Archaeology and Ideology in a ‘ postmodern ’ environment : material remains of ideological claims

Recebido em: 27 dez. 2019. Aprovado em: 1 fev. 2020. Publicado em: 14 jun. 2020. ABSTRACT: According to scholar Fredrik Fahlandar, postmodernism has caused an intellectual identity crisis throughout the humanities. Using his chapter on Postmodern Archaeologies as a guide, this essay attempts to address some of the ways in which archaeology and the other social sciences has actually benefited from the scrutiny of postmodernist criticism, while at the same time maintaining its usefulness and insisting on its ability to avoid a relativistic approach to its research questions. The essay particularly emphasizes archaeology’s on-going relationship to the study of ideology, as both evident within the archaeological record itself and also its influence on the researchers conducting the investigations.

to Napoleon Bonaparte brandishing the term in this cynical way when describing the pie-in-thesky metaphysics of Enlightenment philosophers (ALTHUSSER, 1971, p. 171) representative of productive forces and affix the status quo (a religious symbol or object of fashion). It is important to remember that these objects need not be, and rarely are, designed and constructed by their creators with these direct objectives in mind: the overarching ideology that pervades the given social order makes any such premeditation unnecessary in the marxist model.
Althusser calls these objects and the activities that utilize them (personal habits, rituals, social exchanges), 'hardware', and this is a very useful concept (ALTHUSSER, 1971, p. 186). When examining an archaeological object (let's say -a standard push lawn mower) it is very common to ask -What was it used for? What was its function?
Easy enough: to cut the grass and keep the yard from becoming overgrown. But in the Althussian mode the more poignant questions ought to be -What role did it play ideologically? How did the object fulfill its conceptual duties? In this case, it acts as a buffer of activity between the owner of the object (a hard-working suburban homeowner) and his social role (a productive, satisfied member of his class). The act of mowing the lawn exudes the pride of homeownership, a conduit of activity on a hard-won day off from the 9-to-5 workweek, tangible engagement with mechanics and masculine pursuits, and by maintaining the front lawn in an organized and trimmed manner, the neighborhood maintains its sense of order: a logically manicured rather than wildly untamed environment. Through the use of the lawn mower its action has a ripple effect: reminding the neighbor that his grass could also use a trim before the weekend is over and sending the message down the line. An official set of rules and regulations is not necessary when the symbolic vocabulary is universally agreed upon.
In Bruno Latour's Action-Network-Theory the existence of material objects take on an even more pronounced role. They are not only tools used up by the social creatures and discarded, but are active participants in the social network: influencing, instigating and incorporated into the behavior in an integral way. Their excavation could be seen as more akin to finding skeletal remains which would indicate the past presence of a full body -in their case, the 'body' would be the network of their involvement. In that sense, for Latour, speaking of social development without including its 'component things' is a non-starter: Sociologists will claim that when they appeal to the durability of social ties they bring in something that really possesses the necessary durability, solidity, and inertia. It is 'society ', or 'social norm', or 'social laws', or 'structures', or 'social customs', or 'culture', or 'rules', etc., they argue, which have enough steel in them to account for the way it exerts its grip over all of us and accounts for the unequal landscape in which we are toiling. It is, indeed, a convenient solution but does not explain where their 'steely' quality is coming from that reinforces the weak connections of social skills. (LATOUR, 2005, p. 67) In a scenario of a universal structuralist view of ideology and its functioning dependence on material objects the great distances in time and culture often cited as the challenge of archaeology, comes to be seen not so much as an insurmountable barrier, but even perhaps as epistemological benefit. As we see with contemporary culture (and our weekend warrior, lawn mower using cohort), it is rare that the users of objects, buildings, vehicles, art and fashion consider the purpose of the object in its wider 'structural' sense. Sometimes the contemporary voices can become symbolic red herrings leading to dry lake beds rather than an explanation bearing any relation to reality. If the archaeologist can accurately determine what the practical use of an object was (this is not always easy), and we know a little about the social context in which its user lived (even more difficult, but possible), than we might be able to arrive at some reasonable conclusions about how this object fulfilled its primary ideological role in this specific instance. Indeed, archaeology is in a sense less liable to judgemental relativism than many other humanist disciplines because it deals with material data. Material traces of the past are seldom randomly distributed, but deposited in more or less closed contexts and layers. They are thus locked in time and space relative to other objects, which restricts the number of reasonable interpretations. There are also means of strengthening or refuting an interpretation by appealing to independent analyses such as microscopic traces of use-wear, or analysing biological remains in terms of their isotopic or genetic composition. It thus seems that for most archaeologists the idea of archaeological 'facts' being historically situated is more about being self-aware and reflexive when interpreting the past rather than an argument that 'anything goes' (FAHLANDER, 2014, p. 3). can apply to all and sees it as a bit of an intellectual escape route: "If the more abstract questions of state, class, mode of production, economic justice, had proved for the moment too hard to crack, one might always shift one's attention to something more intimate and immediate, more sensuous and particular" (EAGLETON, 1996, p. 17).

So what then has been the effects of this
In dealing with individuals, the researcher themselves become more flexible in their use of subjectivity in their interpretations: and how could it be any other way? Anyone who has even been in a relationship knows how hard at times it can be to 'understand' your own partner, but giving general relationship advice to a friend is a much less daunting, and sometimes enjoyable, task. In And that is not to say, that this post-processual, anti-ideological, individualized, postmodernist tendency is not without its true merits. Individuals certainly have been largely missing from the archaeological literature (apart from political leaders, etc.); but that was precisely because the researchers were genuinely not interested in their biographic stories! The goal was precisely to find larger truths that could help construct meaning about the way people have lived and developed as societies and that these truths might be applied in a meaningful way. Tracking the individual perspectives and exceptional behavior of each member of a society was not the primary goal of archaeology for the large majority of its development, and neither is this the case today. But, yes, certainly perspective-based subjects are valid for investigation, although considering the nature of the archaeological record, where data points are few and far between, it presents a methodological enigma: how does one get 'biographical' with material remains? One approach has been a Geertz-like vocabulary of symbols, but again this would require a universally accepted 'dictionary' of meaning: "many strands of post-processual archaeology betray a certain inconsistency when they argue for social heterogeneity and multivocality (individual experiences) at the same time as they advocate hermeneutics as a means to understand social collectives (cultures) as wholes" (FAHLANDER, 2014, p. 5).
And Fahlander also notes that these micro- To 'make sense' of material reality we have developed language and language is a very powerful, but clumsy device. Narratives, small or large, and ideology (when developed honestly) are attempts to describe the happenstance of reality in a sensible way. It is ripe to be corrupted, misunderstood, downright incorrect and blinded by teleology, ignorance and connivances -but it is all we have got. Despite the challenges presented by the postmodernist stance, material culture studies and its historically-oriented sidekick, archaeology, are the basis on which our shared and individualized narratives sit. It should be championed as such and expanded in scope, approach and practical application as it engages the criticisms of postmodernity and continues to provide solidity in a seemingly chaotic world.