Clifford's Categories

Clifford, James. “On Collecting Art and Culture”, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 215-251.

"Cultural relativism." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 28 June 2009. 3 August 2009 .

In “On Collecting Art and Culture” James Clifford re-evaluates the Western definitions of “art” and “culture” and how they evolved through the changing field of anthropology. For Clifford globalisation or what he describes as “the growing interconnection of the world’s populations” has created instability in the use of Western art and culture categories in describing non-Western cultures (235). The view could be loosely described as relativist anthropology, a view promoted by Franz Boas in the early 20th century, in which culture should only be understood in terms of itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism).

As an anthropologist Clifford’s interests lie in the institutional collecting of art and culture and, in this case, the potential misuse of descriptive categories when extended to non-western cultures. On the other hand the artist, a producer of cultural objects, is a subject of the anthropologist’s studies. James Clifford wrote this piece in the latter half of the 1980’s by which time global culture had already experienced a significant amount of interconnection according to his essay. A major catalyst for all contemporary globalisation has been media technology which has seen exponential advancements since this time. The cultural changes influenced by these advancements places the individual in a noticeably different position to where they were in the late 80’s.

I find it interesting to consider that the instability that Clifford applies to Western categories of art and culture could translate to potential, opportunity and control for the artist, or any producer of cultural objects. What I mean by this is that when art and culture become less easily defined from one perspective many other perspectives are opened to the individual and, when coupled with technology, they are given control. The boundaries between formerly separate cultures are eroded allowing the artist to form their own cultural brand and when the individual has vast control over the technology that perpetuates global culture they can potentially create their own categories. I use the example of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”. A piece of contemporary cinema, it samples, references and pays tribute to a plethora of world cinema genres from Italy, China, Japan and America. While it is funded and produced by American’s there is a complexity to these combinations that is not easily defined in one particular cultural category. It exists in between and is an example of the “counterdiscourses, syncretisms, and reappropriations” (235,236) that Clifford discusses in his essay.