Great Cat Massacre
 |
| Robert Darnton |
Robert Darnton wrote an ethnography that demonstrates how
to use an anthropological approach to history.
In a series of six case studies he presents cultural "history from
below" that delves into the mentalities of people at all levels of French
society: peasants, artisans, bourgeoisie, clergy and nobility. He showed how even seemingly trivial archival
materials can be used to gain insight into the thinking of people far removed
from the present time and place. The scope of his work is 18th century France as viewed through various lenses: French and
European folktales; a singular mysterious event on the rue Saint-Séverin in
Paris; a parade of citizens in the city of Montpellier; police reports written by the inspector assigned to run surveillance of Parisian writers; an analysis of French taxonomies of the structure of knowledge; and a review of a French
merchant’s personal reading journal. Darnton's approach is postmodern in so far as he rejects
positivism and explores numerous interpretations of the source material. He is a relativist, but not a
deconstructionist. While he openly admits
an academic debt owed to a friend who was an anthropologist, he dismisses the
assumptions of French Marxists and the revisionist Annales school (Darnton,
1984, 257-8). Instead he aligns himself with the French cultural historians who wrote about French mentalités. His sources
are unusual and even eccentric, and make entertaining reading. In the introduction Darnton explains, “I have
pursued what seemed to be the richest run of documents, following leads
wherever they went and quickening my pace as soon as I stumbled on a
surprise. Straying from the beaten path
may not be much of a methodology, but it creates the possibility of enjoying
some unusual views, and they can be the most revealing. I do not see why cultural history should
avoid the eccentric or embrace the average, for one cannot calculate the mean
of meanings or reduce symbols to their lowest common denominator” (Darnton,
1984, 6). Darnton doubts that “the third level (culture) somehow derives from the first two
(economics and demography, and social structure).” (257-8). Although he wrote about class conflict,
he did not make a case for the need to overthrow the superstructure in the way
that postmodern gender theorists and Black historians do. His
thesis is that a cultural historian does not need to rely on academic evidence
to formulate valid opinions about another culture and that there are a wide
variety of acceptable interpretations. When approached anthropologically, events
like the strange massacre of cats in Paris can produce new insights into life in the distant past. This quote captures his main argument fairly
well, “Where the historian of ideas traces the filliation of formal thought from
philosopher to philosopher, the ethnographic historian studies the way ordinary
people made sense of the world.” (Darnton, 1984, 3). He shows how a
postmodern thought can be combined with ethnography to discover new
interpretations of artifacts and archived materials. The
eye-catching title and the quirky way Darnton goes about choosing his source
material would be thought-provoking for researchers in any academic discipline, and the book is written in a literary style that
would appeal to the general public. Darnton’s reminder that “We
constantly need to be shaken out of a false sense of familiarity with the past,
to be administered doses of culture shock” is useful general advice.
Robert Darnton, The
Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New
York: Basic Books, 1984).
