What "man" and which "man"?

Anthropology emerging as a semiology, the "study of the life of signs at the heart of social life," may recover lost common sense by ridding itself of its pretensions to simply be what the modern anthropologist calls "a conversation of man with man."35 Simplicity, however, has its own exactingness, and the questions immediately raised here will be: What "man" and which "man"? It seems clear that the favorite object of anthropological study is not just any man but a specific kmd of man: the Primitive, now elevated to the rank of the full yet needy man, the Native. Today, anthropology is said to be "conducted in two ways: in the pure state and in the diluted state." He who devotes himself to "pure" anthropology should not "confuse its object with other objects," for this "is not the source of action resulting from a sound scientific attitude." He should make a clear distinction between his profession and that of the sociologist by concentrating on those native societies whose distance and "differences in nature . . . [with] our own" privilege observation, making of field research "the mother and wet nurse of doubt, the philosophical attitude par ex-

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cellence." It is by this "strictly philosophical method," this "anthropological doubt," which consists of "exposing what one thought one knew . . . to the buffetings and denials which are directed at one's most cherished ideas and habits by other ideas and habits,"36 that anthropology distinguishes itself from sociology. Such a definition of "pure" anthropology and its requisite living laboratories offers a satisfactory answer to the question "what man?" Two seemingly clashing sets of signs take on their meanings through a difference that emerges from the same site; two cultures become culture through the same eye. The search for a purer original state (an influential anthropologist paradoxically wrote: "The romance of native cultures, to the anthropologist, lies [not in their unspoiled noble-savage-aspect but] in what they disclose about the roots of human behavior" [my italics]),37 and the emphasis laid on a self-challenging, self-present state of alertness speak for the internal consistency of anthropology. Here, the gap between the modern anthropologist and the Great Master seems to close, since the study of the native's mind and behavior is, as quoted from the Great Master earlier, only worth pursuing when it is carried out with the hope that "we shall have some light shed on our own" and that "man's mentality will be revealed to us." Variations on this theme will appeal to you as follows: I am attracted to the Other because of (certain specific) affinities that exist between me and this Other, or "the essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said."33 The question remains whether this inclusion is disinterested or not. If it is not, as in this case-- what is apparently aimed at is "to make available to us" who need it a "consultable record of what man has said"--the result will simply be the opposite or a by-product of "exclusion," and a stirring about within the same pattern of logic. The "conversation of man with man" is, therefore, mainly a conversation of "us" with "us" about "them," of the white man with the white man about the primitive-native man. The specificity of these three "man" grammatically leads to "men"; a logic reinforced by the modern anthropologist who, while aiming at the generic "man" like all his colleagues, implies elsewhere that in this context, man's mentality should be read as men's mentalities. Anthropologists, he declares, enjoy an advantage over their fellow men because they have grown into the habit of forgoing the comparing of two different systems of reference. They would not deserve the same tag they wear if they had not forbidden themselves to found their reasoning about their own society on observations coming from other societies.39 The study of man is a study of men. It is, indeed, not uncommon to encounter in anthropological writings--in any man's writ-

66 WOMAN, NATIVE, OTHER

ing, or perhaps I should say any human's writing--passages such as "the synthesis [of elements that constitute the native man's social existence], however approximate, arises from human experience. We must be sure of this, since we study men; and as we are ourselves men, we have that possibility" (my italics).40 Since man can never be man but only men, since the uses of man and men are interchangeable, why not eliminate man for more consistency? Why hold on to its ambiguity and grammatical incorrectness?

If "man" is grammatically incorrect when used to designate two specific, irreducible "man"-signs, it is, however, grammatically perfectly correct when applied to include two non-specific, one-way reducible man-woman signs. This is where the question "which man?" arises. Which man, indeed? The one that "embraces woman" or the one that excludes her? The one defined as a human being or the one intended as a male human being? The further one proceeds, the less pertinent the question turns out to be, and the stronger the feeling of going round in a generic trap-circle. After all, the two "man" only appear inconsistent. They have, in fact, always supported and acted in collusion with each other. What can such a word as "human" mean when its collaboration with "man" and "men" throughout the history of mankind has become obvious? What can "human experience" imply in a "Men Only" context where we who are ourselves men study men? Listen, for example, to a doctor-man say how for years he had been fascinated by "the law in which man's ideas express what is essentially human in his nature.''4l "His," as some may continue to argue in all dishonesty, is here supposed to cover "her" too. And "he," as an unqualified generic pronoun, can be used correctly to include "she," for "He or she does as much to combat sexism as a sign saying 'Negroes admitted' would do to combat racism."42 Carried just a step further, such reasoning should logically lead to the assertion that whenever the word "white" is used, it means both white and black or white, black, yellow, and red. At least, hegemony will then throw off its mask, and language, the language of dominance, will reveal its paucity, flattening out all individualities, excluding all differences and blending, by the same token, the duping with the duped. Women, like colored, is the "lesser man," and as a ChineseAmerican woman remarks, "in America, Everyman--the universal human being--is white."43 Obviously, no revolutionist says "white" intending it to include "colored." "White" has always been used to mean "white only or "non-Colored," although we all know that literally as well as figuratively, it can never pretend to eliminate colors without eliminating itself. The will to annihilate the Other through a false incorporation can be detected in every language sign that tends, by its ever-widening scope of encompass-

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