95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method 0300100116, 9780300100112

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Theses on

Politics, Culture, and Method

Theses

on Politics, Culture, and Method ANNE

NORTON

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Copyright © 2004 by Anne Norton. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 ofthe U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed byJudith F. Karbowski-Hall. Set in Scala Sans and Sabon type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press. ISBN: 0-300-10011-6 (cloth: alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10998) 7654535251

Contents

95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method Commentary Afterword

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95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method

Culture is a matrix. Culture is not a variable. Politics is in culture. Culture is political. Culture is in language. Language is political. There is no neutral language. We are in language. Authority is political and literary. al Bln I sie atl fs si Culture can be considered as a text. HoH ®: . Literary devices have direct counterparts in political ele

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strategies. Culture constitutes the body and makes it readable. Gender, race, and sexuality are cultural constructs. Commodities serve as semiotic lexicons. The natural is a cultural category. Culture is an observable concept. Culture is made in practice. Culture, as practice, is continually changing. The formal is always accompanied by an informal counterpart, the structural by the antistructural

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and the unstructured. Change comes from the liminal. All cultures are syncretic. All cultures are exceptional. No culture is exceptional.

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Afterword

These 95 theses were not, like their namesakes, nailed to a church door. They were presented at a meeting of the American Political Science Association. Like their namesakes, they were directed against an orthodoxy. They spoke to a hierarchy that is, if not corrupt, certainly at odds with its professed values and with the better practices of its clergy and laity. This commentary on the theses continues dissent from, and a challenge to, that hierarchy and that orthodoxy. They are addressed not to the methodological authorities in the discipline of political science but to the students who have chosen better ways to work on politics. I hope that they are of interest beyond these boundaries. Wittgenstein makes two observations that I attach here like a mezuzah, to identify my loyalties, to acknowledge a better, and to ward off evil. He writes, “If someone is merely ahead his time, it will catch him up one day.”! Nothing here is ahead of its time; everything is following after practice. These theses attempt to capture, in simple terms, how many thoughtful scholars think of work on politics, culture, and method. These have become so well integrated into our practices, so taken for granted as theoretical governance, that it is sometimes difficult to recover the textual sites where they are made explicit and the arguments that support them. My formulations in the first 95 theses, and in the commentary I have, with the help of many others, furnished on them here, are often crude. The citations are inadequate. I can assure you, however, that where I have erred, it is in the direction of insufficient radicalism. The finest 1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, ed. G. H. von Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 8e.

140

Afterword

work in the field is disciplined by guiding principles more rigorous, more refined, and more radical than these. Catching up with practice has not always been easy for me, but I had help. Jim Scott suggested I expand the original 95 theses into this longer form and encouraged Yale to publish it. John Kulka, my editor; Jim Morone; and an anonymous reader offered incisive, amusing, and altogether brilliant suggestions for revision. Joyce Ippolito, dealing gracefully with an eccentric manuscript, did as well. Where I followed them (which is rather often) the text is better for it. Michael Rogin had the manuscript when he died. The silence where his comments should be reminds me of a greater silence. The work this book fed on owes much to him. William Sewell, Jeffrey Tulis, and Lisa Wedeen provided invaluable comments on the original theses, which I have tried to incorporate. Victoria Hattam suggested the panel, worked with me on it, and read this longer text. Uday Mehta dared me to think of 95 theses in the first place. The theses on identity were discussed and critiqued at a seminar at the New School for Social Research organized by Victoria Hattam and Ernesto Laclau. I am especially obliged to Yannis Stavrakakis for his comments there. I am also indebted to scholars I first knew as graduate students and now happily have as colleagues, particularly Alev Cinar, Srirupa Roy, Joe Glicksberg, Joe Mink, Kevin Bruyneel, Joe Lowndes, Tamara Waggener, Jim Henson, Wambui Mwangi, and Vikash Yadav. Jeff Tulis gave an early draft to his class on methods. I am obliged to these people for their reading and their suggestions. Perestroika and the Perestroika list, and the Ethnohistory Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, provided examples and were examples in themselves. The Alfred L. Cass term chair provided support. I have gotten warnings, ideas, and inspiration from Deborah Harrold, Bob Vitalis, Maggie Browning, Tom Dumm, Ellen Kennedy, and Rogers Smith. I did not always listen to their warnings, but I have always learned from their work. Throughout the work, I set myself against certain works and scholars. I have chosen these carefully. I had no wish to damage the career of a promising scholar. I believe, moreover, that one often

Afterword

141

learns most from one’s opponents. Consequently, I have chosen to critique only scholars with established reputations—reputations that I believe to be deserved. I’ve learned a great deal from them and although some may find it odd, I expect they will understand and appreciate this rather perverse tribute. Wittgenstein writes that for him, his way of thinking is new: “That is why I need to repeat myself so often. It will have become second nature to a new generation, to whom the repetitions will be boring. I find them necessary.” For me, many of these ideas are new. Even those to which I have become accustomed are not yet second nature. Repetition for me is a form of training and self-discipline, a regimen. Soon I hope it will be, as it is for others, child’s play.

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