Ethnographic “Truth”
“The writing and reading of ethnography
are overdetermined by forces ultimately
beyond the control of either an author or
an interpretive community. These
contingencies--of language, rhetoric,
power, and history--must now be openly
confronted in the process of writing”
(Clifford 1986: 25).
Realist Ethnographies
(conventions)
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Experiential authority-Ethnographic form-One point of view--,
Interpretive omnipotence--
Experiential Authority
• absence of author,
• academic credentials,
• audience expectations
Particular style (Ethnographic
form)
• arrangements of presentation, editing process
• “Early in the morning each village almost literally
explodes. Asak and odok come down and the
village reveals itself for what it is, a
conglomeration of individuals of all ages, each
going his own way in search of food and water,
like a plague of locusts spreading over the land”
(Turnbull, The Mountain People, 1971).
Third convention: Absence of native
point of view
• Monovocality
• Closely edited quotations
• Verbatim transcriptions
Interpretive Omnipotence
• final word,
• link to a theoretical approach
Interpretive Anthropology
• Science and Literature start to coexist
• Changing of mentality
• Redressing of ethnocentric past
Writing … not only as a method
• influenced by politics,
• intentionality,
• positionality,
No longer a marginal, or occulted,
dimension, writing has emerged as
central to what anthropologist do both
in the field and thereafter. The fact
that it has not until recently been
portrayed or seriously discussed
reflects the persistence of an ideology
claiming transparency of
representation and immediacy of
experience (Clifford, 1986: 2).
It draws attention two aspects
of anthropology
• to the historical predicaments of ethnography--tied
to a Western mentality
• the fact that ethnography is interpretation,
invention and not an unbiased, totally objective
representation of a culture--literary processes
affects: 1. cultural phenomena 2. audience
Literary Process
• metaphor,
• figuration,
• narrative style
Literary processes
• metaphor,
• figuration,
• narrative style
Ethnographic writing (art) is
characterized in at least six ways
• contextually
• rhetorically
• institutionally
• generically
• politically
• historically
Classicism: artistic and academic
movement characterized by the
admiration and imitation of
Greek and Roman literature.
Modernism: an artistic (and sometimes
an academic) movement that represents a
wide range
of experimental and avant-garde trends
in the literature.
Example: “Each in His Own Way”
Pirandello 1930’s
MODERNISM VERSUS
POSTMODERNISM
J.F Lyotard
“The Postmodern Condition”
(1977)
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Attacked the totalizing notion in modernism
Representing wholeness, truth ness
“Writing Culture” Clifford and Marcus (1986)
“Anthropology as a Cultural Critique” Marcus
and Fisher (1986).
• Stephen Tyler “Post-modern Ethnography: From
Document of the Occult to Occult Document
(1986)
Stephen Tyler
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Evocation rather than representation
The split between orality and literacy
One perspective (literacy)
Versus polyvocal present of multi realities
(orality).
• Object (anthropologist) with subject (the
Other)
Timothy Mitchell
• “Orientalism and the Visionary Order”1989
• The vision of the Other
• “The visual Western episteme,”
THE WEST
The observer
Culture
History
ORDER
THE REST
The other
Nature
Stories
SAVAGE
Noble
Barbarian
Wise
Evil
State: JUSTICE
UTOPIA
Paradisiac
Communist
Innocent
Illusory
Thought: REASON
Here
Elsewhere