McGrane on Hierarchy
and Essences versus Homogeneity
In his short but ambitious 1989 book Beyond
Anthropology: Society and the Other, Bernard McGrane
broadly characterizes the West's changing ways of understanding other peoples'
difference from us. These selections are from his chapter on "The Other
in the Renaissance", pp. 39-42 & 17-19.
Within the Medieval cosmos, hierarchy (the ecclesiastical
principle) was the omnipresent principle not only of ordering and specifying
value but also of determining essence itself. The objects located
in the immutable astronomical-theological heavens, as those located on
the corruptible earth, assumed their nature from their place.
The place they occupied was internal to them; it held
an intrinsic, immanent, formative influence upon their being. The ordering,
living heterogeneity of astronomical and cosmographical space determined
in advance and with sufficiency the kind of face the objects found there
would present to the astronomer and cosmographer. For the Aristotelean-Medieval
cosmology:
Places have their nature and peculiar characteristics,
the same as bodies--or, if not the same, at least in an analogous way....
The body is by no means indifferent to the place in which it is located
and by which it is enclosed; rather it stands in a real and causal relation
to it. Every physical element seeks "its" place, the place that belongs
and corresponds to it, and flees from any other opposed to it. (Ernst Cassirer:
Philosophy
of Man in the Rennaissance)
After Copernicus and after Columbus this epistemic framework that
provided for what is experienced and recognized as self-evident changed
and henceforth the general relationship of any object to the place in which
it is located became essentially a relationship of indifferent exteriority.
Astronomical and cosmographical space became, for the first time, self-evidently
uniform
and homogeneous. With this the theoretical and practical geographical
project of representationally and symbolically covering the earth's surface
with homogeneous lines of longitude and latitude in complete indifference
to the specific nature of the areas covered was made possible. At the heart
of both the new astronomy and the new cosmography lay both the presupposition
and the project, however remote its final realization, of the homogenization
of space. This becomes selfconsciously manifested in Descartes....
In post-Copernican astronomy, the earth becomes a planet,
just as, after Columbus, Europe becomes a continent. When Europe
becomes a "continent" there will be numerous "Europes" and therefore numerous
non-European Others who are very different yet somehow the same. When the
earth becomes a "planet" there will be six "earths" and numerous extraterrestrial
earthlings. When the earth is thrust into the heavens the heavens collapse
into the earth. "If the earth is a celestial body it must show the immutability
of the heavens and the heavens in turn must participate in the corruption
of the earth." (Thomas Kuhn: Copernican Revolution).
What Copernicus initiated in revising, in altering, and,
in some instances, collapsing the distance, the difference, and the otherness
between the earth and the heavens, between the terrestrial and the celestial,
Descartes
and Newton, by way of Galileo and Kepler brought to
full fruition. With Newton, with absolute Newtonian space, we may mark
the radical and complete homogenization of the universe, the complete physical
as well as moral and symbolical uniformization of the cosmos. On a broad,
global basis, it was not until Descartes' and Newton's paradigmatic solidification
of astronomical discourse that "the heavens," the celestial, were considered
as essentially uniform with, and governed by the same laws as, the "earth,"
the terrestrial. The heavens become contiguous with the earth just as Europe
becomes contiguous with (i.e., becomes a continent with) the other areas
of the earth. Henceforth "Terrestrial experiments [for example the pendulum,
the projectile] yield direct knowledge of the heavens, and celestial observations
give information immediately applicable on earth" (Kuhn: Copernican
Revolution). In the same way as the heavens, the earth's surface too
is conquered by the Same. With the homogenization and uniformization of
geographical space the Ocean Sea loses its unique being and becomes no
longer limit to, but object in the world; as the terrestrial-celestial
difference so also the terrestrial-aquatic difference is homogenized....
Those who like to write about the "ethnography"
of the sixteenth-century explorers, sailors, missionaries, and cosmographers
overlook the small yet decisive fact that "ethnography" did not exist.
The description of the "manners" and "customs" of foreign peoples, of aliens,
of savages, did not exist. The "manners" and "customs" of these peoples
were not experienced as being instances of primitive behavior or instances
of different cultures, as in nineteenth-century anthropology. Rather their
actions and behavior were experienced as being manifestations of barbarism
and savage degeneracy--a hybrid composite of Christian "nature"
and Christian "evil." The ethnographic description of "primitive peoples"
embedded in nineteenth-century positivism presupposes the desire to literally
transcribe and report the "reality" of the Other, to acquire "objective"
knowledge (observations) of the Other. By contrast, Pigafetta, one of the
few surviving sailors who successfully completed that grueling, heroic
voyage around the world under Magellan, writes:
When the Captain demanded of him [the native
king of the Pacific Island of Zubut] why all the idols on the island were
not burnt according to his promise, he answered that they esteemed them
no more as gods, but only made sacrifice to them for the Prince's brother
who was very sick. . . . The Captain answered that if he would burn all
his idols and believe faithfully in Christ and be baptized, he should be
immediately restored to his health, and that he would else give them leave
to strike off his head. By these words and persuasions of the Captain,
he conceived such hope of health that after he was baptized he felt no
more grief of his disease. And this was a manifest miracle wrought in our
time whereby diverse infidels were converted to our faith and their idols
destroyed and also their altars overthrown on the which they were accustomed
to eat the sacrifical flesh.
What we have in sixteenth-century cosmography and travel literature is
not the perception of "customs" on the horizon of the acquisition of positive
knowledge, but rather perception of strategies on the horizon of the vanquishing
of false faiths....
Notice the peculiar consequence of this way of seeing
the world. The barbarians' "customs" are not seen as "indigenous customs"
in the ethnographic sense....
This is why, only after the project and the experience
of conversion could the alien be considered in relation to the acquisition
of knowledge. Only then could "ethnography" as a positive discipline emerge:
as signposted by Feuerbach, only after Christianity comes Anthropology.
Further, the customs, especially the horrifying customs,
of the savages were not seen as something requiring explanation. Insofar
as these savages and their customs could be seen as instancing or signifying
something other than themselves, they were seen as representing the "naturally"
degenerate, the natural degeneracy of nature, rather than the historically
primitive; they represented man in a Fallen rather than a primitive form.
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