D I A L O G U E May 2000 Anthropology News

BY ANTHONY MARCUS ST JOHN’S IJ

soldiers killing Kosovars, KL4 guer- rillas killing Serbs and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes by this deadly combination, the issue of culture screamed from the headlines. Although anthro- pologists may have different beliefs about the use of bombs to teach ethnic harmony, if we want our discipline to be relevant to current debates we cannot be afraid to challenge abuse of the culture con- cept by public intellectuals in other disciplines.

Guilt by Association There IS one particulai area

where this use of the culture con- cept has been most egregious: the discussion of collective national guilt. The current state of the art for this discussion has come to be known as the Goldhagen thesis after Harvard professor of govern- ment Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s, celebrated Hitlefs Willing Exetation- ers: Ordinary Germans and the Holo- caust (1996). In this book Goldhagen argues that Germany as a nation was responsible for the liquidation of European Jewry, and therefore that all Germans, regardless of their political affiliation or personal action, shared in the guilt. Implicit in this argument is a notion of cul- ture that is national, monolithic, apolitical and static.

The Goldhagen thesis arid its culture model were cited constant- ly during i he Yugoslavian conflict of 1999. A good example of this was a New York ‘Times Week in Revicw cover story by Michael T Kaulman, “Looking for the Line between Patriotism and Guilt” (April 11, 1999). Kaufman begins by explain- ing the Goldhagen thesis and ulti-

mately asks whether the death of Serbian civilians from NATO bombs is justifiable. The article argues that the entire Serbian nation shares collective guilt for genocide against Kosovar Albanians. As evidence the author cites anonymous email (described as ”defensive”) gathered by an unidentified source; a rock concert in which teenagers danced against NATO chanting the name of their president; and an atrocious but uncontextualized 1878 anti- Albanian quotation from a dead Serbian king.

Kaufman does not use the word culture, but the entire argument- like Goldhagen’s-is predicated on a static notion of national cultures in which ordinary people are the passive recipients of their national culture and history. Interpreting the feelings of millions of voiceless Serbs, the author asks us to weigh speculative and decontextualized cultural fragments against a history of multi-ethnic resistance to the Nazis, 45 years of relative ethnic peace in Yugoslavia and the Serb- ian anti-war movement of the 1990s.

“Anthropologists have remained largely silent in the discussion of collective national guilt”

National Tie Optional Now that the culture concept is

being used as an explicit part of international military policy, it is time that anthropologists join the discussion. We need to figure out

Commentary Policy AN Commeitaner are designed to explore diverse vlews of the disaplirie from an anthropological perspective Commentaries reflect the views of the authors thelr pub- lication doe., not ggnify endorsenent by the Anthropology News or the Amencan Anthropological Association. Autnors are expected to verrfy all factual information included in the text. Manuscripts j h d d be less than 1200 words in length and must be submitted both electronically a7d in double-spaced hard copy

Tying the tie that binds.

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how this notion of national culture fits our understandings of the ties that bind a society together. In looking at the German case we need to ask ourselves some ques- tions about the nation and the ties that bind within and between. Does the national tie mean more than the political connections and material aid networks that bound German Communist Party resist- ance fighters to anti-fascist militias from the Balkans to the Warsaw Ghetto? Does the national tie mean more than the ferocious liq- uidation of European Jewry by homegrown Nazi sympathizers in every country from France to the Ukraine? What about every day acts of resistance within Germany such as desertion from the armed forces? Finally, does the national tie mean more than the rescue of thousands of Jews by many more thousands of their gentile neigh- bors in wartime Germany? Despite the hullabaloo about Oscar Shind- ler, it should be remembered that many Germans sheltered their Jewish neighbors without putting them into concentration camps. Although CUNY history professor Norman Finkelstein (A Nation on

Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, 1998) has provided an excellent rebuttal to the Gold- hagen thesis, anthropologists have remained largely silent in the dis- cussion of collective national guilt, as it applies to both history and current events.

C O M M E N T A R Y

Hidden World of Everyday Historical portraits of big events

and powerful organizations that run counter to received ethnic wis- dom are crucial proof that cultures contain many different types of people with many different rela- tionships to their dominant tradi- tions. Anthropologists can, howev- er, contribute more to this debate than just culturally grounded his- tory. Anthropologists have access to the hidden world of the every- day, in which individuals define and negotiate their relationship to national traditions and state power.

It is in this world of the everyday that we can see the limits of state power. Anthropologists have stud- ied national subgroups throughout

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Anthropology News May 2000 D I A L O G U E

the world. We have seen the ways in which national boundaries can empower one group at the expense of another. We have seen the subtle and not so subtle ways that class, gender, race and other invidious social categories cross-cut both sub- ordinate and superordinate groups. It is time that we discuss what we as J discipline think about the increasingly important concept of national guilt. It is time that we provide our uniquely holistic and complex understanding of the con- stricted choices that define the lives of ordinary people.

Ry reducing ordinary people to the embodied creators and bearers of stereotyped national cultures, the Goldhagen thesis assumes a pluralist model of state policy and discards any connection between moral choice, individual agency and personal responsibility. In such an intellectually flattened fairy tale world of good versus evil only great men, national armies and recog- nized governments are seen as ac- tors, while vast sections of human- ity can be reduced to targets on a map. This nationalist logic which aided Milosevic to appear as the protector of all Serbs from all Koso- van, has the potential to reduce all Jews to Christ killers and all Ameri- cans to “Indian killers,” racists and exterminators of the Indo-Chinese. As a discipline which has devoted much of its time and resources to studying the creative, dynamic and ever-changing patterns of ethno- genesis, ethno-interaction and fusion, we should be giving public voice to our understanding that cultures and nations are more than the policies of their leaders and governments. 5

Anthony Marcus, a dean at St Iohri‘s U, NY, studies the social constructio~i aiid admiiiisbation of African descend- ed peoples i i i the Americas. Some of his work is published iii his anthology An- thropology for a Small Planet (1996). His coiiceni for the popular use of histo- ry has led him to produce four docu- meiitary histories of the US for uiider- graduates. Marcus may be reached at ’oiiiornar@ya hoo. corn.

Correction The captions under the two diagrams in Paul Hocking’ report on the Badaga funeral (April 2000 AN, pp 77-78) were inadvertently interchanged.

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