Page 111 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

EXPERIENCE, EMPATHY AND STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 105

racial difference was registered before the fifteenth century within Western
23
understanding through sight, in the nineteenth century it was to be rethought in
terms of science (Gould, 1993; Stepan, 1993; Stepan and Gilman, 1993). In sum,
two moments were uncritically interwoven when observable features, on the one
hand, and underlying claims about essential true nature on the other, were
incorporated into an idea of ‘culture’.
The sixteenth century ended in a fascination with spatial mobility, new
resources and territories, manifested in the discovery of Europe’s alter ego, the
American utopia. 24 These events conditioned the manner in which European
thinkers could take up issues of identity as an academic problem, a political
project and, at the individual level, as a personal struggle. In the late twentieth
century, this project has been reformulated, not rescinded, by the deconstruction
of science, contraction of global space, and destabilization of a European identity
as well as a corollary destabilization of the identity of its colonized others 25
(Harvey, 1990).
Looking at culture from another perspective, literary critic Christopher
Herbert argues for an analysis of the culture concept against the background of
Victorian England (1991). He demonstrates that the culture concept was a
counter-narrative to theological beliefs concerning original sin and its inherent
existence in man, in the form of uncontrollable desire. 26 Reading the texts of
Wesleyan missionaries in the South Pacific, Herbert traces the culture idea as it
slides along a continuum from religion to secular science.
The missionaries arrived with preconceptions and a conviction that the social
lives of the dark-skinned islanders were characterized by behaviour that
represented the incarnation of sin and vice. In order to carry out their religious
project, the missionaries had to establish a rapport with their prospective
converts. They had to learn the local language which then became a vehicle of
entry into the society. Specifically, to convert the locals to Christianity, the
missionaries had to become conscious of the existence of an order. Thinking in
terms of culture consequently provided the key for a strategy of conversion:
The missionaries’ will to power leads directly in this way to the distinct
formulation of the principle of the indivisible integrity of culture.
(Herbert, 1991:199)
The social vocabulary of culture is thus related to policies of domestication
which required knowledge of a particular group of people. Viewing ‘culture’ as
an organizing mechanism demonstrates the process through which the existence
of the alien other might be comprehended and explained. In this context, I
suggest that the issue of how difference is to be ‘grasped’ and brought under
control continues to be both an exhausting intellectual project as well as an
intractable administrative problem.
In the ambiguous discourse of diversity, culture is still called upon to clarify
different social practices and explain social antagonisms. When cleavages in the