Palumbo’s strabismus
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3781
Commento a Berardino Palumbo, Lo strabismo della DEA: Antropologia, accademia e società in Italia, Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2018, pp. 289.
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Noelle Molé Liston
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Palumbo’s strabismus
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Book forum: Berardino Palumbo - Lo strabismo della DEA
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Noelle Molé Liston
2019/07/31
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Palumbo’s strabismus
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                                        2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 153-157




                                                                        BOOK FORUM

Palumboʼs strabismus
Noelle MOLÉ LISTON
New York University


Comment on BERARDINO PALUMBO, Lo strabismo della DEA. Antropologia, accademia e
società in Italia, Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2018, pp. 289.




   Employing a rich array of historical, sociological and ethnographic
analysis and methods, Palumbo analyzes the field of anthropology in Italy
from its initial decades of expansion to the more recent numerical decline in
anthropology positions in the Italian academy and its “condizione di
sofferente precarietà esistenziale e cognitivo-intellettuale” (p. 13). With the
metaphor of strabismus, Palumbo identifies competing tendencies in Italian
anthropology, “un andamento sincopato”, between national and
international dynamics that shape the field, rendering it simultaneously
fixed in fiercely hierarchical power relations within Italy yet also
intellectually agile and progressive (p. 14). The work transports the reader to
a variety of engaging vignettes and multi-layered analyses: his own
biographical memories of his graduate training and career (pp. 19-27), an
excellent analysis of Ernesto de Martino’s work and enduring influence, and
analysis of anthropologists represented in print and television media. He
shifts seamlessly between formal and informal modes of analysis. On the one
hand, he offers rich quantitative and comparative analysis of anthropology
positions and rates of growth and decline illustrating their “organizzazione
gerontocratica e clientare” (p. 48). On the other hand, he uncovers the


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Noelle Molé Liston
Palumboʼs strabismus
2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 153-157.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3781
154                                                            NOELLE MOLÉ LISTON


evolutionary thinking and “implicit racism” in comparisons between pop
artist Jennifer Lopez and Neanderthals, a way of thinking Palumbo believes
still informs public perceptions of the field (p. 59).
   Palumbo is at his best in his compelling and even courageous analysis of
chefferies and regional alleanze in Italian anthropology over the past two
decades. Using a term of anthropological resonance, chefferies, Palumbo
uncovers how few individuals, and mostly men, have dominated Italian
anthropology with their stronghold on economic, political and intellectual
capital (pp. 75-76). What’s more, Palumbo carefully traces how the alleanze
undergird not only the hierarchical organization of academic institutions
and intellectual influences, but also their tentacular grasp on professional
associations (p. 86), scholarly publications (pp. 87-90) and graduate student
training (pp. 92-94). Because the big man (o woman) of each chefferies played
a role, directly or indirectly, on appointing committees, graduate students
would be placed according to these influences, thus guaranteeing the
reproduction of this structure for new generations. Taken together, new and
innovative scholarship in Italian anthropology must fight to emerge from
“un campo intimamente plasmato da particolarismi, tensioni, [e] conflitti
fazionali” (p. 102).
   In Chapter 4, Palumbo reviews four anthropological monographs of
United States based scholars on Italy: Molé (2012), Jason Pine (2012), Andrea
Muehlebach (2012), and Lilith Mahmud (2014). Palumbo is understandably
vexed because of the “dominanti antropologie anglofone” and “egemoniche”
anthropology of US-based academy (p. 15), as well as the dangerously
shrinking pool of anthropologists in Italy over the past decade (pp. 32, 243).
Framed as a “chiusura al dialogo” (p. 15) and “reciprocità negate” (p. 179),
his central complaint is the accusation that citations of Italian
anthropologists number under five (p. 195). Yet counting and labeling
citations is only the most obvious way to assess scholarly influence. Other of
Palumbo’s frustrations over citational practices are less scrutable, even
bewildering. He puzzles over why I might include a film about mobbing in a
book about mobbing in Italy (p. 202). He huffs over my exclusion of Redini’s
(2007) study of Romanian workers at Italian owned companies in Romania.
And he is aghast when Pine does not cite Signorelli (2002) on 19th century
Neapolitan popular culture.
   With all due respect for Redini (2007) and Signorelli (2002), what is it that
is really driving Palumbo’s outrage other than a perceived snub of his co-
national anthropologists? It did not matter whether these well-reviewed and
award winning monographs amply cited Italian academics in sociology,


2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 153-157
PALUMBOʼS STRABISMUS                                                            155


history or political science, Italian nationals working in the US or British
academy, or even – and this level of Palumbo’s minutia is spectacular –
Italian anthropologists who trained in the US or UK but work in Italy (p. 196).
No, the only suitable citation would be Italian anthropologists who both
trained and work in Italy. Moreover, Palumbo frames these citational
practices as acts of individual choices and neglectful scholarship. Social
scientists typically know that all individual choices and, more broadly, the
production of knowledge, even in reproducing an asymmetrical relationship
with the Italian academy, are subject to forces that are much bigger than
individual intentions. Finally, as I have argued in this journal, the
anthropology of Europe in the United States has also struggled to overcome
an antiquated anthropological privileging of the non-western “other”; so
these four ethnographies on Italian citizens (not foreign nationals) were
likely subject to increased scrutiny (Liston 2016). The real mystery here is
why Palumbo seems blind to the ways in which citational practice is
constrained by political economic forces and dominant intellectual trends
when he dedicates much of the same book to analyzing how Italian
anthropology is shaped by similar underlying pressures and structures (e.g.
pp. 32, 243-244).
   In her sociological analysis of American academic evaluative processes
and notions of academic excellence, Michelle Lamont holds that each
discipline an “evaluative and epistemic culture of their own field” (p. 54). In
ways that align with Lamont’s study, Palumbo frames his own research as an
“etnografia di un campo accademico” (p. 29), evenly jokingly imagining how
the 153 Italian anthropologists in the Italian academy are kind of “cacciatori
raccoglitori” compared with the United States’ massive 20,000 person field
of anthropology (p. 43). If we understand the field of anthropology as culture
and Palumbo’s work as “auto-etnografica” (p. 102), then perhaps Palumbo
committed the same sin he ascribed to Mahmud: being “incapace di
oggettivare quell’humus culturale” (p. 200).
   Yet Palumbo’s review of these monographs goes well beyond enumerating
citational snubs and employs a “gotcha” style, which is an American term for
journalistic reporting that employs a technique of distraction. Palumbo
adopts this “gotcha” style of review for four American monographs on
Italian life: Molé legal analysis has translation error!, Muehlebach omitted
two legal cases in Lombardia!, Pine ignored Neapolitan folklorists!, and
Native Italian Mahmud can’t analyze her own culture (pp. 197-204)!
Palumbo’s “gotchas” aim to entice his largely Italian audience by
forefronting salaciousness and trying to overtly shame these American


                                    2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 153-157
156                                                            NOELLE MOLÉ LISTON


ethnographers who, in his estimation, enjoy a structurally dominant position
with respect to Italy. His tone and prose are absolutely antithetical to the
kind of generous critique we might expect from a scholar of Palumbo’s
stature.
   But let us probe deeper: Palumbo takes on four first-time book authors,
published before these scholars were tenured, ¾ of whom are women, whose
names he does not deign to consistently spell correctly (e.g. “Mohlebach” p.
202). That Palumbo can embody the big man of Italian anthropology rides on
the systemic privileging and position of male scholarship in the Italian
academy. Palumbo’s own analysis provides further evidence that
anthropological discourse in Italy has been and remains deeply gendered,
“una piramidale gerontocrazia maschile” (pp. 47, 98). Indeed Palumbo shows
us how Italian women hover at around the same small number (30-32%) of
professori Ordinari, have disproportionately decreased their share as
professor Associati and have increased their proportion of the lowest rank,
as Ricercatori universitari (p. 47). Though aware the Italian academy may be
“tenacemente ancorati a concezioni autocratiche del potere, produttori che
naturalizzano gerarchie”, he fails to critique how his own gendered
subjectivity plays into the power structure he reveals (p. 14). A late career
scholar, Palumbo reproduces the very “chieftaincy” he aims to undo (p. 80).
   I share Palumbo’s hope for a “democratizzazionne degli spazi della
produzione scientifica in antropologia” where global scholarly exchange
might be more equitable and reciprocal. In his vision for the future, Palumbo
also shares his dream of requiring more native anthropology: “una quota
minima annua di libri scritti da studiosi provenienti da paesi dove sono i
terreni da loro vissuti” (p. 192). I am, however, deeply troubled by his view of
auto-ethnographic work as intrinsically superior and authentic. Rather, we
must be equally skeptical of native and non-native anthropology, and never
assume that any nationalized subjectivity automatically endows one with
greater or lesser intellectual acumen. Indeed these kinds of epistemic
assumptions represent the central preoccupation of my forthcoming book on
Italy where I interrogate how the material and technological forms of
knowledge – televised, print media, and Internet shape emergent political
structures (Liston n.d.). How does the way we know the world shape who we
think should rule it? In order, however, to trace how our epistemological
practices give rise to political regimes and high stakes forms of governance,
we must, first and foremost, be able to scrutinize the epistemic assumptions
of our own work. Clear vision is just as much a function of knowledge as it is
the physical structure of the eye.


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PALUMBOʼS STRABISMUS                                                                157



REFERENCES
Lamont, Michelle, 2009, How Professors think: Inside the curious world of academic
      judgment, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Liston, Noelle Molé, 2016, An anthropologist in parallel structure, in
      Anthropologists in/of the neoliberal academy, Tracey Heatherington, Filippo M.
      Zerilli, eds, Thematic section, Anuac, 5, 1: 71-74.
Liston, Noelle Molé, n.d., The Disinformation Society: Politics and Post-truth in Italy.
      Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.
Mahmud, Lilith, 2014, The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters: Gender, Secrecy, and
      Fraternity in Italian Masonic Lodges. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Molé, Noelle, 2012, Labor Disorders in Neoliberal Italy: Mobbing, Well-Being, and the
      Workplace, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press.
Muehlebach, Andrea, 2012, The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy.
      Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Pine, Jason, 2012, The Art of Making Do in Naples, Minneapolis, University of
      Minnesota Press.
Redini, Veronica, 2007, Del dare e togliere corpo al lavoro. Luoghi, merci e persone
      nel processo di internazionalizzazione delle aziende italiane in Romania, in
      Un aricpelago produttivo. Migrati e impreditori tra Italia e Romaia, Ferruccio
      Gambino, David Sacchetto, eds, Roma, Carocci: 171-206.
Signorelli, Amalia, 2002, La cultura popolare napoletana: un secolo di vita di uno
      stereotipo e del suo referente, in Cultura popolare a Napoli e in Campania nel
      Novecento, Amalia Sigorelli, ed, Napoli, Edizione del Millennio: 11-24.




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