Since the publication of Resunga: the Mountain of the Horned Sage, we, the authors, have eagerly expected critical comments from Nepali readers. Unfortunately, neither Sudhindra Sharma's review (#29) nor Pratyoush Onta's letter (#32) addressed the subject matter of the book. Sharma expected that we, being French, should have mentioned French theoreticians like Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu. The value of these scholars is a separate issue-but we find they are more popular in ego-driven American or Americanised social science circles than in Europe, where they are simply taken as two of many possible theoreticians. The question really is what the relevance of these texts is to the data we published. General anthropological theory is important, and so is dealing with the issue of representation, which is at the heart of anthropology, and not a new concern, as Sharma seems to suggest.

But Resunga is not a theoretical essay, it is a collection of in-depth studies on the historical, ecological and social conditions of a Nepali region. Onta's criticism revolves around our alleged assertion that no research at the regional level was undertaken in Nepal before. No such statement appears in the book. Onta writes further that it is no surprise that foreigners are unaware of Nepali works, suggesting we don't care about them. We totally support Onta's effort to defend and promote Nepali writings, but the allegation here is not really grounded in fact. Readers may check for themselves: the book contains 73 references to Nepali work, of which 23 are in Nepali, in addition to the 70 historical documents from Gulmi-Argha-Khanci. It should be noted that most of the Nepali texts we cited were written by local scholars and not by passers-by in the yatras tradition.

We would have been very interested to read Sharma's and Onta's opinion about the issues dealt with in the book, and their criticisms on the way we perceived, interpreted or presented what we saw in the field. From the ecological dynamics to the rituals and the political relations, the book's substance pertains to the life and perceptions of local people, not to the self-interrogation of the postmodern urban dweller. It is unfortunate that this was not read as something worth discussion.

Philippe Ramirez
via email