Traveling

Speaking of modernity (see Rachel's last post), I came across a very evocative quote in the opening pages of Joseph Conrad's Victory, written in 1915:

"The age in which we are encamped like bewildered travelers in a garish, unrestful hotel"

-- Joseph Conrad

The obvious point is how fitting this quote seems within its historical context: the beginning of the 20th century, after the West's imperial project but before two convulsive world wars, a time of political crises not yet redeemed by the marvel of consumer technology or the optimism of a return to democratic ideals.


The second point I want to make concerns the trope of traveling. I found Conrad's quote in an essay by James Clifford (originally given as remarks at a conference on cultural studies in 1990). Clifford is an anthropologist, and in this essay, he criticizes the dominant strain of anthropological study in the mid-twentieth century, a mode that focuses on participant-observation in the "field." This method basically means the anthropologist finds a village of "natives" in, say, Melanesia, pitches a tent, lives with the subject of his study for two years, and records his observations.


I have placed the words natives and field in quotation marks not to be obnoxious, but rather to show that Clifford finds these concepts problematic. A field is restrictive: to define a field, you must draw boundaries, outside of which is not the field, not a part of the anthropological study. Culture thus becomes circumscribed within the field. The "native" is assumed to be a dweller, not a traveler; he lives within an enclosed space out of contact with the larger world. Does this kind of hermetic native even exist? The village-mode of anthropology marginalizes a long list of actors: missionaries, converts, people of mixed blood, merchants, tourists, pilgrims, servants, entertainers, migrant laborers, translators, and so forth. Culture does not stay still, it does not live and die in a bounded village. Clifford's essay is tellingly titled "Traveling Cultures."


Why have I spent so long talking about Clifford's critique? Anthropology has long moved beyond a Jane Goodall-esque study of natives, witness the attention paid to the migrant labor phenomenon in Southeast Asia (Pei-Chia Lan's Global Cinderellas, Rhacel Parrenas' The Force of Domesticity, Servants of Globalization). In the process of reading Clifford, two thoughts occurred to me.


First, I like the conjunction between academia and traveling. Imagine anthropological studies of liminal spaces: hotel lobbies, airplane terminals, hospitals, urban cafes, buses, and trains. But travel here can also be a metaphor. How do we as students "travel" between discourses, disciplines, and paradigms? (Edward Said published a paper specifically on this topic: "Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler.") And on a shamelessly personal level, I think of myself as a traveler, an individual defined by my schismatic crossing of the Pacific. How does this shape my awareness and thought?


Second, the layering of traveling and culture pulls me inevitably towards JASC. I can't help it; I've been reading essays on culture, cultural identities, and cultural confrontations, and I always end up trying to map these theories onto my understanding of JASC. If, as Clifford suggests, the act of traveling is culturally meaningful, then JASC can be imagined not just as the meeting of two hegemonic cultures. Rather, the process of JASC -- the four weeks of traveling -- is itself a site of cultural production and hybridity. Does this obviate the need for an overarching mission? Is the fact that JASC happens at all sufficient?