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Crapanzano On The Writing of Ethnography
Crapanzano On The Writing of Ethnography
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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 toMethod 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
Brisbane reflects the threat of dissolution of 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
that I'd like to have a mouth just like mine to kiss, a neck
reify a "moment" at the expense of a "move?
that curves just like mine (seen from the side). I got tired ment". The painter and the politician, Merleau
and collected myself slowly .. . (Malinowski 1967:13) [7]. Ponty cynically remindsus ( 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 aims at is not given; it is precisely the one
acter". his works will elicit. The others he thinks of are not
if his response to fieldwork has been conserva? he does not write them down. But before long these
? a murmurs cease to satisfy him. When he listens to himself,
tive stubborn refusal to go native. At home he cannot ignore the fact that it is he who is speaking .. .
he must be his old self again, must adopt the He is aware
that he alone hears himself, that he alone
The act of writing, any writing, is an act of to the Other, for it is the other who confers upon the
word a veritable objectivity - by listening to it
communication. an ad [10].
It requires, minimally,
dressor and an - a
addressee 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 of all ?
writing
stitutes the writer's sense of self. It reconfirms
The imaginary gaze of the gentle reader has no function from whom recognition. The other
he desires
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. ? a
more complex other bifurcate other. He
Genet is not yet speaking to us: he is talking to himself,
though wanting to be heard [11]. is at once the significant other of the ethnog?
rapher's own cultural world and the other of
So, too, I suggest that the writer of the ethnographic confrontation. The writer of
? ? a
writes and creates double
ethnography writes "to talk to himself, though ethnography
wanting to be heard". The act of writing audience: the audience of his own people and
? the audience of those other people whom he
ethnography is an act of self-constitution of
a willing objectivation of selfwell worth the refers to in an act of presumptive if not
price of alienation. Indeed, the alienation is an patronizing incorporation as "my 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 effectupon the objectivity ifnot 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
? ? or his new
writing of autobiography and however ob? wants to reconstitute his old self
seem is an autobiograph? ?
jective they may there 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
serves to exorcise the writer of ?
confrontation 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 itwere 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
? a
doing more, itwould seem, than making a ethnography through 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 is this other,
remains: Who importance he pretends. The anthropologist
? a
whose standpoint the ethnographer takes in must recognize his product for what it is
his act of 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 ismuch more than the learns to read and read with courage what
name to whom the ethnography is dedicated. he had written.
He ismore, too, than the ethnographer's profes?
sional or public audience, his spouse, his father,
his mother, his mentors, or any other signifi?
NOTES
cant other in his personal history against whom 1 George Devereux, From Anxiety toMethod in the
he wishes to separate or measure himself or Behavioral Sciences (The Hague: Mouton, 1967).