Local Knowledge (Text Only)

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Clifford Geertz. Local Knowledge (Text Only)

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Epigraph

“Je demande dans quel genre est cette pièce? Dans le genre comique? il n’y a pas le mot pour rire. Dans le genre tragique? la terreur, la commisération et les autres grandes passions n’y sont point excitées. Cependant il y a de l’intérêt; et il y en aura, sans ridicule que fasse rire, sans danger que fasse frémir, dans toute composition dramatique où le sujet sera important, où le poète prendra le ton que nous avons dans les affaires sérieuses, et où l’action s’avancera par le perplexité et par les embarras. Or, il me semble que ces actions étant les plus communes de la vie, le genre que les aura pour objet doit être le plus utile et le plus étendu. J’appellerai ce genre le genre sérieux.”

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The juxtaposition of Elizabeth’s tours through her realm as an allegorical representation of Chastity, Peace, or Safety at Sea, Hayam Wuruk’s parades through his as the incarnation of the Sun and the Moon Shining Over the Earth-Circle, and Mulay Hasan’s expeditions through his as the material expression of Divine Will seeks, like the similarly eccentric juxtapositions in the earlier essays, to attain what generality it can by orchestrating contrasts rather than isolating regularities or abstracting types. It is analogy that informs, or is supposed to, in this sort of anthropologizing, and it is upon the capacity of theoretical ideas to set up effective analogies that their value depends. And it is this kind of analogy between, here, the cult of a Virgin Queen, of a God King, and of a Commander of the Faithful, that the concept of charisma, training our attention on the witchery of power, enables us to construct.

All this is perhaps acceptable enough for traditional monarchies, where the symbolics of domination are so elaborate and egregious; whether extending the comparison to modern states, as I do in a rather hurried and anecdotal conclusion, strains the analogy beyond reasonable bounds is a more difficult question. One may doubt that high politics have been completely demystified in such states, even that they ever will be. But the general issue that is raised by considering the matter against so panoramic a comparative background—how far a mode of analysis designed to apply to the long ago or far away can be applied to ourselves—nevertheless remains. The De Voto Problem is all too real: what, save impressionism and self-parody, plus a certain amount of ideological axe grinding, might come from anthropological discussions of modern culture?

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