Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology, grounded in the concept of thick description, revolutionized the study of culture by emphasizing meaning, symbols, and context over rigid structural laws. His work positioned anthropology closer to the humanities, particularly hermeneutics and literary analysis. However, poststructuralist thinkers, particularly Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have raised significant challenges to Geertz’s approach. These critiques focus on the assumptions underlying interpretation, the stability of meaning, and the politics of representation. This article explores how Geertz’s methodology both aligns with and is problematized by poststructuralist thought.
Geertz’s Interpretive Anthropology: The Search for Meaning
Geertz’s anthropology is built on the premise that culture is a system of symbols, much like a text, that must be interpreted rather than explained in a scientific sense. In works like The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), he argues that human action is embedded in a web of significance, and the task of the anthropologist is to decipher these meanings in a manner akin to literary analysis. His reliance on hermeneutics places him in opposition to structuralist approaches like those of Claude Lévi-Strauss, which sought universal cognitive structures beneath cultural variation.
For Geertz, meaning is relatively stable and recoverable through close ethnographic engagement. He famously described ethnography as “thick description”—a process of layering interpretations to arrive at a nuanced understanding of cultural practices. His most celebrated example, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, demonstrates how an ostensibly simple activity operates as a complex system of social meaning. In this sense, Geertz assumes that symbols, while context-dependent, have decipherable meanings that can be reconstructed through rigorous ethnographic work.
Derrida and the Instability of Meaning
One of the most fundamental poststructuralist challenges to Geertz comes from Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance—the idea that meaning is never fully present but is always deferred through an endless chain of signifiers. While Geertz treats cultural symbols as texts that can be read for meaning, Derrida dismantles the idea that any text (including culture) has a singular, stable meaning to be uncovered.
Derrida’s deconstruction problematizes Geertz’s assumption that the anthropologist can reliably extract cultural meaning. If meaning is never fixed, if interpretation is always contingent and deferred, then the notion of a definitive thick description becomes suspect. What Geertz views as a rigorous ethnographic reading, Derrida might see as a momentary stabilization of meaning—one that ignores the fluidity and indeterminacy inherent in any act of interpretation.
Foucault and the Power of Interpretation
Michel Foucault further challenges Geertz by shifting the focus from meaning to power. While Geertz assumes that culture operates through symbols that can be understood through deep interpretation, Foucault sees discourse as fundamentally shaped by power relations. His work suggests that what counts as “meaning” is not simply there to be uncovered but is produced through historical and institutional frameworks.
From a Foucauldian perspective, Geertz’s ethnography risks reinforcing dominant interpretations rather than exposing the structures that shape meaning. Who gets to define what a symbol means? Whose interpretations become authoritative? By prioritizing the anthropologist’s interpretation, Geertz’s methodology could be critiqued as an exercise of epistemic power, where the researcher—often a Western scholar—claims to reveal the “true” meaning of cultural practices.
Spivak and the Politics of Representation
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s critique of representation adds another layer of complexity to Geertz’s approach. In her seminal essay Can the Subaltern Speak?, Spivak questions whether marginalized groups can ever truly represent themselves or if their voices are always mediated by intellectual elites. This critique is particularly relevant to Geertz, whose ethnographic work often speaks for the cultures he studies rather than allowing them to speak for themselves.
Spivak’s critique suggests that Geertz’s method, despite its attentiveness to meaning, may still impose a dominant interpretive framework on the societies he studies. His portrayal of Balinese cockfighting, for instance, may reflect more of his own academic lens than the lived perspectives of Balinese participants. This raises ethical questions: Does thick description truly capture the voice of the cultural subject, or does it inevitably reshape it through the anthropologist’s interpretive authority?
Geertz’s Defense: Between Objectivity and Relativism
Despite these critiques, Geertz’s approach offers a pragmatic alternative to both positivist objectivity and poststructuralist relativism. He acknowledges the partiality of interpretation but resists the extreme skepticism of poststructuralists who claim that meaning is wholly unstable or that power determines all knowledge.
Geertz’s response to such critiques can be found in his later works, where he emphasizes the situated nature of interpretation. He does not claim to produce definitive readings of culture but rather to provide interpretations that are contextually grounded and open to revision. In this way, his work can be seen as a middle path—acknowledging the instability of meaning without surrendering to radical indeterminacy.
An Unfinished Debate
The tensions between Geertz and poststructuralist thought remain unresolved, reflecting deeper philosophical questions about interpretation, meaning, and power. While Geertz offers a compelling method for understanding culture, poststructuralist critiques reveal its limitations, particularly in its assumptions about meaning’s stability and the role of power in shaping interpretation. Yet, Geertz’s legacy endures precisely because he confronted these complexities head-on, offering an interpretive framework that, while imperfect, continues to inspire debate in anthropology, literary studies, and cultural theory.
See also: Clifford Geertz and the Interpretive Theory of Culture: Understanding Meaning in Human Societies
