Vocabularies of cultural analysis: Challenges and directions

A charge often levelled against contemporary scholarly writings in humanities and social sciences that deal with cultural analysis is that they are unduly and unjustifiably weighed down with jargon; the jargon stands in the way of communication. It is also asserted that there is a certain pretentiousness and uninviting elitism in the deployment of this technical jargon. One has to admit that there is much substance to these charges. The use of arcane terminology has also become, in an unpleasant kind of way, a badge of recognition, of belonging to a club or a select group. At the same time, we need also to recognise that technical terms are vital for scholarly inquiry if it is to pursue ideals of precision and objectivity. Jargon, which is employed in the pursuit of precision, often ends up as the dark twin of clarity. While some display a prissy dismay at the absence of fashionable jargon, others recognise that jargon-clogged prose rarely makes blood run faster.

It has been pointed out, not without a certain measure of resentment, that vocabularies of analysis pressed into service by literary theorists and cultural analysts are too arcane and mystifying to be of much use to use in promoting an active dialogue among educated lay readers. It has been contended that as a consequence of this penchant for jargon-ridden language many of the interested readers are unable to follow the trains of thought and the progressive steps in arguments resulting in the breakdown of communication. Now the question of vocabulary, of technical terms, is indeed a troubling one. Clearly, one can use the newly minted neologisms for ostentatious purposes, and to obfuscate rather than to communicate, and this happens often enough. I myself, no doubt, have been occasionally guilty of it in my columns.

However, at the same time, we need to recognize that technical vocabularies are sanctioned by all academic disciplines whether it is biology or geography, and that they constitute acceptable registers approved by those disciplines.

They can perform a valuable function by providing us with pathways to complex thought-worlds, and act as markers in newer understandings and theorizations. Terms such as ‘text’, discourse’, ‘subjectivity’, supplement, gaze, episteme, genealogy, trace, intertextuality, aporia, hegemony, mimicry, imaginary, which are commonly found in literary-critical writings bear testimony to this fact.

Integrity

The use of jargon, its appropriateness and applicability, is often a judgement call that depends upon the integrity of the writer. It also relies on the good faith of the writer. Let us consider a passage selected at random from Homi Bhabha’s writing. Bhabha who is a professor at Harvard, is regarded as a leading scholar of post-colonial theory. He has also been the object of virulent criticism for his frequent use of jargon and for his impenetrably opaque prose. The question we should ask ourselves regarding the following passage is, Is there a simpler way of expressing these thoughts? Or is the use of technical terms and challenging prose warranted by the complexity of the subject?

‘Cultural difference must not be understood as the free play of polarities and pluralities in the homogeneous empty time of the national community. It addresses the jarring of meanings and values generated in-between the variety and diversity associated with cultural plenitude; it represents the process of cultural interpretation formed in the perplexity of living, in the disjunctive, luminal space of national society that I have tried to trace. Cultural difference, as a form of intervention, participates in a supplementary logic of secondariness similar to the strategies of minority discourse. The question of cultural difference faces us with a disposition of knowledges or a distribution of practices that exist beside each other, Abseits, in a form of juxtaposition or contradiction that resists the teleology of dialectical sublation. In erasing the harmonious totalities of culture, cultural difference articulates the difference between representations of social life without surmounting the space of incommensurable meanings and judgments that are produced within the processes of transcultural negotiation.’

When we examine this passage it becomes evident that the author has chosen to use many technical terms favoured by contemporary cultural theorists.

The author’s prose is difficult and in some ways impenetrably obscure. Part of the reason for this obscurity is Bhabha’s decision to assume a more than normal breadth of reference on the part of the reader.

There are numerous academic allusions in this passage, and without a clear notion of them, the full meaning of the passage will not be registered. For example the phrase ' homogeneous empty time’ comes out of Walter Benjamin’s writings.

The idea of the ‘supplement’ reminds one of Jacques Derrida’s formulations. The terms ‘teleology and dialectical sublation’ reminds us of Hegel. One can go on in this fashion citing the various scholarly allusions in the passage and decoding the concealed meaning. One reason, therefore, why the prose of many modern cultural theorists is so challengingly dense is because of this breadth of reference.

This undoubted obscurity is only one issue related to the use of technical jargon. There are many others. For example, the question of vocabulary is at the heart of some of very interesting contemporary philosophical debates.

The eminent American philosopher Richard Rorty has said that what philosophers can optimally do is not to expound truths and offer guiding principles to living but to offer newer sets of vocabularies in place of the older ones. Through these newer sets of vocabularies we can purposefully enlarge our current conversation about human beings and society.

As Rorty said, ‘for us ironists, nothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another such vocabulary; there is no answer to a re-description save another re-description.

Since there is nothing beyond vocabularies which serves as a criterion of choice between them, criticism is a matter of looking on this picture and on that, not of comparing both pictures with the original. Nothing can serve as a criticism of a person save another person, or of a culture save another, an alternative culture – for persons and cultures are for us, incarnated vocabularies.’

We see here the considered view of a leading contemporary philosopher, whom Harold Bloom has described as ‘the most interesting philosopher in the world today.’ regarding the centrality of vocabularies in philosophical inquiry. The idea of new sets of vocabularies replacing the older sets of vocabularies is pivotal to Rorty’s understanding of philosophical development.

It has to be recognized that vocabularies of interpretation, re-description and analysis are not static or monolithic; what is interesting about them is that they grow, expand, enlarge, mature and wither away.

They can be most profitably understood as discursive spaces in which newer interpretations encounter old ones leading to an incessant contestation of meaning. As this happens, they relate to new and interesting ways to other comparable vocabularies that were subject to the same phenomenon.

Analysis

Let us, for example, consider the term ‘discourse’ that is widely used in contemporary critical writing that is focused on cultural analysis. Basically this term can be described as a verbal statement made by a speaker to a listener with the aim of influencing or impacting him or her in some fashion.

For example, Emile Benveniste, who has written so insightfully on this subject, said that, ‘discourse must be understood in its widest sense; every utterance assuming a speaker and hearer, and in the speaker, the intention of influencing the other in some way.

It is primarily every variety of oral discourse of every nature and every level from trivial conversation to the most elaboration. ,’Foucault drew on Benveniste’s description’s and Lacan’s conceptualizations as well as Marxist thinking to fashion his widely used notion of discourse.

Questions of power, knowledge, ideology, material forces, history, personhood were shown to be indissolubly connected to this concept. It was pointed out that discourses are not neutral, but ideologically weighted and ideologically located.

Thinkers of the caliber of Foucault sought to focus attention on the rules of formation, regulating patterns, ways of structuring thought, which underpin discourse. Foucault, and others like him who follow similar paths of thinking, argue that there are no autonomous human subjects that construct discourse; instead, discourses produce human subjects; this is indeed a complete reversal of the normal understanding of this phenomenon.

Consequently, thinkers such as Foucault have sought to place greater emphasis on rules of formation by which clusters of statements attain coherence and authority as a text. To them, displacements, discontinuities, transformations effected by discontinuities are more significant and compelling than stabilities, continuities and cohesions. It is evident that Foucault in glossing the term discourse has travelled a great distance from Benveniste.

Discourse

What Foucault did was to take the concept of discourse that figured so prominently in the French intellectual tradition and give it a new investigative importance. Other scholars following in his footsteps have aimed to extend its semantic range. Let us take another concept – that of genealogy – which is in many ways adjacent to discourse.

This was indeed a concept that was of great importance to Nietzsche. It was seized upon by Foucault for his own mode of social and philosophical analysis. He saw it as being fundamentally different from of historical analysis; instead of inquiring into the origin, developments, the goal, unity of historical events, he sought to focus on questions of discontinuities, multiplicities, dominations and exclusions that marked history.

The genealogist, much more so than the historian, is interested in the violence that produces falsehoods, exclusions, oppressions, and falls unities. Indeed it is historical analysis with a radical political face.

Concept

The concept of genealogy has been reshaped, expanded, challenged by later scholars; as a consequence of it has become a site in which competing interpretations confront each other.

Hence, when discussing the nature, significance and problems associated with technical terms, it is important to bear in mind the fact that these newly introduced vocabularies of analysis are not static but constantly changing and that they are linked to other comparable concepts in complex ways.

When we discuss the complexities associated with vocabularies of interpretation we need trio direct our attention to Asian societies as well.

These concepts are being constantly invoked by humanists and social scientists alike. How do they stack up against traditional understandings? Asian countries possess numerous concepts and vocabularies that are culturally embedded, impossible to translate cogently, but of greater interpretive value.

Let me cite three examples from India, China and Japan that deal with aesthetics, philosophy and anthropology respectively. The word ‘rasa’ figures very prominently in Indian aesthetics, directing our attention to a broad range of issues from generation of emotion in the theatre to questions of subjecthood and universalization.

Originally formulated by Bharata in his famous treatise on drama the Natya Sastra, the word rasa can be variously translated as poetic emotion, aesthetic emotion, flavor etc. although none of these words successfully captures the full freight and complexity of meaning in the original Sanskrit term. This word was initially deployed to signify the ways in which emotion is generated in theatre audiences and later applied to other arts.

This is indeed a concept that is rich in meaning and has the potential for much productive contemporary analysis in the domain of cultural studies including film and television. As Asian scholars we need to open this concept up into diverse analytics without forfeiting its identity and allowing it to address modern experiences and problem areas from its distinct vantage point.

It is important to explore ways in which we can bring concepts and vocabularies associated with Asian cultures into play in modern cultural analysis. The way we can achieve this objective is not by treating Asian cultures as exotic marginals but by associating them as equal partners.

Price

Let us consider another example, this time from China. The word ‘chih’ is usually translated as knowledge. Many sinologists have used this translation in their interpretive writings. However, as Roger Ames points out this translation tends to highlight certain Western understandings and paying the unacceptable price of concealing exactly those layers of meaning that are central to a recognition of its difference from the English word knowledge.

He goes on to say that given the complex and rich connotations contained in the word ‘chih’, dealing with performative, productive, societal, affective and aesthetic dimensions, it would seem that as a term it approximates a broad notion of cultivation of faculties rather than a sharply defined cognitive entity. Here again what we need to do is to open it up to the interventions of diverse discourses and currents of thinking so that its relevance and full plenitude of meaning will be made more apparent.

The third term that I have selected at random is from Japanese, and is one that has great appeal to anthropologists interested in questions of cultural constructions of self and emotion. The term I have in mind is ‘kokoro’, which is alternately translated as mind, heart or spirit. None of these translations, it needs to be emphasized, is able to catch the fullness of meaning of the Japanese word. In order for actions to be appreciated and lauded in Japanese culture, they need to be carried out with ‘kokoro’. When this occurs, ‘kokoro’ shines through the action and the perceiver recognizes it.

Concept

According to Japanese, whenever a poet writes a poem or a carpenter makes a chair, the ‘kokoro’ should invariably be embossed in it; otherwise the poem or the chair would lack worthiness. This is related to other important concepts like’ ninjo’ (human sympathy) and forms a vital pillar in Japanese social interaction. Here again is a term that cannot be translated easily into English or any other non-Japanese language. It is, at the same time, essential to the understanding of the dynamics of Japanese culture.

This concept too can be opened up to diverse interpretations also that its relevance and significance for Japanese behavior can be more usefully understood. When we examine the topic of vocabularies of interpretation, then, we need to pay close attention to the Asian scene as well. Is it better to retain the original Sanskrit or Chinese or Japanese word as it is instead of translating it into English?

In discussing Asian concepts and vocabularies of analysis in terms of contemporary needs and imperatives it is unavoidable that we address the relationship to modern Western cultural theory including post-modernism. Broadly speaking, there are three approaches to post-modernism adopted by Asian scholars, and for that matter some western scholars as well. The first is to discard it outright as a meaningless and sterile academic game that has very little bearing on the concerns, interests, preoccupations of Asian cultures. This stance, it needs to be pointed out, is fairly widespread. The second is to recognize its importance and go on to assert that it represents nothing new. And that works of Asian scholars such as Nagarjuna and Dogen have already enunciated the principles and concepts that lie at the heart of deconstruction, post-structuralism etc. While it is always interesting and challenging to re-interpret classical Asian texts in the light of modern thinking and uncover affinities of interest, one has to take into account the changed historical, social, political contexts.

To assert that the Indian philosopher of language Bhartrhari said some of the same things that Derrida said in the twentieth century against a background of structuralist thinking is to ignore nearly twenty centuries that separate their respective writings. To make such comparisons convincing and productive the different discursive spaces from which these statements are formulated have to be made very specific and explicit .Otherwise the comparisons remain unpersuasively and unhelpfully de-contextualized.

The third approach to this issue is the one exemplified by such scholars as Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Trin Minh-ha, Ranajit Guha which seek to engage seriously post-structuralist, post-modernist thought from clearly defined Asian subject-positions; such a move serves to extend the reach of the preferred discussion to include certain salient Asian concerns as well. I, for the most part, prefer the third approach so long as we regard it as a dialogue full of possibilities.

As we pursue our examination of the complex interconnections that exist between western and non-western cultures, it is exceedingly important that we do not lose sight of the fact that these exchanges take place within a global system where power relations are paramount and asymmetrical.

The power/knowledge axis is at the center of this asymmetry. As Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto rightly points out, while western critics as subjects can examine a non-western text as an object, non-western critics is not permitted to occupy the position of subject in order to investigate into a western text as object. He goes on to remark that the binary self/other that underlies the project of cross-cultural analysis is counter-productive in that it abstracts the role of power in the production of knowledge, and removes the politics from the interaction.

Hence, according to Yoshimoto, cultural analyses based on the dictates of the self/other binary only serves to reproduce the hegemony of western neo-colonialism. It is important to bear in mind this crucial fact as we seek to the different facets of the problem of vocabularies of cultural analysis.

The topic of vocabularies of cultural investigation, therefore, demands close and sustained attention. It is a topic that serves to focus on a number of important issues related to both humanities and the social sciences, as these disciplines pursue their interest in cultural analysis.