talal asad - the concept of cultural translation
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TALAL
ASAD
The Concept
of
Cultural
Translation in British Social
Anthropology
Introduction
All anthropologists are
familiar
with
E
B. Tylor's famous defJ
llillon
of
culture:
"Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethno
graphic sense,
is
that complex
whole which
includes
knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, custom,
and
any other capabilities
and habits
ac
quired hy man as a member of society. t would be interesting to trace
how and
when
this n o ~ o n of
culture,
with its enumeration of "capabil
ities
and habits" and
its emphasis on
what
Linton called social here ity
(focusing on the
process
of learning), was transformed into the notion
of a text that is, into
something
resembling an inscribed
discourse.
One
obvious clue to this
change
is to be
found
in
the
way
that
a
notion
of
anguage as the precondition
of historical
continuity and social
learning ( cultivation ) came to
domjnate
the
perspective
of social an
thropologists. In a
general
way,
of
course, such
an interest in language
predates Tylor,
but
in the nineteenth
and
early
twentieth
centuries it
tended to
be central
to varieties of nationalist
literary
theory and edu
cation
cf.
Eagleton
1983
:ch.
2) rather
than
to
the
other human
sci
ences. When
and
in what ways did it
become
crucial for
British
social
anthropology? I do not intend to attempt such a
history
here,
but
merely
to remind ourselves that the
phrase
"the translation of cul
tures," which
increasingly
since the
1950S has hecome an almost
banal
description of the distinctjve task of social anthropology, was not al
ways so
much
in evidence. I
want
to stress that this apparent shift is
not
identical with
the old
pre-Functionalism/Functionalism periodiza
tion. Nor is it simply a matter of a direct interest in language
and
meaning that
was
previously
lacking
(Crick 1976).
Bronislaw
Mali
nowski, one of
the
founders of
the
so-called
Functionalist
school,
wrote much on "primitive language"
and
collected enormous quan
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2
T AL.o\L
ASAD
lItles
of
lingu
istic ma t
e ria l (prove rbs ,
kinship
terminology,
magical
spe
ll
s, and so
on) for
an t
h
ro
pological analysis. But
he never
thought
of his work iin te rms of the translation of cultures.
Godf rey Lien hard,'s paper "Modes of Thought" (1954) is possibly
one
of the
earl
i
est
-
certa
inl y
one of
the
most
subtle-
examples
of
the
use of
Ilnis l'1otion
of
tr ans lation
explicitly
to describe a central
task of
social
anthropology.
""F
he problem
of describing to others how men2.
bers
of
a
remote tribe
think then
begins to
appear
largely as
one-" f'
translaLion.
of making the
co he r
en
ce primitive
thought has
in
the
lan-
guages
it
rcally
lives in , as clear as possible in our own"
(97). This
state
ment is quoted and cr
it ici
zed
in
th
e article
y
Ernest Gellner
that
I
an alyze in
the next
section,
and
I shall return to
it in the context of
Ge
lln er's argument.
Here
I
draw attention
briefly to
Lienhardt's
lise of
the
word
"translation" to refer not
to linguistic
matter per
se,
but to
"modes of thought"
that
are embod
ied in
such matter. It may not
be
withollt sign ificance, incidentally, th
at Lienhardt has
a background in
English
literature,
th
at
he
was a
pupil of F. R.
Leavis's
at Cambridge
before
he
became
a
pupi
l
and
co
llaborator of E.
E.
Evans-Pritchard's
at Oxford.
Oxford
i
s,
of cou
rse,
famous
as
the
an thropo
l
og
ica l
center
in Brit
ain Illost self-conscious
about
its
concern
with
"the translation
of cul
tures." The best-known
int roductory
textbook
to emerge from that
center,
J o
hn
Beattie's Other Cultu.r (1964),
em p
hasized
the
ce
ntralit
y
of the "problem
of
trans
l
ation" for
social anthropo logy and dist in
guished (but did not
separate) "cul
ture"
from
"language"
in a way
that
was b
ecomin
g familiar
to anthropologists
-
though not
necessarily
therefore
en tirely clear (see pp.
89 - 90).
It
is
in terest ing to find Edmu nd Leach, who has
never been
associ-
ated
with
Oxford, employing the
same
no ti
on in
hi
s conclusion to a
historical ske tch of socia l an thr
op o
logy a
decade
lat
er:
Let
me
r
ecapit
ulate.
We started by
em phasizing h
ow diff
er
ent
are "the
or.hers"- a
nd made them nOl
only
different but remote
<md
in fer
i
or.
Se nti
mentally we
then
took the
oppos
ite track a
nd
ar
gued that
a
ll
human beings
are
alike ; we
can understand
T r
ob ri
a
nd
ers o r
(he Barotse
because
their
Ol
od
vations are
just
the sa me as our ow n; but that
didn't wor
k eit her , "rhe ot he ls"
remained obstinately ot hel'. But now we have
come to
. ~ e e that the
problem
is o ne
of
transla
ti
on, T he linguists have shown us
that
a
ll
translation
is
difficult,
and that
pe
rf
ec
luan
slation is usually
impo
ssible .
And
y
el we
know
that for
practical purposes a tOle r
ab
ly satisfacto ry translation
is
a lways pos
sible even
when the
o
ri
g in al "text"
is
highly abst
ru
se .
Languages
are di.ITere_lt
but
not so different
as a ll that. Looked
at
in this
wa
y socia l
anth
ropologists are
engaged in establishing a methodology
for
the translation of cu ltural l
an
guage. (Leach
' 973
:77
2)
The Concept of Cu ltur
al
Trans
lati
on
'43
Even Max Glu
ckman (197 3: 905), responding
shortly
afterward
to
Leach,
accepts
the
centra lity of "cu ltural translation," while
propos
in g a
very different genea
logy
for that anthropological pr
actice.
Yet despite
the general agreement
with which this no tion has
been
accep,ed
as part of the self-defini tion of Briti
sh
social
anthropology,
it
has
rece
i
ved
little systematic
exam
i
na ti
on
from
w
ithin
the
pr
o fession.
One partial
except
i
on
is Rodney
Need
ham's Belief, Language, and Expe- •• .
'riente
(' 9
72). This is a complex, scholarly work that deserves extended
treatment. He r
e , h
oweve
r , I
wis
h
to
conce
nt r
a te on a s
honer
text.
Ernest
Gell ner's
"Concepts and
Society," which ap pe
ars
to
be
fairly
widely
used
in undergraduate co
ur
ses a t British universities and is still
available in
severa
l
popu
l
ar
co
ll
ections. I
propose
,
therefore,
to d
evo te
th e
next
sec tion
to
a detailed exa
min at
i
on
of
that
essay and then to
take up so me points that em
erge
from m y discussion in the sec tio ns
th at follow.
A Theoretical Text
Gellner's "Co n
cep
ts a nd Society" is
concerned
with
the
way in
which Functionali
st
anthroPQlogists deal with
problems
of
in ter pret
- '
ing
and translating
the
discourse of a
li
en socie
ti
es. His basic argument
is
that (a) contemporary anthropologists insist
on
interpreting exoti!:
concepts and
be
li
efs within a social
context, but that
(b) in
doing SO j
the
y ensure that
apparently absurd
or in
coherent
a s ~ ~ r ~ i o n s are al
ways given an acceptable
meaning,
and that (c) while
the
contextual \
method
of
interpretation is
in
principle
valid,
the
"excess
iv
e
that usuall
y
goes
with it
is
not. The paper contains
severa
l d i
agrams
intended to fix and clarify
the relevant
cu
ltur
al processes visua
ll
y.
Gellner introduces the problem
of
in terpretat
i
on
hy
refere
n
ce to
Kun
Samuelsson's R eligion and Economic ction (1961), which
is
an
economic
historian's
atta
ck
on
the
Web
erian
Protestant-ethic
thesis.
Samuelsson
takes issue witb
the
fact that W
eber
a
nd
his
supporters
have
reinterpreted religious texts in a way that. enables
them to
ext ract
meanings that
confirm the
thesis. Gelln
er pr
ese
nts
this
exa mpl
e
merely
to bring
out more
sharply
the contrasting
position of the Funct.ionalist
anthropologist:
I
am not concerned, nor competent, to argue wheth
er Samuelsson's em ploy
ment,
in this
particular
case,
of
his tacit principle (hat
one must not
re
interpret
the
assertions one actually finds,
is
valid.
What is
rel
evant
here is
that if
such
a
principle
is made explicit and generalized, it would
make
non
se
nse
of
most
sociological studies of
the
relationship of belief and
conduct.
We
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TALAL
ASAO
'14
sha ll find anthro polog ists d"jven O employ the ve ry oppo site p,-inciple, the
insistence rather than r
ef
usal of con
ex
lual re-
im
e '
-p
'-etation. 20)
But this mod est disclaimer of
com
p
ete
nce a llows too
llla ny
in te r
est ing questions
10
drift b
y.
To
beg in with , it ca lls for no great com pe
tence to note
that
Sa muelsso n does
not
hold
10 the
principle that one
mu st never re
int
e rp re t. Nor
does
he insist that there
is
never a signi fi
can l con nec tion between a religious text and its social context. but
only
that th
e concl usio n the Weber thesis see ks
10 make can
not be es
tablished. (See, e.g., SamuelsS ",
'96, :69.)
There is, fu
rth
er
mo r
e, a
rea l con tras t that Ge llner mi ght have picked up between the Samuels
son
example
and th
e typical anthropologist's
predicament. For
eco
no mic hislO rians a nd socio log ists
in
volved in the Weber debate, his
to rical texts a re a prim
ary
d atum in relat ion to which the
co
ntexts mu
st be
reconstructed
.
The
a nth
ropo
l
og
ical field
worker
be
rglns with a social situ ation within which somethin g is and it is the
cu ltural signifICance of these e
nun
ciations that must be reconstructed,
This is no t to say, of course, that the hi storian can ever
a
pp roac
h his
arc hi val
material wi
Lil OU Lsome conception
of
its histor ical context, or
that the field worker ca n define the social situation ind
epe
nd em ly of
what
was said within
it. The
con
tra
st, such as it i
s,
is one
of
ori
enta
tion, whi ch follows
from
th e fact
thauhe
hist
or
ia n is given
a
text and
the e thnog rap her has to C011S/ruet 01le
I
nstead of
investigatin g
thi
s
impor
ta nt
cont
rast, Gellner rushes
along
to
define and commend what he ca lls "mod era te Functiona l
ism" as a method, which
consists of the insistenc.e on the fan that conce pts a nd beliefs do not exist in
isolation , in t
exts
or in individu al Ininds, but in the life o f m en and socielies.
':rhe activities and instiuHions, in the conl
eXl
of which a wOI d o r phrase or set
of
phra
ses is used, must be known before that word o r th ose ph rases can be
understood,
before we can reall y speak of a concept Or a
be
ef.
(22)
This
is well
put, and.
eve n
if
it has b
ee
n said
before,
it is
wort
h
restating. At this p
oint
the reader might ex pect a d i
sc
ussio n of the dif
fe
rent
ways in wh ich la nguage
is
enco
un t
e
red
by tne
ethnographer
in
the field, how utterances are produced . ve rbal meanings orga nized,
rhetorical
effects attained , a nd c
ultur
a lly appropriate responses e lic
ited. After all, Wittgcnstein
had
already sensitized British philoso
ph ers to the complexity
of
lang uage-in-use,
and
J L Austin h
ad
set
up
distinctions betwee n the different levels o f speech pr od uction
and
re
ception in a way that fo resh
adowed
what anthropologists would
later call the ethnography of speaking. But Gellner had pr eviously re
jected
the suggestion that this philosophical mo v
ement
had
of
va lue to
teach
(see his pole mic in Words
a.nd
Things '9
59),
a nd like
o ther critics , he always insisted that its co ncer n with understanding
The Concept
of Cultural Translalion
'45
everyday language was merely a disguise for defend ing establ ished
ways
of
sp
ea
kin g
about the
world, for
denying
tha, it
was
possible
for
suc h speech-ways
to
be illogical or
absurd.
Gellner has always
been de
term ined to maintain the distinction between defending and explain
ing
concepts and
beliefS" and
to warn
against
the kind of
anthropo
logical
translation
that rules out a
pr
ior i
the
critical distance necessary
for explaining how concepts actually function, for "to understand the
w01 king of the concepts of a society," he writes, "is to
understand
its
instit.utions" (p. ,8; see also
note, on the
same page).
This is why Gellner's brief statement about moderate Functional
ism quoted above leads him imm ed iate
ly to
a discussion
of D
urkheim's
Elementa.ry
Forms
of
h e Rehgio
us Life,
which, besides being one
of the
fountainheads of Functionalism in genera l"
(22),
is concerned to ex
plain
rather than
to c1efend concepts- to
exp
lain ,
more
precisel
y,
"
lhe
compu lsive nature of our categoria l concepts" (22) in
terms of
certain
collective processes. Thus:
Our
contempo
ra ry invocations
of
the functional , social-context
approach to
the
sLUdy
and interpretation of concepts is in various ways very different from
Du rkheim's. Durkheim was not so much concerned to defend the concepts of
primit ive societies: in their sening. they did not need a defence. and in the
setting of modern and chan ging societies he
was
not anxiolls to defend what
was
archaic, nor loath to suggest that some intelleclualluggage might
we ll
be
archaic, He was really concerned
lO
explain the cOf .lpulsiveness
of
what in
practice did
not seem
to need any defence (a nd
in
so doing. he claimed he
was
solving the
problem
of knowledge whose solut ion had in his view evaded Kanr.
and others, and to be solving it without fa lling into either empiricism or apri
or
ism), Whether he was successful I do not propose to discuss: for a variety of
reasons it seems 0 me that he was not. (23)
It
is clear th at Gelln
er
has recognized the basic project
of
Elemen
tary Forms - n
me
ly, its attemp t to explain the compulsive
nature
of
socially d
efined
concepts- but
he
moves too hastily
from
a consi
dera
tion
of
what
mig
ht
be involved in such a
problem
to
a dismissal
of
Durkheim s
attempt
a t explanation. The possibility that a pl'iori de
nunciation
may
not
further t
he purposes of explanation
any better
than defense
does
not seem to be envisaged in
Concepts
and Society."
Instead, the
reader
is reminded, by way of quotation from Lienhardt,
that the contemporary
an t
h ropologist typically appears to
make
it a
condition of a good translation that it conveys the coherence which he
assumes is
there to
be found in primitive thought" (26). So we have
here what I think lS a misleading contrast-Durkheim's attempt to ex
plain versus the contemporary an thropologist's attempt
to
defend. I
shall return to this point later, but here I want to insist that
O
ar
gue
for a form
of
coherence by which a discourse is held together is not
ipso facto to justify or
defend
that discourse; it is merely to take an
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TALAL ASAD
'4
6
essential step in
th
e prohlem
of
explain in g
its
compulsiveness.
Anyone
familiar with psychoanalysis would take this point quite easily.
We
might
put
it
another
way:
the
criterion
of abstran
coherence
or
log icality (Gellner tend s to use these and other terms interchange-
ably) is not always, and in every case, decisive for accepting or r e j e
ing discourse. This is because, as Gellner himself correctly observes,
Language functions in a variety
of
ways other than 'referring
to
ob
jects' 25).
No
t every utterance
is
an assertion.
There
are many things
thal language-ill-use does, and is intended
to
do which explains
why
we
may J-espond positively to discourse that may seem in ade quate from a
narrow logical point of view. The functions of a particular langu age,
the intentions
of a particular discourse, are
of
course part
of
what
every
competent
ethnographer tries to grasp before he can
attempt
an adequate translation into his own language.
Gellner does
seem
half
-aware
of
this
poi11l
,
but
quickly
brushes
it
aside in his eagerness to display to Functionalist anthropologist s their
excessive charity n cultural translation.
The situation , facing a social anthropo logist who wishes to interpret a con
cept, assertion or doctrine in an a en culture, is basically simple. He is, say.
faced with an assertion
S in
the local language. He has at his disposal the large
or infinite set of possible semences iu his own language
.
He
ma
y not be wholly happy about this situation, but he
ca
nnot avoid il.
There is no third language which cou
ld
mediate between the native language
and his own, in which equivalences cou ld be stated and which wou ld avoid the
pitfalls arising from the fact that his own language has its own way of han
dling the world, which may not be those of the native language studied , and
which consequently are
1iable
to distort that which is being translated.
Naively, people sometimes think
that realit ,
itself could be this kind of
mediator and third language. For a
var
iety of powerful reasons, this is
of COllrse no good.
(24-25)
Again , (his sensible statement might seem to some readers to sup
port
the
demand
that the elhnograp
h
er
must
try tn
reconstruct
the
various ways in which the native language handles the world, con
veys information, and
co
nstitutes x p r i n before translating an
alien discourse into th e
language
of his
elhnographi
c text.
But
Gell
ner's accoun t proceeds in
a
different, and very dubious, direction.
Having located an equivalem English sentence,
he cont
inu es ,
the
anthropologist notices that it inevitably carries a value connotat i
o n -
that it is , in other words, either Good
or
Bad. 1 do
not
say
'true'
or
'false',
for
this only arises with
regard
to some types
of
assertion. With
regard t others, other dichotomies, such as 'meaningful' and 'absurd'
or 'sensible' or 'silly'
might app
ly. deliberately use the 'Good'
and
'Bad'
so as
to
cover a
ll
such possible polar alternatives, which
ever
might best app ly
to
the equivalent of S (27)·
The Concept of Cultural Transl;llion
'47
Have we not got here some very curious assumptions, which no
practiced translator would ever make ? The first is th at eva luative dis
crimination
is
a
lw
ays a matter of choosing between polar alternatives,
and second , that eva
lu
ative distinctions are finall y reducible
to
Good
and Bad. Clearly neidler of these assumptions is acceptable when
stated as a general rule. And then there
is
the suggestion
thell
the
translator's task necessarily involves matching
se
ntence for
sentence
.
But if the skilled translator looks first for any principle of coherence
in
the discourse to be
tr
anslated, and then (ries to reproduce that co
her
ence as nearly
as he
Can in his own language, (here cannot
he a
general rule
as
to what units the translator will employ- sentences,
paragraphs , or even larger units of discourse.
To
tUfn my point
around: the
app
r
opriaten. of
the unit employed itself
depends on
th e principle of coherence.
But
Gellner's parable of th e anthropologist-translato,·
requires the
assumption
that
it
is sentences that the latter matches , because that
makes it easier to display ow the sin
of
excessive charity occurs. Hav
ing
n1ade an initial equivalence between a sentence in the local lan
guage and one
in his own ,
the
anthropologist
not
ices
that the
English
sentence carries a Bad imp ression. This worries the anthropologist
because, so runs Gellner's parable, an ethnographic account giving
such an impression might be thought to be disparaging the natives he
has studied,
and
to disparage other cultures is a sign of ethnocen-
trism,
and ethnocentrism
in turn
is
a symptom
of poor
anthropolog y
according to the doctrines of Functionalist anthropology. Functional
is( method requires that sentences a
lw
ays be evaluated in terms
of
their own social context. So the worried anthropologist reinterprets
the original sentence , with a Illore flexible and carefu l use of the con
textual method, in order to produce
a
Good translation.
The
sin of excessive
char
ity,
and
the contextual
method
itself, are
together linked, Gellner writes, to
the
relativistic-functlonalisl view
of
thought
that
goes back
to
the Enlightenment:
The
(unreso lved) dilemma, which the thought
of
th e Enlightenmem faced ,
was between a rcialivi sdc-funClionalist view of thought, and the absolutist
claims of enlightened Reason . Viewing man as part of nalUre, as enlightened
Reason requires. it
wi
shed to see
hi
s cog niti ve and evaluative activities as pans
of nature too , and hence as varying, legitimately, from organism to o rganism
and comext to conlext. (This is the relativistic-functionali st view.) But
at the
same time in recommending life according
0
Reason and Nature,
it
wished at
the very least to exempt this jew itself (and , in practice, some others) from
such a relativisrn. (3 1)
Typically, Gellner's philosophical formulation presents this
unre
- I
solved dilemma as an abstract opposition between two concepts- a
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149
AL
AL
ASAD
The
Concept of Cultural Translation
.t
{
relativistic-functionalist view of thought. and the absolutist claims o f
po
ssible ? Wh y does one ever say to foreigners that th ey have mIS-
,r
enlightened Reaso n. BUl how do these [\..,0 c
oncepts
as
understood somethi ng they heard or saw? Does social learning
pro
, \
relates
of
he inst itutions
of
[
We
ste rn] society ? (cf. Gellner, p. 18).
t would not be difficull
LO
a rgue
,hat
the claims of enlight
ened
Rea
so n arc
matenally
mo r e su ccessful in T hird World countries than
ma n y relativisti c views, that they have
exerted
gr
ea ter au./
}wn ty
than
th e lattel' in the deve lopment of industrial economie s and th e form a
lion of nation Slales. We shan have occasion to discuss this further
when examining transl
at
ion as a process of power. Th e point is th a t
the
abso
lu tist claims o f enlightened Reason arc in e ffec t a.n
inslitu
rionalizedforce, and that as such it is by de(tnition committed to adva'nc-
Il
ing inw and appropriating
alien territory,
and
that its
opponents
(whether explicitly relativistic or not) are by definit.ion
defensive.
Thus
when Genn er continues on the sa me page to characterize
th
is abstract
dilemma
in
the attitudes
of
anthropo
l
og
ists,
he
fails
to
consider
what
cUltuqJ
tran
slation might involve when it is considered as institu
tio nalized practice given the wider relationship of un equal societ ies.
l
For it is not
the
abstract logic of what individual Western an
th rop o
lo
gists say in
Lh
eir ethn
og
raphies, but the concre te logic of what their
countries (an d perhaps they th emselves)
do
in their relations with lh e
Third
World that should form the starling point for this pa
ni
cu la r
discu
ss
ion . Th e dilemmas of ·'relativism appear differ
en
tly depend
In g on
whether
we think
of
abstracted
und
erstanding o r of histor ica lly
l t u a t pracllces.
How ever, Ge llner says he is not in principle aga inst anthropologi
cal relativism. My main point about tole rance-engende rin g con
textual in terpretation, he writes, is that it ca lls for caution (32). But
why such cauti
on
is r eserved for toleran ce-engel'ldering as opposed
. to intolerance-engendering co
nt
ex tu al interpretations is
nOt
ex
plained. Afte r a ll , Gellner insisted earlier that a ll translated se ntences
are bound to be received eith er as Good or as Bad. Wh y should we
be suspici
ous only
of
tho
se t
hat appear
Good'
If
it is
the
priQr de
te rmin
at
ion
that
S, the indi ge nous affirmation, be interpreted favour
ably, which determines just how mu ch
(ontext
will be tak en into co
n·
sideration (3 3), can we per haps escape this vicious cin.;ularit y by
adoptin g
an
U.11Sp palit
eti(
all . lUd
e
Gellner does no t address himself
di rec tly to this possibility here, but one mu st assume [hat it cann ot be
a solution, especia lly in view of the
claim
tha t there is not
hing
[sic] iD
I he nature of things or societ ies to d ictate visibly just how
mu
ch co n
text is relevant
to
any given
ut tera
nce, or how the context should be
described
(33.).
r Yet can thi s last remar k be mean t seriously ?
Nothing?
How, then ,
is communication even between individuals in the sam e socie ty ever
duc e no skills in th e discrimina ti
on
of releva nt conte xts? T he answers
to these questions should be obvious, and they are connected with the
fact th a t th e anthropologist's
tr
anslation is not merely a m
at
te r of
matching sen tences in the abstract. but of
lean. ing
o j i v ~
another
O r r r v . f
J.if and to sp ea k another kind Ef langu age. Whi ch con texts a re rele
\.JO
vant in
diff
er
en
t discursive even ts is something
one
learn s in the
- s e of
Ji
ving. and even th ough it is often
ve
ry difficult to verbalize
lhat
knowledge, it is still knowledge about something in th e n
at
ur e of
society, about some aspect of hving, that indicates (a lthough it does
not dictate ) ju st how mu ch context is re
le
vant to any given utter
ance. T he point, of co urs e, is not that th e
ethnograph
er
cannot
know
what context is ap propriate for giving sense to typica l stat.ements , or
th
at he
is
indu
ced
to
be
mo r
e charitable than h e should be
in
trans
lat
ing them, but th
at
his attempts at trans lation ma y meet with pr oblems
rooted in th e linguislic materials he works with
a
nd the social co ndi
tions he works in
-b o
th in the field and in his own society. More on
th
is later.
T he latter ha lf of Gellner's essay is devoted to examples from et h
no
graphic studies in ord er to display, fi rst, excessive cha ri ty in transla
tion, and then, the
ex p
lana tory advantages of tak ing a cri tical look at
th e logic of a lien religious discourse.
The first se t of exa mpl es comes from Evans-Pritchard 's N U ~ I
R eli
gion
(1956), in which odd-sounding initial translations of Nu er reli
gio us disco urs e, such as th e notorious statem
en
t tha t a twin is a bird,
are re inte rp reted. This kind of statement , Gellner observes,
ap pears to be in conAict with the princi ple of idel1lity o r non
contradiction, or witb common sense, or with manifes t observable
fact : human twins are nO I birds,
ahd
vice versa (34). Acco rding to
Gellner , Evans-Pritcha rd 's reinterpretation absolves Nuer thou ght
from
th e ch
arge
of
pre-l
og
ical me
nt
ality by
an arbitrary
use of th e
conlextual melhod. T he
apparent
absurdity is reinterpreted to deny
that
Nuer
beliefs co
nAi
ct with
manif
est fact by relating the meaning
of
the absurd statement to log ical behavior. Gellner indicales ho w
this is
do n
e by qu oting (w ith the deliberate om i
ss
i
on
of one significant.
sentence) from Evans-Pritchard:
no contradiction is involved
in
the statemenl which, on the co
nt r
ary, appears
quite se nsible and eve n true,
to
one who presenLS the
id
ea
to
himself
in
the
Nuer lan
guage and
within
Ih
eir system of religious th
oug
ht. [He does not
then ta
ke
their statements abo
ut
[wins any more lit
era
lly than they make and
und erstan d them themselves.] They a.re 1U t saying thal a. Iwin has a.
beo.It,
feathers,
and so for th. Nor i-n lheir everyday relalilms as t-wins do Nuers speak of
hem
IS
bi-,.ds or
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5
TA LAL ASAD
act towards them as though they were birds (35. Sentence in bra ckets omitted
by
Ce
lln
er; emphasis supplied y Cellner.)
At this point Gellner breaks off the quotation
and
inteljects in
mock despair:
But
what, then, would
count as
pre-logical thought?
Only, presumably, the behaviour
ofa
totall y demented person, suffer
ing
from
perman
e
nt
hallucinations , who
would
treat something which
is
perceptibly a
human
being as
though
it had all th e attributes of a
bird (35). So eager is Ge lln
er
to nail utterances that must
count
as
expressions of pre-logical thought (why is he so eager?) that he does
not pause to cons
ider
carefully what E
va
ns-Pritch
ard is
trying to
do. In fact,
Ev
ans-Pritchard devotes several pages to ex plaining this
strange
senten ce. It is plain that he is concerned to explain (in terms of
Nuer
social life), not to ju slify (in terms
of
Western commonsense,
or
Western values).
Th
e
aim
of
this kind
of
exegesis
is
ce
nainl
y
not
to
persuade
Western reade rs to
adopt Nuer
religious pra ctices.
Nor do
es
it rul e
out the
possibility
that
individual
spea
kers make mistakes or
utter absurdities in
th
e ir religious discourse when employing their
traditiona l ways of thinking. It is
not
clear, therefo re, why Gellner
should point to this example from Nner Religion to substantiate his
charge of excessive charity on the part of Fun ctionalist anthropolo
gists. Evans-Pritchard is trying to explain the coherence
that
gives
N uer re ligious discourse its sense, not
to
def end that se nse as having a
universal
status-after
a ll , Evans-Pritchard himself was a Catholic
both before
and after
his
monograph
on
Nuer
religion was written.
N
ow
whether Evans-Pritchard succeeds in explaining the basic co
herence of Nuer religious discourse is, of course, another question.
Several British a
nthropol
ogists-for example, Raymond Firth (1966)
-( though not, to my knowledge , a
ny
Nuer themselves) have disputed
aspects o f Evans-Pritchard's interpretation . But such disagreements
are still about different ways
of
making se nse
of Nuer
religious dis
course, not about too mu ch Or tOO little charit
y
in translation . In fact
contrary
to Gellner's allegations, Evans-Pritchard's exegesis does make
,quite explicit apparent contradictions, or at least ambiguities, in
Nuer concepts-for example, between the notion of a supreme and
omnipresent be ing and
that
of lesser spiriL', both of which
are
ca te
gorized as
kwo lh
And il is precisely because Evans-Pritchard insis
ts
on
keeping the different se nses of
kwolh
together as parts of one con-
cept
and
does
not treat
lhem
as
homonyms (as Malinowski might
have done by relating the word to different contexts of use) that
the Nuer conce pt
of
spirit might be said to be contradictory . But
whether
th e identifica tion of ambiguities and contradictions in the
basic conceptual repertoire
of
a language provides obvious evidence
of
pre-logical
thought
is , of course, a different issu I would sug-
The Co ncept of Cultural Tran slalion
'5'
ge
sl that only
someone
with a very naive unders ta
nding of
what was
involved in translation cou ld think that
it
does .
Yet Gellner's discourse typically evades the issu
es
it see ms lo be
rais
ing
,
in
a style that seeks
to
hurry the reader
along ove
r a series
of
archl y
phras
ed disclaimers:
I do nOI wish to be mi sunderstood: I am tw l arguing
thai
Eva
ns-Prilc
hal
'd s
account of Nuer concepts
is
a bad one, (Nor am I anxious to revive a do ctrin e
of
p, -e-
Iogical me
ntality f
Levy- Bruhl.) On the
n t r r ~
I have the greatest
admiration
for it. What
I am anxiolls
to
argue is thal con textual interpr
eta
lion, w
hi
ch offers an account or
wh
at
asse
rlions r
ea ll
y mean
in
opposition to
what th ey seem to mean
in
iso lation , does not by itse lf
cl in
ch matters . (3
8
)
Now who would have claimed
it
did ? Certainly Evans-Pritchard
do
es
not. In any case the opposi
ti
on between a contex LUal intel-pretatio n
and
one
that is not contextual
is
enlirely spurious.
Nothing
has mea n
ing in isolation . The problem is always, what kind of co nleXl?
But that is somethin g Ge llner never discusses, except by suggest
ing that the answer must involve a vicious circu larity- or by utterin g
repeated warnings against excess
ive
charity (when is charity not ex
cessive ?). He appears unaware that for the lranslator the problem
of
determining the relevant kind
of
co ntext in each case
is
so
lv
ed by sh ll
in th e use
of
the langtlages concern
ed not by
an a prio
ri a
ttitude
of
intolera nce or tolerance. And skill is something that is le rned th at
is, something .that
is
necessarily circular, but not vi ciously so. We are
de
aling
not
with an abstract matching
of
tw o se
ts of
sentences, but
with a socia l practice rooted in mod es of life. A translator may make
mistakes, or he may knowingly mi srepresent something- much as
people make mistakes or lie in everyday life.
But
we cannOl
produce
a
gen eral principle for identifying such things , panicularly not
through
warnings
to
be careful
of
the co ntext ual method
of
inte rpreta tion.
And
so to a
nother
of Gellner's c
harming
disclaimer
s: To
say a ll
this is not to argue for a scepticism or agnosticism concerning what
memb
ers of a
li
e n languages mean , s
oilless
to
c:lrgue
for an abstentio n
from
the contextual m
el
hod
of
inte
rpretation
. (O n the contrary, I
shall argue for a fuller use of il , full er in the sense of allowing fo r the
possibi lity that what people mean is sometimes absurd .) (39). The
charm
of
this statement co nsists in Gellner's cheeky appr opriation
of
his opponent's method to strengthen his own distinctive pos itioll .
But
before that is done, we
are
given furt her exampl es or th e
tolerance-engendering contextual method at work in Leac h's P
obticu l
Systems of Highland unna Thus according to Leach, Kachin state
ments about
th e s
up
ern at ural world are
i
n th e last analysis,
nothing
more
than wa
ys
of describing the formal relationships that ex ist
between real persons and real groups in ordinary Ka chin society
-
r
.I\SoI
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TALAl. ASAD
I
(quoted
on p. 40). At this
point
Gellner intervenes: " It is possible to
I
discern
what
has
happened.
Leach
s
exegetic
procedure
s have
also
Isavesl
.1he K ~ c h i n s {rom being
credited with
wbat they
appear to
be
say
i!1g"
and m
ade it
possible
" to au ribute _
meanin
g
to assert
i
ons
which
might otherwise be
found
to lackit" (41).
Ge
lln
er goes
on
to
insist that he is not concerned LO dispute Leach s in terpreta
tions,
but
merely
"to
show
how
the
Tange of co ntext, a
nd the
manner in which
th
e
context
is
see
n ,
necessarily affect the intel-pretation"
(4 1).
This is
a
si
gnificant remark
,
because
it is
indeed not
Leach's
reductionism to
which
Gellner
objects (we shall find
him
insisting on it
him
self
later
in
connection with Berber
religious
ideology) but to the
fact
that
this
ex
am p le
of reductionism
- which
Gellner
misleadingly ca
ll
s
"contex
tualism
"- seems
to
defend, rather
than
to attack,
the cultura
l d is
course
concerned.
Ge
llne r
s demonstration
of how
"the uncharitable
may
be
'co
nt
ex
tualist' in
the
second, deeper
and better
sense" (42) begins by
present
i
ng
a fictitious
word
in a fictitious
society-the word "bable," used
in a
way
rem"rkably
like
the
English
word
"noble." Thus we
are
tOld
that
it
can be
applied to people
who actually display certain
habitual
forms
of conduct,
as well as to
people
who occupy a
particular
social
status
irrespective
of
their
behavior.
"But the point is: the
society ill question
does not distinguish
two
concepts boble (a)
and
boble (b).
It
on ly uses
tlte word
boble LOlit court"
(42). Tbe logic of bobility
is then analyzed
further to
show
how
bobility
is
a co
nceptual
device
by
which the
privileged
class of the soc i
ety
in
question
acquires some of
the
prestige of certain v
irtue
s re spected in that so
ciety,
without
the incon venience
of
needing
[
practice it . thanks to the
fact
that the same word is ap p lied either
to
practitioners or those vin ues
or
TO oc
cupiers
of
favoured posirions. h is, at the same tim e, a manner
of
rein ro ,'cin g
the
ap
pea l
of
those virtues, by associating
them
. th rough the
use or
the same
appellation,
wit h pr es
lige
and pO\\r·er.
But
a
ll
this needs
to
be
sa
id , and to say
it.
is
to
bring out the int
e
rnal
logical in co hc.'e nce
or
rhe
concep t - an incoher
ence which , ind
eed,
is socia lly functional. (42)
t .
fI n
fact
~ h e co
n
cept of
"bobility" is
not shown
to be
i n c o h e r e n l ~ e v e n
if
it
be accepted
lhat the ambiguity of
the
word allows it to be
used
in
Q
political disc ou rse
to consolidate tbe
legitimacy of a
ruling
class
(and
I; .
r
therefore,
in principle , also
to undermine that
legitimacy), Gellner's
satisfied conclusion to his fictional
example
is surely far too hasty:
"
What
this sbows ,
however
, is
that
the over-cha
rjtable
interpreter,
de
termined
to
defend the
concepts
he is investigating from the charge
of logical
incoherence,
is bound to misdescribe
the
social situation. To
make sense the concept is
to
mahe nonsense
of
the society (42, emphasis
added). t,:
learly
the word
"bobility"
makes
sense
to
its
user
s in
particu
-
The Concept
or
Cu ltura l Translacion
153
lar
state
m e
fH
S
(or tlley
would not
use it), and
it makes
sense l s o ,
al
thou gh-of a different kind , to Gellner, who states that by deceiving its
llsel-S
it somehow upholds
a social S
t.ruClure. Sense
0 t.:..
nonsense
,
l i k ~
tl-utb
or falsehood, ap p lies
to
s.tatemen ls
and
not
to a b s _ ~ r a c t
concepts.
There seems
to
me no evidence
here
of
a
"no nsensical" concept,
be
c,!!:se
there is no ana
lysis
of
socia
ll
y
situated
state!!lents.
But
there
is
a
ls
o a more
important
failure ev
ident
in this
example:
",lW I C ~
the
lack
of
any
attempt to
explore
i
ts
c o h e r e ~ t h a t
which
makes
its
social effect
such
a
powerful
possibility. or
course,
political
discourse
employs lies,
half-truths
, logical trickery,
and
so on. Yet
that is
n0
what
gives it
its
cornpu.
.lsive
character,
any
more
than
the
use of true
or
l L O .
e a r
statements does, and
compulsiven ess b,.precisely
wha
t is in volved
in
Gellner's
example.
It
is not
the abstract logical status of concep-,ts
that is
relevant here,
but
the
way in which specific political
discourses
seem
to mobilize
or
direct
the behavior
of people within given cu lw ral
t i o n s . The compulsiveness of "bobility" as a politi cal
concept
is a
feature not of
gullible
minds but of
co h
erent
disco
urses
a
nd
practices.
T
hat
is why it is essential
for a translator
of powe
rful
political ideolo
gies
to
attempt to convey
somet
hin g of this
coherence,
To
make
non-
sense
of the concept is to mak
e non
sense of the
society.
Gellner
s final
example comes from
his own fieldwork
am o
ng
the
ce ntral Moroccan Berbers, and is
intend
ed
to
clinch the argument
thal an
un
c
haritabl
'e
con
textu a
Iist makes better
sense
of
the
societ y
he
describes by
emphasizing the
in
coherence
of its
concepts:
"Two con
cepts
are relevant,"
he
writes , baraka and agu.rra1n (pI. iguTramen).
Bm'aha is
a
word which
can
mean
simply
'enough', but
it also
means
plenitude, and
above all blessedness manifested
amongst
other things
in
prosperity
and
the power
to cause prosperity in others by super
natural means, An agurram. is
a poss
essor of baraka (43),
Igurramen translated as "saints" in Ge llner's
later
writings (e,g.,
Ig6g)-are
a fairly privileged
and
influential
minority
in
the
tribal so
ciety
of
centra
l
Moroccan
Berbers
who
act as foci
of
religious values
and
also as n1ediators
and arbitrators amongst
the tribal popu l
ation
with wh
om they
live. "T
he
local
belief is
that
they are
selected by
God.
Moreover,
God makes his choice manifest by
endowing
those
whom
he has seJected with certain characteristics,
including
magical powers,
and great generos
it
y, prosperity,
a consider-the-lilies
attitude
, paci
fism,
and so
forth" (43).
This is Gellner's "
tran
slation. " But his too-fluent use of" re ligious
vocabu l
ary
with
strong, and
peThaps
irrelevant
, C
hri
stian
overtones
rn
ust prompt
doubts
and questions
at
this point.
What
precisely are
the
behavior and discourses translated here as "a consider-the-lili es at
titude
," "
make
s
hi
s cho i
ce manifest." and "e ndowin
g,"
[or
in stance?
Do
the
Be
rbers
believe
that God
endows
their
"sai
nt
s" with disposi
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TAL.
i\L ASAD
154
tional
charaCleristics su ch as great
generosity
and pacifism, or do
tbey take it rather tha t these characteristics are conditions
of
saintli
ness,
of
th e closeness of i
gu.TTGmen to
God ? Do the Berbers r
ea
lly be
ha ve as th ough re
li
g
ious
and
moral
virtues
wer
e manif
es
tat ions of
divin
e c
hoi
ce?
Wh
at do th ey say and
how
do
they
behave
when people
fail to display
th
e
virtues they
ought to
ha
ve? By whom
is an
gurram s
behavior concep
tualized as a consider-the-lilies a
ttitud
e, given that
he has bot h family
an
d property, and that this fact is taken by the Ber
bers to be perfectly in
order?
Gellner does not g ive the r
eade
r
the
relevant evidence for answering these important questions, whose sig
nificance for his translation will emerge in a
n10menl.
Th e reality of
the
situation
is,
however, th aL the
igu f1 amen are
in fact se
Iecr.cd by the surrounding
or
dinary tribesmen who use their services, by being
ca
ll
ed to
perform t h o ~
services
and
being
preferr
ed to
the
rival ca
ndidates
for their performance,
Whal appear
s to be vox Dei is in reality vox populi.
Mor
eover,
the maHer or
the
blessed ch
aracter
istics,
the
stigmata
[s
ic]
of
agunmn-hood is
more
complicated .
t
is essemiall.ha t successful c
andidates
to
agu1
ram
stat
us be ClwLiled with
(he
se c haraCleristics, bUl it is e
qu
a lly essenrial ,
at any
rale
wi
th
regard
to some
of them, (h
al
the y should not really possess
rhem.
For
instance, an agurram
who
was
extremely
ge nero us in a consider
the-lilies
sp
irit would soon be impoveri
shed
and, as such , fa il by another cru ,
cial
eS
I, that of prosperity.
There is he
re
a crucial
divergen
ce hetween
concept and
reality, a div
er
gence
whi ch
moreover is quite
essenti
a)
for
the working of the
social system.
(43- 44)
It is
not at
all clear from the acco
unt
given by Gellner what is
mea nt by
th
e statement, The local belief
is
that they are selected by
God - selected for what
exact
l
y?
For being a rbitrators?
But
arbitra
tion mu st be initiated by
one or
o th er
member of
the tribal society,
and that fact
can
hardly be unknown to
the tribe
smen , For being pa
cine? But padfism is a virtue, not a rewa
rd
. For worldly success
and
prosperity? But that cannot
be a local
defini
ti
on
of
saintliness,
or
th
e
French colonial rulers would have
been
r
ega
rded as more saintly than
an
y agurram.
t is really
no
great explanatory ac
hi
eve
ment
for a
Europe
an an
thropologist to inform his ag nost ic and/or modern European readers
tb at the Berbers believe in a particular kind
of
direct intervention
of
the
deity
in
their affairs,
th
at
th
ey are of cO
urse mistaken
in this be
li
ef,
an d that this mistaken
belief
can have social
consequences.
In
this
kind
of
exercise we do
not
lea
rn
what they helieve, but only that what
th
ey
believe
is quit
e
wrong:
thus, th e Berbers believe that
God
se
lects igu
,.ramen;
we
kn
ow
God
does
not
exist (or
if
some
of
us still be
lieve
he doe
s, we know he does not interve
ne
directly in secu
lar
his
tory); ergo the
se
lecto r
mu
st be a nother agent
whom
the tribesmen
The
Conce
pt of C
ultural Translation
'5 5
do
n
ot
know as the
agent- in
fact, the su
rr ou nding
tribesmen them
selves. The ig UTlamen are selected
(for
a par ticular social role? for a
moral virtue? for a religious destiny?)
by
the people.
The
selection
a ppea rs to be vox
Dei and is
in reality vox populi,
Or is
it?
In
reality the social process descrihed
by
the anthropologist as se- I
lection is the locus
of
a
vox
only if it is
pr
etended that
that
process
constitutes a c
ultural
text.
For
a t
ex
t
mu
st have an author- the one
who makes his voice heard
th r
ough it. And if that voice cannot be
God 's, it
must
be someone else's-the peo
pl
e's,
Thus
Gellner the athe
ist insists o n answering a
th
eo logical
qu
es tio n:
who speaks
through
histo ry,
through
society? In this particula r case, the answer
de p
e nds
on
th e text containing
at
once the
rea
l, un conscious meaning and its
appropriate
translation,
This fusion of signifier and signified is
espe
cia lly evident in the way in which the Islamic concept of bamka is ma de
to
sound
remarkably like the Christian conce
pt
of grace as
portr
ayed
by an eighteenth-century skeptic, so
that
the
conditions
defining the
agurram s baraka
are re ferr ed to with a knowing Gibbonian smile as l
s
t igmata -and
by that
deft
sign, a portion of the
Berber
cultural
text
is at once constructed (made
up)
and designated (shown
up)
within Gellner s text , as exqu isite a union of word and thing as any to
be
found
in all his writings,
But society is not a text that co
mmunicates
itself to the s ~ i l l e 1 1 :
reader. t is people who spea k. And the ultimate meaning
of
what
they say
does
not
re
side in soci
ety-soc
iety
is the cultural con
dition in
which speakers act and are acted upon . The pri vileged pos ition th at
Gellner accords himself for deco
ding
the real meaning
of
what the
Berbers say
(regardless
of what they
think
they say)
can
be m aintained
only by someone who snpposes that translating
other
cultures is es
sentially a
matter of
matching written sentences in two languages,
such
that
the
se
con
d set of sentences becomes
the
real meaning of
the f irs t-an op eration the anthropologist alone com.rois, fr om field
notebook
to
printed ethnog
raphy,
In other
words, it is
the privileged
position
of
som
eone who
does
not, and
can
afford not to, eng
age in
a
genuine
dial
ogue
with those
he
or she once lived with a
nd
now writes
about
(cf. Asad , ed, 1
973:
17),
In the middle of his article, when discussing anthropolog ical rela
tivism, Gellner compl ains that anthropologists were relaLivistic, toler
an t
, contextually-comprehending vis-a.-vis the savages who
are
a
fter
all some distallce away, but absolutistic, intolerant vis-a -vis their imme
diate neighbou rs or predecessors, the
memb
ers
of
our own soc iety
who
do not share their comprehending
outlook
and are
th
emselves
'ethnocentric' .
(3
1) .
Why have 1 tried to insist in this
paper
that anyone conce rned
with
translat
ing from other
cultures must
look for co herence in dis
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6
TA
L AL ASA D
cou
rs e
s, and yet
devoted
so
many
pages to
showing that
Ge llner 's
text
is largely incoherent ? The
reason
is
quite
simple:
Gellner
and I spea k
the same
l
anguage, be
long to the sa
me
academic pro fession, live in
the same society.
In
taking
up
a critical sta nce [Oward his
text I am
co_
nte
sti·ng wh
at
he says, not
tra.nslating
it,
and the radi
cal d i
ffere
n
ce
be
I
w
ee
n
these
two activities is precisely
what
I insist on. Still,
th
e
purpose
of my
argumen
t is n
Ot to
expr ess
an attitude
of " in tolerance" LOward
an "
immed
ia te ne
ighb
our," bUl to try and
identif
y incoherences in his
text that ca ll
for remedy
, because
the
anthropo logica l ta sk of
tr
ansla
tion
deserves
to be
mad
e mo re
co
herenL.
Th
e
purpose
of thi s criti
cism ,
therefore,
is to furth er a co llective e
nd
eavor. Criticizing "savages
w
ho are
after a ll
some
d i
stance
away ," in
an ethnographi
c mo
nograph
they
cannot
re
ad , do
es not
seem to
me
to have
th
e sa me kind of
pose, In
order
for criticism to be responsible , it
must
always be ad
dressed to someone who
ca n contest it.
The lnequality of Languages
A ca ref ul r
ead
ing of Gellner's paper shows
th
a t a
lthou
gh he
raises a number of important
question
s,
he not
only fails LO answer
them , but misses
some
of
the
most c
ru
cial aspects of
th
e
problem
with
wh i
ch
the ethn
og
raph er is eng
aged.
The most
intere
sting of
these
, it
see
ms to me, is
the
pr ob lem
of what one might
call unequal lan
guages
- and it is thi s I wan t now
to
discuss in
some
d
em
it.
All
good
translatio 'n see ks to
reproduce tbe
structure of an alien
di
sco ur se within the translator's own la n
guage.
How
th at
strUCtu re
(or
cohere
nce
") is re pr odu ced will , of course, depend on
the ge
nre
conce rned (" poetry," "scientific analysis," "
narrative,"
etc.), o n
the
re
sou rces
of the transla to r
's
lan
guage,
as we ll as on the inte res ts of the
translator and
/o r hi s r
eade
rs
hip
. A
ll
successful
trans
l
at
ion is
pr
emis
ed
on
the
fact th at it is
addressed
within a
spe
c
ifi
c
language, and
there
fore
also to a
spec
ific
set
of
pr
act ices, a
spe
.c
ifi
c f
orm of
life.
Th
e fu r
ther that
form
of life
is
from
the or
iginal ,
the
less
mechanica
l is the
reproduction . As Wal
ter
Be
njamin
wrote: "T he lan
guage
of a
tr
a nsla
tign ca
n- in
fact
must- let
its
elf
go, so
that
it gives voice
LO
th e
inte
nt
io
d..'\;
of
t : e
not
as
reproduction but
as
harmony
, as a
supplement
to
the language
in which it e
xpres
ses itself, as its own kind
of ten tio
(1969:
79
).
It
is,
incidentall
y,
lo r
the
read
er to eva lu
ate
that intentio,
n
ot
fo r
the tran
sl
ato
r
to
pr e
e
mpt
th
e evaluation. A
good
t
rans
l
at
i
on
sh
ou
ld always
pre
ce
de
a c
ritique
. A
nd
we can
turn
thi s
around
by say
ing that
a
go
od cr
iLiqu e
is
a
lw
ays an "int e
rnal
critiqu
t
h
at
i
s,
one
based
on
some shared un d
e rst
an ding
, on a
joint
lif
e, which it aims to
Tbe Con ce
pt
of Cu ltural Translat ion
' 57
enl
a rge
and make
m
ore coherent.
Such a critique
n
o less
than
th e
objeCl o f cri ticis
m -i
s a
point
of view, a (contra)
ve
r
sion
having only
provi
sional
and limited author ity.
What
h
appens when
the
languages co
ncerned
are
so r
emote
Lhat
l
is very di fficu lt to
rewrite
a
harmon
io us /entia?
Rud
o
lf
Pannwit
z.
qu oted
in
th
e Be
njamin
essay on which I have just
drawn
, makes
the
following
observation:
Our tran slations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise.
They
want
LO
tum Hindi . G reek, Eng lish
in
to German instead of tunling Ce rman
into Hindi , Gree k, English. OUf translato rs have a far g reater reverence for
the
usa ge
of
their own langu age
th an
for
the
spirit o f th e
foreign
works, . . .
The
basic e
rr
or of the
lr
ansl
al.O
r is thal he
preser
ves the Slate in which his own
' lan guage ha
pp
ens to b e instead
of
a
ll
owing his lan
guage
to be powerfu ll y ar.
reeted by the foreign l
on g
ue, Par'tic
ul
a
rl
y when translating fr om a langu age
very remo te from his own he must go back to the primal element
of lan g'uage
i(sel f and penetrate
to
the point where
wo
rk, image,
and tone convnge.
He
mu st expand and deepen his
language
by means
of
the foreign language.
( 1969:80-8, )
Th is ca ll to
tra
ns
form
a
language
in or der
to
tran sl
ate th
e
cohe
r
ence
o f the original, poses an interes ting cha
ll
en
ge to the
pe rson satis
fi ed with an
absurd-soundin
g translat io n
on the assumption th at the
original must
have
been
equally
absurd: th
e
good
transla t
or
do es not
immediately assume
that
unusu
al d ifficulty in conveyi
ng th
e sense of
an alien
dis
cour se d
enotes
a fault in
the
lauer ,
but
instead critica lly
examin
es the
normal
st
ale
o r his
or
her
own
language, The
relevant
qu est ion therefore is
not
how
tolerant an aUil Ud.e th
e translator o ug
ht
to display toward the o riginal author (an abstract ethi cal dil e
mma)
,
but
how she
ca n test
the
tolerance of her own lan
guage for
assuming
unaccustomed
forms.
But this
pushin
g beyo
nd
the limits of one's habitual usages, this
breaking
down
and reshapin g of
one
's
own
lan
guage
through
the pro
cess
of
tr ans
lati
on,
is
never an
easy business, in
part
be
cause
(if
I may
II
._
be a ll
owe
d a hy
posta ti
la tio n) it depends
on
the
wi
llingness of the
translator's language to su bject itself to this
transform
ing pow
er.
I a t
tr ibute, sOlnewhal ficti
ti
ous l
y,
volition to
th
e
language
because I
want
to em phasize
th al the
matte r is largely something the
trans
la to r can
not
d
ete
rmine by
individu
al activi ty (a
ny
mo re than
th
e individ
ua
l
sp eake r ca n affect the evoluti
on
of his 01 her la n
gu
age)- that it is gov
erned by institutionally
defined
power re la
tions between th
e lan
guages
/
mode
s
of
lif
e conce
rned. To pU
L t crudely: because the lan-
I
guages of Third World societies-including , of
course
, the socie
ti
es i l
that social anthropologi sts have traditionally s
tudi
ed-a re "weaker" in ,
~ l . •
relation [0
W
es
te
rn
languages (and t
od
ay, especia lly [0 English),
the
y .
.
are more likely to
subm
it to forcible r.ransrarmati
on
in
the
translation
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TALAL ASAD
'58
p£.ocess than the
other
way around. The reason for this is, first, that in
l h ~ i r
political-econ01Tlic relations with
Third
World countries, West
ern nations have tbe greater
ab
ility
to
manipulate the latter. And sec
ond, Western l
anguages produce
a
nd
deploy
de
sire knowledge mOre
i l y
than Third World languages do. (The knowledge that Third
World languages deploy
more
easily is not sought by Western societies
i ~ u i t
the
same way, or for the same reason.)
Take modern Arabic as an example. Since the early nineteenth
century there has been a grow
in
g volume of material translated from
European
language
s sp cially French and
Eng
li
sh
in to Arabic.
This includes scientific texts as well as "social science," "history," ph i-
loso ph y," and "
Ii[
erature. And from the nineteenth cen tu ry, Arabic
as a lan
guage
has
begun
as a result to
undergo
a
transformalion
(lex-
ica l, grammalical, semanlic) that is far more radical than anything
to be identified in European languages-a transformation that h
as
pushed
it
to
approximate
to the latter
more
closely
than
in
the
past.
I
1
Suc h
r
ansforma£ions signal in equalities in the
power
(i.e. , in
the
ca
parities
of the respective languages in relation to the
dominant
forms
I
of dis
course that
have been
and are
still being translated. There
are
varieties of knowledge to be learnt, but also a host of models to be
imitated and reprod uced. In some cases knowledge
of
these models is
a
precondition
for
the
production of
more
knowledge; in
other
cases
it
is
an end in itse lf, a mimetic gesture
of
power, an expression
of
de-
sire for transformation. A recognition of this well-known fact reminds
us that industrial cap italism transforms nOt only modes of production
but also kinds of knowledge and styles of life in the Third World.
And
with th
em,
forms of language. The result of
half-transformed
styles
of life wi
ll
make for ambiguities, which an unskillful Western trans-
la
tor
may simpl ify in
the dir
ection of his own "strong" language.
What does
this argument imply for
the
anthropological
concept
of
cuituraltranslation?
Th
at perhaps there is a greater stiffness in eth
nographic linguistic
co
nventions, a greater intrin sic resistance than
ca n be
overcome
by individual experiments
in
modes of
ethnograp
hic
representation.
In
his perceptive essay "Modes of T houg
ht
, which Gellner criti-
cizes for making over-charit
ab
le assumptions about the
coherence
of
"primitive thought,"
Lienhardt
has this
to
say:
When we l ve with savages and speak their languages, learning
to
represent
their experience
t o
ourselves in their
\'la
y.
we
come
as
near to thinking like
them
as
\
·e
can without ceasing
to
be ourselves. Eventually. we try to represent
their conceptions systematica
ll
y in the logical constructs we have been brought
up to use; and we hope, at best, thus TO reconcile what ca n
be
expressed
in
their languages, with what can be expressed in ours.
We
mediate between
their hab its of thought. which we have acquired with them, and those
of
our
The
Concept
of Cu
ltu
ral
Translation
'59
own society;
in
doing so, it
is
not finally some mysterious
p
rimitive
philos.,9-
I
ph)' '
that we are exploring, but the further potentialities
of
our thought and
language. (
954:
96-97)
In the fjeld , as Lienhardt rightly suggests, the process
of
tran slation
takes place
at the
very
moment
the e thnographer engages with a spe-
cific
mode
of life-just as a child does in learning to grow
up
witbin a
specific culture,
He
learns to find his way
in
a new environment, and a
new language. And like a child he needs to verbalize explicitly what
the proper way
of
doing
things i
s,
because
that
is how
learning
pro-
ceeds. (Cf. A. R. Luria on "synpraxic speech" in Luria and Yudovich
197
1
:50.) When the chi ld
/anthropolog
ist becomes adept
at
adu lt
ways, what he has learnt becomes
implicit as
assumptions inform
n
g
a shared
mode
of life, with all its resonances and areas of unclarity.
But learning- to live a new
mode
of life
is
llot th e same as lea rning
I
about anothe r mode
of
life. When anthropologists return to
their
cauneries , they must write up "their people , and they must do so in
the con ventiolls of representation already circumscribed (already
:'writlen
around,
bo unded")
by
their discipline, institutional life,
I
and wider societ
y.
Cu ltural translalion"must accommodate itself to a
different
language not only in
the
sense of English as
opposed
to
Dinka,
or
English as
opposed
to Kabbashi Arabic,
but
a
lso
in the sense
of a British, middle class, academic game as opposed to the modes of
li fe of
the
"tribal "
Sudan.
The stiffness
of
a powerful established
structure of lif
e.
with its own discursive games,
it
s
OWIl
"strong" lan
guages, is what among other things finally determines the effective-
ness
of the
translation:
The
translation is
addressed
to a very specific
' )
e
aud,ence, which 's wallmg to read
a bou t another
mod e of life
and
to / .
manipulate
the text it reads acco
rding
to established ru les, not to
learn to live a new mode of life.
f
Benjamin was right in proposing that translalion may require
not a mechanica l reproduction
of
the original but a harmonization
with its
i-nlenlio, it
follows that there
is
no reason why this should be
done on ly in the same mode. Indeed , it cou ld be argued that "trans-
lating" an alien form of life, another cuitu re,
is
not always done bes t
through
the
representational
discourse
of ethnog
raphy, th
at under
certain conditions a dramatic performance, the execution of a dance,
or the playing of a piece of
mu
sic might be
more
apt. These would all
be
productions
of the orig
in
al and nOt mere interpretation s: trans
formed instances
of
the original , not authoritat ive textual representa
ti
ons
of it (cf. Hollander '959).
But
would they be t
hought
of by most
social anthropologists
as
valid exercises
in
the "translation of culture"?
I think not , beca use they a ll raise
an
entirely different dimension of
the relationship between the anr.hropologiGIl "work" and its audience,
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TALAL ASAD
th
e
qu est
ion of different Uses (practices), as op pos
ed merely
to d iffer
ent unitings and readings (meanings) of that work. And as social
an
I thropologi
sts we
are trained to trans
lat
e
other
cul
tura
l lan
guages
as
texts , no t O o d u c e or e
nlarg
e c
ultural
ca pacities,
learnt from
ot he r ways of living, in to o ur own. It seems
to me
very likely Ihat th e
n
otio
n
of
c
ultur
e a s
text
has
reinf
orced this view of
OUf
task,
because it
faci lita tes
th
e assumpt. i
on th
a t translation
is essentia lly
a ma ller of ver
bal re
pre
se
n tation.
Reading
Other
Cultures
This
in e
quality
in the
power of
l
anguages,
togeth
er with th e
fact th
at the
an t
hr
o pologist. typ ica lly writes
about
an illite
rate (or at
any
rate
non-English-spe
a king) popu lation
for
a largely
academic,
English
-speaking aud
ience,
encourages
a
tendency
I would now like
to
d iscuss: the
tendency
La r
ead
the implicit in alien cu
ltures
.
Ac
co
rding
to
many
social anthropologists,
the
object
of et
hno
grap hic
[1'anslat
i
on is not the
hi
stor
ica
ll
y s
ituated speec
h (th
at
is
the
\..
,ask of
the
folklorist or the linguist), but cu
lture
,"
and
to
trans
l
ate
c
ulture the anthr
o
polo
g i
st mu st.
first
read
a
nd
then
reinscribe the
im
plicit
meaning
s
that
lie ben
eath
/wi
thin
/
beyond si
tua t
ed
speech.
Ma r
y
Douglas
puts
this nicel
y:
The a nthmpologist wh o draws Out the wh ole scheme of
the
cosmos whi ch is
implied
in [the
observed] practices does
the
primitive
culture
gr
eat vi
ol
ence if
he
seems
to
present the
cosmology as
a
systematic philosophy suhscribed
[ 0
consciously by individuals So the primitive world view which
I
have de ·
fined above is l'arel y iLSelf an obj ect
of
co
nt
e
mplation
and speculation in th e
primitive c ulture.
t
has evolved as the appana ge of other social insritutions .
To thi s extent
it
is produ
ce
d indirectly. and to this extern the primitive culture
mu
st be taken
to be un
aware o f itself, un consci
ous of
its own con ciitions.
(
966 :9
1
)
One
differenc
e
between
the an
throp
ologist
and
the
lingui st in
the
matter of
translaLion is p
er
ba ps this :
that whereas
t
he
latte l'
is imme
diatel
y faced with a specifit.: piece of dis co
urse
produced within the
societ y
studied
, a dis
co
ur
se
that
is
th en
textualized,
the
fo
rm
e r
must
co
nstruct the
di
scourse as
a c
ultural text
in
terms
of
meanin
gs
imphc
it
in a range of
pra
ctices. T he co
nstru
ction of
cultural
disco
urs
e and its
translation
thus
seem to be facets
of
a single act.
This point
is
brought
out in
Douglas
's com
ments on
her
Own
translations of
the meanings
o f
the
pangolin cult
among the Lele:
There
are
no
Lele books
of
th
eo
logy or philosophy
to
state
the meanin
g
of
the
cult. The metapbysir:al impli
c;.n
ions have
not been expressed
to me in so
man
y
The
Co
n
cept of Cu
ltu
ra
l
Trans
la ti
on
161
words by Lcle, nor did I even
eavesdrop
a cO
ll
versali
on
betwee n (Iiviners
covering this ground.
Wh
at ki
nd of
eVldence for
the
meaning of
this cult, or
of
a ny cult , can be
sensibly d emanded ? h can
ha ve
many
different
levels a
nd
kind s o f m
ea
nin g.
B
Ul the
one o n which I gro
und
my a rgum e
nt
is [he m
ean
in g wh
ic
h eme rges
out of a paltern in which
the
parts can in co
nt
eslably he shown to
be regu
la rly
related. No
o ne
membe
l- o f tile socie{y is neces
sar
ily
aware of the
whole
pat
tern, any more than
spea
kers are able
to be
explicit
abo
ut the ling uistic
pat·
terns they emp l
oy. ( 1966: 17
3- 74)
I've
suggested
elsewhe
re
(Asad 1983a)
th
at
th
e
attribution
of im:
I
p
li
cit
me
a
nings to an
a
li
en
pr a
c(jee
rega rdl
ess
ojwhether
th.
ey a re acknowl-
edged
by
its
a g e ~ 1
is
a
cha
racteristic
form of
th
eo
l
og
ica l exerc
is
e, with
19
an anc
ie
nt
history. H ere 1 want to
note
tha t refe r
ence
to the linguistic.
patterns produ
ced
by
speakers
does not
ma k
e a
good
analogy because
lingui
st
ic
patte
rns are not meanings
to be
tran
sla t
ed, the
y
are
rul es
to
I;>e
systematicall y
descr
ib
ed and ana
lysed. A nat.ive s
peak
er is
aware
of
how su ch
patterns
sho uld be
produ
ced even
when
he ca
nn
ot verba
li
ze
that
know led
ge ex p
licitly in
the form
of
rules.
T he apparent l
ac
k
of
ab
ility
to verba
lize sllch social knowl edge does not necessarily
co
nst i-
tu te
evidence
of
uncon
scious mea
nin
gs
(c f. Dumm
e
tt
1
98 ,)
.
The
co
n
ce
pt
of un consci
ous
m
ea nin
g belongs
to
a
theo
ry of the r
epressive
unconscious,
suc
h as Freud's, in whi ch a person
ma
y be sa id t o know
so
methin
g
un
conscio usl
y.
The
business of ide
ntif
ying
uncon
sci
ous
me
anings
in
th
e task o f
"cultural translatio n
is th
ere fo
re
perhaps better
com
pared to the ac
~ ~ i t y
of
the
psyc
ho
a n. l
ys
t than to
that
of
the
linguist.
Indeed
British
anthropologists
have
sometimes
prese
nt
ed
their work
in pr ecise ly
these
terms.
T
hu
s David Pocock, a
pupil
of Evans· Pritch
ar d
's, writes:
In
s
ho n
,
the
work
of
lhe social
n t h r o p o
may be rega rd ed as a highly
co
mplex
act
of tr
ans la
t i
on in which a
uth or
a
nd
translator co
llaborare
.
A
more
precise analogy is that. of the rel
at
ion between
the
psychoanalyst a nd his sub·
ject. The
analyst
enters
the private wo rld
of
his subject in
order
to lea
rn th
e
grammar
of his private langua ge. 1f the analysis goes nOfurth er it is nOdiffe r·
em in kind fro m
the und
erstanding which may exist betw
ee
n a ny
tw
o
pe
ople
who
kn ow
eac
h
ot
her well.[
] It
beco mes
sc
ientific to
the ex t
ent
thalthe
pri
va
te
language
of intim
ate und
erstanding is
lran
slated into a puhlic lan
guage
, h
ow·
ever specialized
from the
layman's point of view, which in thi s case is t he la n
guage psychologists . But the
particu
lar act
of tran
sl
alio
n does no t disto rt
the private experie nce of the subject and ideall y it is,
at
least pOle ntia lly, ac·
ceptabl
e
to
him as a scie ntific
represe
nt
ation
of
it. Similarly, the m
ode
l o f
Nuer politi
ca
l life which e m
erges
in
Pr
o fessor Evans-PriLch
ard
's wo rk is a sc i·
entific m
ode
l m
ea
ningful to his fellow-sociologists as soc iol
og
ists, and it
is
effective because it is /JOlen l.iaily acceptable to the
uer
in same ideal
situaligll
in
which th ey could be supposed 10 interested in themselves as nun Lving in society. T he
collaboration of narur al scient ists
ma
y
from
this point of view be see n as de ve l
~ \ i
l l > l ' ~
>J
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.63
62
TALAL
ASAD
oping
lan guage enabling ce
rl
ain
people ro
com
municate \,,..ith
incr
eas
ing
[lety
abo
ut a distinct
area of natural phenom
e na
whic.h is defined
by
the name
of the part
icul
ar
science. Their science i
s,
in [he lit
era
l
meaning of
the
term
,
their
commonsense
,
their common
m
ea
ning.
To move
hom this
com mon
se nse to
the
com mon sense of
the wider
public involves
aga
in an act
of
translation. The
situ atio n
of
social anthr
opo
logy,
or
soc iology
in
ge nel-al,
is
not at
this level so
very different. The difference
lies in
the
fact
th
a t so
ciological
ph
e
nomena are
objectively swelied o
nl
y to
[he extent
that
th
eir
sub
jecti
ve m
eani
ng
is
taken
into accou
nt and
[hat the
people
studied
a re
poten
tially
capable
of sharing lhe sociol
og
ical consciousness
that
[
be
sociol
og
ist
has
of them. ('96
. :
88-89; emphasis added)
I have quoted thi s
remarkable
pas
sage in
full because it
states
very
lu
cidlya
position
that is, I think , broadly accepta
ble to
many an thropol
ogist.s who would otherwise
co
nsider themse lves
to
be engaged in very
differe
nt
kinds of enterprise. I have quoted it also because the nature
of the collaboration be.tween auth or and transla tor is
neatly
brou ght
J \ ti
l
out
in the subsequent reference to the
psychoanalyst
as scientist: if the
a nthropological translator, like
th
e a nalyst, has final authority in d e
ter m ining the subject's meanings-i t is then the forme r who becomes
tlt
e Teal au.thoT of the latter. In this view,
c
ultural translation is a
matter of d etermining implicit
meanings-n
ot the meanings the
na
I
tive speaker ac tually
acknowl
edges in his speecb, not even the m ea n
ings the
nativ
e listene r necessarily accepts , but th
ose
he is potentially
capable of sharing with scientific a
uth
o rity in some idea l situation :
it
is
when
he
can say, f
or
example, with Gellner, that vox Dei
is
in real
ity
vox
poPu.li that he ut ters the true mea ning o f his traditional dis
course, an ~ s s e n t i l meaning o f his culture . The fact that in that
ideal
situation he would no lon ger be a
Muslim
Berber tribesman, but
something coming to resemble Pr
ofesso
r Gellner, does not
appear
to
worry such cultural
tr
a
nslators.
1 This
power
to create meanings for a subject through
the
notion of
I
th
e
implicit
or
th
e
u
nconscious ,
to
autho1ize lhem
h as
of
co
urse
been discussed for the
;malyst
-analysand relationship (e.g., recently in
Malcolm
'9
82).
It has not ,
t.o
my knowledge ,
been
considered with re
gard
to
what
the
cu ltural
transl
ato r
does. Ther
e are, of co
ur
se, impo r
tant
differen
ces in the case
of
th e an thropolog·ist. I t m ay be point
ed
o
ut
that the
laLter
do
es
not
impo
se his tran
slation
on the me
mbers
of
th
e society whose cultural discourse he
unravels
, that his
et
hn
og
raphy
is
th erefor e not authoritat
iv
e in
the
way the ana lyst
s
case
study
is. The
analysand
co
mes
to the
analy
st ,
or is
referred
to the latter
by
th
ose
with
authority
ove
r
him,
as a pat ien t in
need
of he lp.
The
anthropolo
gist, by
co
nt ras t, comes
to the
society he wants to read, he
see
s himself
as a learner, not as a guide, and he
withdraws
from
the
society when
he has adequate in f
orma
tion
to
inscr ibe its c
ulture
. H e does not
co n
-
The Concept of Cultur
al
Tra
nslation
sider th e society, and ne ith er do its members
cons
ider themselves to
be , sick: the society is ne
ver s ~ b j e c t
to the anthropologist's authority.
But this argu me nt is not quite as
con
clusive as it m ay seem at
first
sig ht. It remaius th e case that the et hnographer's translation / repre
sentation of a particul
ar
culture is inevitably a textual construct, that
as representation it cannot normally be
co
ntested by th e people to
whom it is a ttributed , and that as a scientific tex t it evemually be
come
s a privileged element in the potential store o f histo rical m em o ry
for the uonliterate society concerned. In mo d er n an d modernizing
societies,
inscri
bed reco rds hav e a greater power to shape, to reform,
selves and
instituti
ons
than
folk memo ries
do.
They eve n
co
nstruct
folk memories. Th e an thropologist s monograph
may
return , ret.rans
lated , int.o a weaker
Third
World language. I n the long run, th er e
fore, it is not the persona l au thority of
th
e ethnographet·, but the so
cial
authorit.y
of hjs , thnography matters. And that authority i§.
insc ribed in the insn t
utio
Qalized forces of indu§tri al ca pitalist socie t
Y
(see page 158
above),
which are constantly tending to pu sh the mean
ings of various
Third
Wo rld societies in a sin gle direction. This is not
to say that there are no r
es
ista nces to this
tendency.
But
resi
sta n
ce
in
itself indica tes the presence of a dominant force.
I must
stress
I
am
not arguing that ethnography plays an y gTeat
role in the reformation
of
other
cu
ltures. In this respect the effects of
et
hn og raphy canno t be compared with some ot her forms of repre
senting societies- for exa mple, television films produced in th e
West
that are sold to
Third
Wo rld countries. (That anthropologists r
ecog
nize th e power of television is re Rected, in
cide
utally, in the increasing
number
o f a nt.hropological films being ma de for the medium in Brit
ain.)
Still less can
th
e effects of et hn ogra phy compare with the politi
ca l, eco nomic, and military constraints of the world system. My point
is only that the
pr
ocess of cult ural translation
is
in
ev
itably enmeshed
in cond
itions
of power -professiona l, national,
internation al.
And
among
th
ese conditions
is
the
a
uthority
of
et
hn og raphers
to
u n
cove
r
the implicit meanings of
subordinate
societies. Given that that
is
so,
t.he inter
es ting
question for en quiry
is
not whether, a nd if so to
what
exte
nt
,
anthrop
olog ists s hould be relativists
or
rationalists, critical
or
char
itable, toward
ot he r cultures, but how power en ters into
the pro
cess of
cultural
translation,
seen both
as a dis cursive
and
as a
non
dis c
ur
sive
practice.
Conclusion
For some years I have been
exercise
d
by
this pu
zz
le.
How
is it
that the a pproach exemplified
by Gelln
er s
pape
r re mains attractive
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Ii
TALALASAD
16
4
so many academics in sp ite
of
its
being
dem
onstrably
faulty? Is it per-
haps because
they
are
intimidated by a style We know, of course, that
a nthropo logists, like
ot
her
academ
ics, learn not merely to use a schol-
arly
language, but
to
fea r it, to admire it, to be captivated
by
it. Ve t this
does not quite answer the question because. it does n
ot
LeHus wh
y
such
; ..Sc
holarl
y style sh
ou
ld
capture
so
many
intellige
nt peop
le. 1 now
put
f
orwar
d this tenta tive solutio n. What we have here is a style easy to
leach,
to learn, and to reproduce (in
examination answers, assessmen
t
essays, a
nd
dissertations). I t
is
a style
that
facilitates the textualization
of other c
ultur
es, that encourages the construction
of diagrammatic
answers to
comp
l
ex
c
ultural
questions, and
that
is well s
uited
1 a r-
ranging fore ign cultural
concepts
in clearly marked hea ps of se nse
or
nonsense
. Apart from being' easy to teach and to imitate, thi s style
promises visible resu lts
th
at ca n readily be graded. Su ch a style must
surely
be
at
a
premium
in an establish
ed
university discipline
that
as
pires to st nd rds
of sc
ientific objectivity. Is the l r i t y of this style,
then, not a reflection of the
kind
of pedagogic institutio n we
inh
ab it?
Although
it is now
many
years since Gellner's p
aper
was first
pub-
lished,
it
represents
a
doctr
inal position
that
is sti
ll popular
today.
1 have in mind the sociologism according to which religious ideo logies
are sa id to gel lh e ir real
meaning
from
the
poli tical or
economic
struc
tur
e,
a
nd th
e self-confirm in g methodology accordin g to which this re
ducLive semantic principle is eviden r to the (authoritative) anthr
opo
lo
gis t
and not to the people being
written
about.
This
position therefore
assumes th
at
it is not o nly possihle bUl necessary
for the
anthropolo
gist
to
act as
tr
a nsla
tor
and critic
at
o ne aIld the same time. 1
regard
this position as
untenable,
and think
that it
is relations
and
practices
of power that give it a measure of viability. (For a critical discussion of
this position as it relates to Islamic history, see Asad Ig80.)
The positive
point
I have tried
to
make in
the course
of my inter
roga
ti
on
of
Gellner 's text has to do with what I have ca lled th e ineq ua l-
ity of languages. I have proposed that the a nthropologica l
enterpr
ise
of c
ultur
al
tr
anslation may be vi tiated by
the
fact that
t.h
ere are asym
m
et
rica l tendencies and pressures in the languages of
domina
t
ed
and
dominan t societies. And I have
suggested
that an th ropologists need
to
explore these
processes in o
rde
r to
determine
how
far
they
go
in de-
fining
the
possibilities and
the
limits of effect ive tra nsla tion.
In additjon to the
memb
ers of the Santa
Fe
seminar
wh
o discussed an early
draft
of
this article- and especially Paul Rabinow,
wh
o
co mmented
on
it
at le
ngth
- I wish
to
thank Tanya Baker. J ohn Dixon, Rodney Needham, and Keith Nield for their helpful
criticism .