The Culture of Criticism

Abstract

The peculiarity of culture is that you know it only by doing it. You know what culture is only by knowing what it isfor. In this sense, culture is roughly like a tool, its form or shape—its definition—derived from its function. A hammer is used for driving nails, and its particular shape is well suited to this task. But if I have no hammer, I could (in a pinch) use a stone. The stone would become my ham mer, its structure temporarily determined by my perspective—that is, by my knowledge of what hammers are for. This analogy between tools and culture has prompted some to argue that tools are a kind of elementary culture. Clifford Geertz, for example, suggests that the originary form of culture can be found in the protocultural activity of early humans.1 What is protoculture? Protoculture is culture without symbolic thought, and it includes such socially mediated or imitatively learned activities as hunting and toolmaking. Does this mean that lions, which hunt in groups, have protoculture? How about chimpanzees? They hunt in groups and use tools. Do they therefore have protoculture? Consider the argument for chimpanzees as users of culture. In her pioneer ing studies of wild chimpanzees, Jane Goodall notes how they modify branches to make termiting sticks.2 They tear a branch from a tree, strip away its leaves, and poke the stick deep into a termite mound. When the stick is withdrawn, they eat the termites that have gathered on it. Jane Goodall emphasizes the creativity of this task, which seems to rival our own much-vaunted creativity. Would not a man left naked and hungry in the jungle make a termiting stick in exactly this fashion? Goodall goes on to point to another, more significant feature of chim panzee tool use. A young chimpanzee watching his mother at the termite mound attempts to imitate her, but he selects a stick that is too short and manipulates it clumsily and incompetently.3 The point is not just that the task is complex, but that it must be learned, first by observing the mother, then by imitating her action, then by repeating the