operations
for reasons noted above (social outreach, public relations, economic development,
and art tourism).15 In this case, the institution may displace the work that it
otherwise advances: the show becomes the spectacle where cultural capital collects.
I am not entirely cynical about these developments. Some artists have used
these opportunities to collaborate with communities innovatively: for instance, to
recover suppressed histories that are sited in particular ways, that are accessed by
some more effectively than others. But I am skeptical about the effects ofthe pseudoethnographic
role set up for the artist or assumed by him or her. For this setup
can promote a presumption ofethnographic authority as much as a questioning of
it, an evasion ofinstitutional critique as often as an elaboration ofit.
Consider this scenario, a caricature, I admit. An artist is contacted by a curator
about a site-specific work. He or she is flown into town in order to engage the
community targeted for collaboration by the institution. However, there is little
time or money for much interaction with the community (which tends to be constructed
as readymade for representation). Nevertheless, a project is designed, and
an installation in the museum and/or a work in the community follows. Few of
the principles ofthe ethnographic participant-observer are observed, let alone critiqued.
And despite the best intentions of the artist, only limited engagement of
the sited other is effected. Almost naturally the focus wanders from collaborative
investigation to "ethnographic self-fashioning," in which the artist is not decentered
so much as the other is fashioned in artistic guise.16
Again, this projection is at work in other practices that often assume, covertly or
I
I THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 307
otherwise, an ethnographic model. The other is admired as one who plays with
representation, subverts gender, and so on. In all these ways the artist, critic, or historian
projects his or her practice onto the field of the other, where it is read not
only as authentically indigenous but as innovatively political! Ofcourse, this is an
exaggeration, and the application of these methods has illuminated much. But it
has also obliterated much in the field ofthe other, and in its very name. This is the
opposite of a critique of ethnographic authority, indeed the opposite of ethnographic
method, at least as I understand them. And this "impossible place" has
become a common occupation of artists, critics, and historians alike.
NOTES
I. The fact that Stalin had condemned this culture by 1934 is only one of the
ironies that twist any reading of"The Author as Producer" (Benjamin [1934] 1978)
today (to say nothing of "The Work ofArt in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction"
[Benjamin 1968]). My title may also evoke "The Artist as Anthropologist" by
Joseph Kosuth (1975), but our concerns are quite different.
2. This danger may deepen rather than diminish for the artist perceived to be
other, for he or she may be asked to assume the role ofnative informant as well.
Incidentally, the charge of "ideological patronage" should not be conflated with
"the indignity of speaking for others." Pronounced by Gilles Deleuze in a 1972
conversation with Michel Foucault, this taboo circulated widely in American criticism
ofthe left in the 1980s, where it produced a censorious silent guilt as much as
it did an empowered alternative speech. See Foucault (1977:209).
3. This position is advanced in an early text by the figure who later epitomized
the contrary position. In the conclusion ofMythologiesJ Roland Barthes writes:
There is therefore one language which is not mythical, it is the language ofman as a producer:
wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image,
wherever he links his language to the making ofthings, metalanguage is referred to a languageobject,
and myth is impossible. This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be mythical.
([1957] 1972:146)
4. This fantasy also operated in the productivist model to the extent that the
proletariat was often seen as "primitive" in this sense too. .
5. For a related discussion ofthese problems, see Foster (1993).
6. It is in this sense that critics like Homi Bhabha have developed such notions
as "third spaces" and deferred times.
7. James Clifford develops the notion of"ethnographic self-fashioning" in The
Predicament qfCu/ture (1988), in part from Stephen Greenblatt (1980). This source
points to a commonality between the critique ofethnography in new anthropology
and the critique ofhistory in new historicism (on which more below).
8. Clifford also develops this notion in The Predicament qfCulture: "Is not every
ethnographer something of a surrealist, a reinventor and reshuffler of realities?"
(1988:147). Some have questioned how reciprocal art and anthropology were in
306 HAL FOSTER
and so on). Ofcourse these recognitions were not strictly internal to art. Also crucial
were different social movements (feminism above all) as well as diverse theoretical
developments (the convergence offeminism, psychoanalysis, and film; the
recovery ofGramsci; the application ofAlthusser; the influence ofFoucault; and so
on). The important point is that art thus passed into the expanded field ofculture
that anthropology is thought to survey.
And what are the results? One is that the ethnographic mapping ofa given institution
or a related community is a primary form that site-specific art now assumes.
This is all to the good, but it is important to remember that these pseudoethnographic
critiques are very often commissioned, indeed franchised.Just as appropriation
art became an aesthetic genre, new site-specific work threatens to become a
museum category, one in which the institution imports critique for purposes ofinoculation
(against an immanent critique, one undertaken by the institution, within
the institution). This is an irony inside the institution; other ironies arise as sitespecific
work is sponsored outside the institution, often in collaboration with local
groups. Here, values like authenticity, originality, and singularity, banished under
critical taboo from postmodernist art, return as properties of the site, neighborhood,
or community engaged by the artist. There is nothing intrinsically wrong
with this displacement, but here too it is important to remember that the sponsor
may regard these "properties" as just that-as sited values to develop.14 Ofcourse
the institution may also exploit such site-specific work in order to expand its operations
for reasons noted above (social outreach, public relations, economic development,
and art tourism).15 In this case, the institution may displace the work that it
otherwise advances: the show becomes the spectacle where cultural capital collects.
I am not entirely cynical about these developments. Some artists have used
these opportunities to collaborate with communities innovatively: for instance, to
recover suppressed histories that are sited in particular ways, that are accessed by
some more effectively than others. But I am skeptical about the effects ofthe pseudoethnographic
role set up for the artist or assumed by him or her. For this setup
can promote a presumption ofethnographic authority as much as a questioning of
it, an evasion ofinstitutional critique as often as an elaboration ofit.
Consider this scenario, a caricature, I admit. An artist is contacted by a curator
about a site-specific work. He or she is flown into town in order to engage the
community targeted for collaboration by the institution. However, there is little
time or money for much interaction with the community (which tends to be constructed
as readymade for representation). Nevertheless, a project is designed, and
an installation in the museum and/or a work in the community follows. Few of
the principles ofthe ethnographic participant-observer are observed, let alone critiqued.
And despite the best intentions of the artist, only limited engagement of
the sited other is effected. Almost naturally the focus wanders from collaborative
investigation to "ethnographic self-fashioning," in which the artist is not decentered
so much as the other is fashioned in artistic guise.16
Again, this projection is at work in other practices that often assume, covertly or
I
I THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 307
otherwise, an ethnographic model. The other is admired as one who plays with
representation, subverts gender, and so on. In all these ways the artist, critic, or historian
projects his or her practice onto the field of the other, where it is read not
only as authentically indigenous but as innovatively political! Ofcourse, this is an
exaggeration, and the application of these methods has illuminated much. But it
has also obliterated much in the field ofthe other, and in its very name. This is the
opposite of a critique of ethnographic authority, indeed the opposite of ethnographic
method, at least as I understand them. And this "impossible place" has
become a common occupation of artists, critics, and historians alike.
NOTES
I. The fact that Stalin had condemned this culture by 1934 is only one of the
ironies that twist any reading of"The Author as Producer" (Benjamin [1934] 1978)
today (to say nothing of "The Work ofArt in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction"
[Benjamin 1968]). My title may also evoke "The Artist as Anthropologist" by
Joseph Kosuth (1975), but our concerns are quite different.
2. This danger may deepen rather than diminish for the artist perceived to be
other, for he or she may be asked to assume the role ofnative informant as well.
Incidentally, the charge of "ideological patronage" should not be conflated with
"the indignity of speaking for others." Pronounced by Gilles Deleuze in a 1972
conversation with Michel Foucault, this taboo circulated widely in American criticism
ofthe left in the 1980s, where it produced a censorious silent guilt as much as
it did an empowered alternative speech. See Foucault (1977:209).
3. This position is advanced in an early text by the figure who later epitomized
the contrary position. In the conclusion ofMythologiesJ Roland Barthes writes:
There is therefore one language which is not mythical, it is the language ofman as a producer:
wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image,
wherever he links his language to the making ofthings, metalanguage is referred to a languageobject,
and myth is impossible. This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be mythical.
([1957] 1972:146)
4. This fantasy also operated in the productivist model to the extent that the
proletariat was often seen as "primitive" in this sense too. .
5. For a related discussion ofthese problems, see Foster (1993).
6. It is in this sense that critics like Homi Bhabha have developed such notions
as "third spaces" and deferred times.
7. James Clifford develops the notion of"ethnographic self-fashioning" in The
Predicament qfCu/ture (1988), in part from Stephen Greenblatt (1980). This source
points to a commonality between the critique ofethnography in new anthropology
and the critique ofhistory in new historicism (on which more below).
8. Clifford also develops this notion in The Predicament qfCulture: "Is not every
ethnographer something of a surrealist, a reinventor and reshuffler of realities?"
(1988:147). Some have questioned how reciprocal art and anthropology were in
HAL FOSTER
the surrealist milieu. See, for example,JeanJamin (1986) and Denis Hollier (1992).
9. Is there not, in other words, a poststructuralist projection akin to the structuralist
projection critiqued long ago by Pierre Bourdieu in Esquisse d'une thiorie de la
pratique (1972)?
10. Incidentally, this artist-envy is not unique to new anthropology. It was at
work, for example, in the rhetorical analysis ofhistorical discourse initiated in the
1960s. "There have been no significant attempts," Hayden White wrote in "The
Burden ofHistory" (1966), "at surrealistic, expressionistic, or existentialist historiography
in this century (except by novelists and poets themselves), for all of the
vaunted 'artistry' ofthe historians ofmodern times" (White 1978:43). .
II. Obviously there are other dimensions of these crossings-over, such as the
curricular wars of the last decade. First some anthropologists adapted textual
methods from literary criticism. Now some literary critics respond with pseudoethnographies
ofliterary cultures. In the process some historians feel squeezed
on both sides. This is not a petty skirmish at a time when university administrators
study enrollments closely-and when some advocate a return to the old disciplines,
while others seek to rec.oup interdisciplinary ventures as cost-effective moves.
12. In a sense, the critique of these two human sciences is as fundamental to
postmodern discourse as the elaboration ofthem was to modern discourse.
13. Louis Althusser (1990:97) writes ofinterdisciplinarity as "the common theoretical
ideology that silently inhabits the 'consciousness' ofall these specialists ... oscillating
between a vague spiritualism and a technocratic positivism."
14. I am indebted in these remarks to my fellow participants in "Roundtable on
Site-Specificity," Documents 4 (1994): Renee Green, Mitchell Kane, Miwon Kwon,
John Lindell, and Helen Molesworth. There Kwon suggests that such neighborhood
place is posed against urban space as difference against sameness. She also
suggests that artists are associated with places in a way that connects identity politics
and site-specific practices-the authenticity ofthe one being invoked to bolster
the authenticity of the other.
15. Some recent examples of each: social outreach in "Culture in Action," a
public art program of Sculpture Chicago in which selected artists collaborated
with community groups; economic development in "42nd Street Art Project," a
show that could not but improve the image of Times Square for its future redevelopment;
and recent projects in several European cities (e.g., Antwerp) in which
site-specific works were deployed in part for touristic interest and political promo-
tion.
16. Consider, as an example, one project in "Project Unite," a show of sitespecific
works by some forty artists or artist groups within the Le Corbusier Unite
d'Habitation in Firminy, France, in summer 1993. In this project, the neo-conceptual
duo Glegg and Guttman asked the Unite inhabitants to contribute favorite
cassettes toward the production of a discotheque. The tapes were then edited,
compiled, and displayed according to apartment and floor. The sociological condescension
in this facilitated self-representation is extraordinary.
THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER?
REFERENCES
Althusser, Louis
1990 "Philosophy and the Spontaneous Ideology ofthe Scientists." In Phiwsoplry
and the Spontaneous Ideology qfthe Scientists and Other Essqys. London:
Verso.
Barthes, Roland
[1957] 1972 Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.
Benedict, Ruth
1934 Patterns qfCulture. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Benjamin, Walter
[1934] 1978 "The Author as Producer." In Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz, trans.
1968
EdmundJephcott, pp. 220-238. New York: Harcourt Brace.
"The Work ofArt in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations:
Essqys and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, pp.
217-251. New York: Schocken Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1972 Esquisse d'une thiorie de fa pratique. Paris: Droz.
Clifford,James
1988
Foster, Hal
1993
TIe Predicament qfCulture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, andArt.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
"The Politics of the Signifier: A Conversation on the Whitney Biennial."
October 66(4}:3-28.
Foucault, Michel
1977 Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen
1980 Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.
Hollier, Denis
1992
Jamin,Jean
1986
Kosuth,Joseph
1975
White, Hayden
1978
"The Use-Value of the Impossible." October 60(2}:3--24.
"L'ethnographie mode d'inemploi. De quelques rapports de l'ethnologie
avec la malaise dans la civilisation." In]. Hainard and R. Kaehr, eds., Le
mal et fa douleur. Neuchatel: Musee d'ethnographie.
"The Artist as Anthropologist." Fox I. 1991. Reprinted in ArtAjlerPhilosophy
andAjler, Collected Writings, I966-I990, pp. 107-128. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
"The Burden ofHistory." In Tropics qfDiscourse, pp. 27-50. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
HAL FOSTER
the surrealist milieu. See, for example,JeanJamin (1986) and Denis Hollier (1992).
9. Is there not, in other words, a poststructuralist projection akin to the structuralist
projection critiqued long ago by Pierre Bourdieu in Esquisse d'une thiorie de la
pratique (1972)?
10. Incidentally, this artist-envy is not unique to new anthropology. It was at
work, for example, in the rhetorical analysis ofhistorical discourse initiated in the
1960s. "There have been no significant attempts," Hayden White wrote in "The
Burden ofHistory" (1966), "at surrealistic, expressionistic, or existentialist historiography
in this century (except by novelists and poets themselves), for all of the
vaunted 'artistry' ofthe historians ofmodern times" (White 1978:43). .
II. Obviously there are other dimensions of these crossings-over, such as the
curricular wars of the last decade. First some anthropologists adapted textual
methods from literary criticism. Now some literary critics respond with pseudoethnographies
ofliterary cultures. In the process some historians feel squeezed
on both sides. This is not a petty skirmish at a time when university administrators
study enrollments closely-and when some advocate a return to the old disciplines,
while others seek to rec.oup interdisciplinary ventures as cost-effective moves.
12. In a sense, the critique of these two human sciences is as fundamental to
postmodern discourse as the elaboration ofthem was to modern discourse.
13. Louis Althusser (1990:97) writes ofinterdisciplinarity as "the common theoretical
ideology that silently inhabits the 'consciousness' ofall these specialists ... oscillating
between a vague spiritualism and a technocratic positivism."
14. I am indebted in these remarks to my fellow participants in "Roundtable on
Site-Specificity," Documents 4 (1994): Renee Green, Mitchell Kane, Miwon Kwon,
John Lindell, and Helen Molesworth. There Kwon suggests that such neighborhood
place is posed against urban space as difference against sameness. She also
suggests that artists are associated with places in a way that connects identity politics
and site-specific practices-the authenticity ofthe one being invoked to bolster
the authenticity of the other.
15. Some recent examples of each: social outreach in "Culture in Action," a
public art program of Sculpture Chicago in which selected artists collaborated
with community groups; economic development in "42nd Street Art Project," a
show that could not but improve the image of Times Square for its future redevelopment;
and recent projects in several European cities (e.g., Antwerp) in which
site-specific works were deployed in part for touristic interest and political promo-
tion.
16. Consider, as an example, one project in "Project Unite," a show of sitespecific
works by some forty artists or artist groups within the Le Corbusier Unite
d'Habitation in Firminy, France, in summer 1993. In this project, the neo-conceptual
duo Glegg and Guttman asked the Unite inhabitants to contribute favorite
cassettes toward the production of a discotheque. The tapes were then edited,
compiled, and displayed according to apartment and floor. The sociological condescension
in this facilitated self-representation is extraordinary.
THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER?
REFERENCES
Althusser, Louis
1990 "Philosophy and the Spontaneous Ideology ofthe Scientists." In Phiwsoplry
and the Spontaneous Ideology qfthe Scientists and Other Essqys. London:
Verso.
Barthes, Roland
[1957] 1972 Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.
Benedict, Ruth
1934 Patterns qfCulture. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Benjamin, Walter
[1934] 1978 "The Author as Producer." In Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz, trans.
1968
EdmundJephcott, pp. 220-238. New York: Harcourt Brace.
"The Work ofArt in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations:
Essqys and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, pp.
217-251. New York: Schocken Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1972 Esquisse d'une thiorie de fa pratique. Paris: Droz.
Clifford,James
1988
Foster, Hal
1993
TIe Predicament qfCulture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, andArt.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
"The Politics of the Signifier: A Conversation on the Whitney Biennial."
October 66(4}:3-28.
Foucault, Michel
1977 Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen
1980 Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.
Hollier, Denis
1992
Jamin,Jean
1986
Kosuth,Joseph
1975
White, Hayden
1978
"The Use-Value of the Impossible." October 60(2}:3--24.
"L'ethnographie mode d'inemploi. De quelques rapports de l'ethnologie
avec la malaise dans la civilisation." In]. Hainard and R. Kaehr, eds., Le
mal et fa douleur. Neuchatel: Musee d'ethnographie.
"The Artist as Anthropologist." Fox I. 1991. Reprinted in ArtAjlerPhilosophy
andAjler, Collected Writings, I966-I990, pp. 107-128. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
"The Burden ofHistory." In Tropics qfDiscourse, pp. 27-50. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Traffic in Culture
RefiguringArt andAnthropology
EDITED BY
George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University ofCalifornia Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University ofCalifornia Press, Ltd.
London, England
N
72
.AS'f.
T13
,qq ~
New material © 1995 by the Regents ofthe University ofCalifornia
Parts ofthis book were published in earlier versions.
Chapter 2: "Representing Culture: The Production ofDiscourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings,"
CulturalAnthropology 6 (no. I, Feb. 1991). Reprinted by permission ofthe American Anthropological
Association. Not for sale or further reproduction.
Chapter 3: "From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis," Working Papers and Proceedings ifthe Centerfor
P.ryclwsocial Studies, no. 53 (1992); "Voices ofthe Rainforest," Public Culture 4, no. 1(1991), © 1991 by
the University ofChicago, all rights reserved; "Voices ofthe Rainforest: 'Imperialist Nostalgia' and
the Politics ofMusic," Arena 99/100 (1992); "From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: On the
Discourses and Commodification Practices of'World Music' and 'World Beat,' " in MusU: Grooves, ed.
Charles Keil and Steven Feld (University ofChicago Press, 1994).
Chapter 5: "Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: The Mediation ofKnowledge by Traders in Mrican
Art," V'ISUaIAnthropology Review 6, no. I (1990): 45-49. Reprinted by permission ofthe American
Anthropological Association. Not for sale or further reproduction.
Chapter 6: "The Patronage ofDifference: Making Indian Art 'Art, Not Ethnology,' " Cultural
Anthropology 7 (no. 4, Nov. 1992). Reprinted by permission ofthe American Anthropological
Association. Not for sale or further reproduction.
Chapter 7: "The Power ofContemporary Work in an American Art Tradition to muminate Its Own
Power Relations," Power: Its Myths andMores in American Art, 1961-1991, ed. Holliday T. Day
(Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum ofArt in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1991).
© Indianapolis Museum ofArt. Reprinted by permission ofIndiana University Press.
Chapter II: "The Female Aesthetic Community," PoetUs Todl!)! 14, no. 1(1993): 143-163' ©Judith L.
Goldstein.
Chapter 12: "The War on Culture," Art in America (Sept. 1989): 39-45; "Misunderstanding
Obscenity," Art in America (May 1990): 49-55; "Reagan's Revenge: Restructuring the NEA," Art in
America (Nov. 1990): 49-55; and "Feminist Fundamentalism: Women against Images," Art in America
(Sept. 1993): 35-39. © Carole S. Vance.
CIP information will be found at the back ofthis book.
ISBN 978-0-520-08847-4
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08
I1109 8 7 6 54
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSIINISO Z39-48-J992
(R 1997) (Permanence if Paper). 9
For our children-Samantha, Rachel, and Avery
viii CONTENTS
8. Confusing Pleasures
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett / 224
9. Inside Trading:
Postmodernism and the Social Drama ofSu'1flowers in the 1980s Art World
Nancy Sullivan / 256
10. The Artist as Ethnographer?
Hal Foster / 302
11. The Female Aesthetic Community
Judith L. Goldstein / 3IO
12. Four Essays on Art, Sexuality, and Cultural Politics
Carole S. Vance / 330
The War on Culture / 331
Misunderstanding ObscenitY / 340
Reagan's Revenge: Restructuring the NEA / 348
Feminist Fundamentalism-Women against lmoges / 359
UST OF CONTRIBUTORS / 369
INDEX / 371
ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1. Uta UtaJangala at work / 61
2.2. Uta UtaJangala, Tuman / 63
2.3. Uta UtaJangala, OldMan Dreaming at Tuman / 64
4.1. Srimati Savitri Devi Sah,]yonti / 130
4.2. Snmati Ugra Tara Devi, Das Mahavidya / 132
4.3. Bowa Devi, Niiginis: Femmes serpents / 136
5.1. Mrican art trader with Senufo mask / 15:3
5.2. Mrican art trader at his stall / 155
5.3. Mrican art trader with wooden storage trunk / 156
5+ Shipment ofMrican art / 158
5.5. Guinean workshop artist with "colonial" figures / 162
5.6. Mrican art trader sanding down "colonial" statues / 163
6.1. Cartoon: "Isn't it cute" I 175
ix