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Crapanzano On The Writing of Ethnography PDF
Crapanzano On The Writing of Ethnography PDF
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Vincent Crapanzano
An ethnography - and I use the word in its Elsewhere, he notes that frames of reference,
most comprehensive sense to include what methods, and procedures within the behavioral
might more properly be called ethnology - is sciences "are often systematically transformed
a sympton [ 1 ] of a particular confrontation into veritable counter-transference reactions,
between two or more individuals - the leading to self-constricting acting out, mas-
ethnographer and those others whom he, the querading as science" [4].
ethnographer, refers to, impersonally and pre- Devereux is concerned principally with data
sumptively, as his informants. As some anthro- as anxiety-provoking. The emphasis itself on
pologists are beginning to recognize, with more methodology in the social sciences - and
or less sophistication, there is no question but Devereux recognizes this - suggests that
that this confrontation is anxiety-provoking, methodology may often be a locus of displace-
ego-dystonic, threatening to the ethnographer's ment for the anxiety provoked not just by
sense of self. George Devereux has, in a signifi- data but by the investigator's confrontation
cantly ignored book, From Anxiety to Method with the subjects of his research. This displaced
in the Behavioral Sciences, considered the im- anxiety produces, to use one of Devereux'
plications of anxiety on the methods, proce- favorite words, its own scotoma - its own
dures, and conceptual apparatus of the behav- blind spots.
ioral sciences. One of these blind spots is, curiously, the
Devereux notes that "good methodology" writing of ethnography. It is surprising that a
is "the most effective and the most durable discipline which has become as self-conscious
anxiety-reducing device". Ideally, as anthropology - and is traditionally con-
cerned with texts, - has ignored the structural
It does not empty reality of its anxiety arousing content, 9presuppositions and implications o f the text
but 'domesticates' it, by providing that it, too, can be by which it conveys its data, meanings,
understood and processed by the conscious ego [2].
hypotheses, and theoretical confabulations,
its very identity as a scientific or humanistic
He is quick to add:
discipline.
However much the writer of ethnography
Unfortunately, even the best methodology can, uncon-
sciously and abusively, be used primarily as an ataractic wishes to separate his ethnography from the
- as an anxiety-numbing device - and, when so used, ethnographic confrontation, the writing of
produces scientific (?) 'results' which smell of the morgue ethnography is a continuation of the confron-
and are almost irrelevant in terms of living reality [3].
tation. Such stylistic devices as the self-con-
Vincent Crapanzano is Professor of Anthropology in the
scious avoidance o f the " I " (anthropologists
Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College, City appear particularly disturbed by the presence
University of New York. of the personal pronoun in a "serious" work),
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Brisbane reflects the threat o f dissolution o f his meaningful world. The other, too, is con-
self. stituted - evoked, in Lacan's magical lan-
guage - through the act of communication.
I had a strange dream; homosex., with my own double as To give the other constitutive priority is to
a partner. Strangely autoerotic feelings; the impression reify a " m o m e n t " at the expense of a "move-
that I'd like to have a mouth just like mine to kiss, a neck
that curves just like mine (seen from the side). 1 got tired ment". The painter and the politician, Merleau-
and collected myself s l o w l y . . . (Malinowski 1967:13) [ 7]. Ponty cynically reminds us ( and we might add
the writer, even the writer of ethnography),
However rooted in his personal history, his im- "moulds others much more often than he
manent departure, or his neurotic adaptations, follows them".
Malinowski's dream prefigures the very last
sentence of the Diary: "Truly I lack real char- The public he alms at is not given; it is precisely the one
acter". his works will elicit. The others he thinks of are not
empirical "others" defined by what they expect of him at
All fieldworkers, insofar as they have carried this moment. He thinks even less of humanity conceived
out research elsewhere, have experienced some- of as a species which possess "human dignity" or "the
thing o f this. What they have experienced too honor of being m a n " as other species have a carapace or
an air-bladder. No, his concern is with others become
- and have seen often enough in others coming
such that he is able to live with them (italics my own) [9].
back from the field - is the shock o f return.
In many ways the shock of return is more dif- The act of writing - the evocation o f the
ficult than the initial encounter. The fieldworker response of the other and t h e constitution
has been led to expect the stress and strain o f thereby of the self and his meaningful world -
the ethnographic confrontation; he does not is reifled, in its product, the written word. The
really expect such stress and strain, such an- self is objectivated in the written word, and
xiety, upon his return. He is, after all, return- insofar as the self is objectivated, the other is
ing home. What he forgets of course is that the also. Sartre, in his study of Jean Genet, de-
confrontation with the other - his informants - scribes this process brilliantly:
has had its effect upon him. His sense of self
has been altered. He is other than he was, even At the beginning Genet utters the words or dreams them;
if his response to fieldwork has been conserva- he does not write them down. But before long these
murmurs cease to satisfy him. When he listens to himself,
tive - a stubborn refusal to go native. At home he cannot ignore the fact that it is he who is s p e a k i n g . . .
he must be his old self again, must adopt the He is aware that he alone hears himself, that he alone
standpoint of those significant within his "offers himself the ideal fault of roses" and that a moan
of pleasure will not keep the earth from turning. Therein
" o w n " socio-historical horizon. He requires lies the trap; he will write. Scripta manent: tomorrow, in
re-affirmation - reconstitution - and this he three days, when he finds the inert little sketch that con-
tries to accomplish in many ways, including, fronts him with all its inertia, he will regard the phrase as
an erotic and scandalous object. A drifting authorless
most notably, the writing of ethnography,
sentence will float toward h i m . . . This is only an expedi-
which will also "free" him to be a professional ent. Even when he reads the sentence, Genet still knows
again. who set it down. He is therefore going to turn once again
The act of writing, any writing, is an act o f to the Other, for it is the other who confers upon the
word a veritable objectivity - b y listening to it [10].
communication. It requires, minimally, an ad-
dressor and an addressee - a self and an other. Sartre notes that others "were already present
At some level, it is always, inevitably, an ap- in the heart of the word, hearers and speakers,
peal to the other for recognition. "What I seek awaiting their turn". In Genet's case - and
in the Word", writes Lacan, "is the response Sartre finds exceptional here what is probably
of the other" [8]. It is a response which con- an essential characteristic o f all writing -
stitutes the writer's sense of self. It reconfirms
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The imaginary gaze of the gentle reader has no function from whom he desires recognition. The other
other than to give the word a new and strange consistency. of ethnography is, I suggest, an essentially
The reader is not an end; he is a means, an instrument.
Genet is not yet speaking to u s : he is talking to himself, more complex other - a bifurcate other. He
though wanting to be heard [ 11]. is at once the significant other o f the ethnog-
rapher's own cultural world and the other of
So, too, I suggest that the writer o f the ethnographic confrontation. The writer of
ethnography writes " t o talk to himself, though ethnography writes - and creates - a double
wanting to be heard". The act of writing audience: the audience of his own people and
ethnography is an act o f self-constitution - of the audience of those other people whom he
a willing objectivation o f self well worth the refers to in an act o f presumptive if not
price of alienation. Indeed, the alienation is an patronizing incorporation as " m y people".
inevitable feature of the act, for the act of The writing of ethnography - and this must
writing is not simply an act of creation, objec- have an effect upon the objectivity if not the
tivation, or constitution; it is also, in some scientific validity of the work - is essentially
curious way, an act of exorcism. Like the a compromise formation. The ethnographer
writing of autobiography - and however ob- wants to reconstitute his old self - or his new
jective they may seem there is an autobiograph- professional self - through an act of writing
ical dimension to all ethnographies - the writ- that is addressed to the significant others with-
ing of ethnography through objectivation and in his own world. He wants, too, to address,
.consequent alienation of the ethnographic and must inevitably address, those illiterate
confrontation serves to exorcise the writer of others on his fieldwork - not simply out of
the confrontation. "And if I succeed in taking good faith, professional responsibility, integrity,
my mind off myself when the word comes out guilt, irritation, resentment, hatred, or the
of my mouth", writes Sartre, with reference desire to fill an obligation, but also out of a
to the onanist's use of the word in his incan- necessity to declare them worthy of having
tatory masturbations, "if I succeed in forgetting been and continuing to be that silent audience
that it is I who say it, I can listen to it as if it by which he identifies himself as an ethnogra-
emanated from someone else, and indeed even pher and obtains his sense of self. His ambiva-
as if it were sounding all by itself" [12]. lence toward both his audiences, inevitably
The ethnographer in writing ethnography is toward himself, is worked out in a text - the
doing more, it would seem, than making a ethnography - through a dialectic of constitu-
scientific contribution or convincing others to tion and deconstitution, incantation and exor-
hire, reappoint, or promote him. He is affirm- cism, creation and destruction, which must be
ing an identity, subjectively felt as a sense of revealed, like the structures of dream and myth,
self, by addressing and reifying thereby, an before the anthropologist can succeed to the
other. The question remains: Who is this other, importance he pretends. The anthropologist
whose standpoint the ethnographer takes in must recognize his product for what it is - a
his act o f self-constitution? Surely, if the con- symptom of extreme confrontation with other-
tention about the multidimensionality of the ness which can only be understood when he
other is correct, he is much more than the learns to read - and read with courage - what
name to whom the ethnography is dedicated. he had written.
He is more, too, than the ethnographer's profes-
sional or public audience, his spouse, his father,
NOTES
his mother, his mentors, or any other signifi-
cant other in his personal history against whom 1 George Devereux, From Anxiety to Method in the
he wishes to separate or measure himself or Behavioral Sciences (The Hague: Mouton, 1967).
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