History and Anthropology
History is about today, the present, not about the past. It is interesting how we narrate the past in order to make it relevance to the present context. Trouillot (says that the relation between two dimensions of history (the sociohistorical process and story of the process) is fluid. This fluidity or the ambiguity between two sides of historicity is occurred within the production of specific narratives. “What matters most are the process and conditions of production of such narratives.” (Trouillot, p.25). It is important to “…focus on the process of historical production rather than an abstract concern for the nature of history” (Trouillot, p. 24). Because, through this focus of ambiguity, we can explore how power involve in process of constructing history: narrative possible and silences others.
In Anthropology, for instance, we can find the concept of Primitivism as a way to silence its object ---the Other-- through constructing history (Fabian, p.18). Primitivism is a historical concept that produces and is reproduces by chronopolitic strategies. Fabian argues that the ambition of expansion, aggression and oppression –geopolitics ambition—are the historical conditions where Anthropologist utilizes the concept primitivism to deny the coevalness of the Others. This vision in circumventing the coevalness of the Other silences the historical facts that the Other not living in the isolated place in a small scale village but they are always in connection with the other crossing their boundary.
Since Malinowski with Kula circular transaction until today anthropology under the notion of globalization have been trying to reveal the coevalness of the other in many different ways. Appadurai (1991) invents concepts of ideoscape, finanscpe, mediascape, ethnoscape and technoscape to grasp people and things moving across many different boundaries. “Recent work in anthropology has done much to free us of the shackles of...