Synopses & Reviews
Anthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary account. In
Far Afieldbrought to English-language readers here for the first timeVincent Debaene puzzles out this phenomenon, tracing the contours of anthropology and literatures mutual fascination and the ground upon which they meet in the works of thinkers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes.
The relationship between anthropology and literature in France is one of careful curiosity. Literary writers are wary about anthropologists scientific austerity but intrigued by the objects they collect and the issues they raise, while anthropologists claim to be scientists but at the same time are deeply concerned with writing and representational practices. Debaene elucidates the richness that this curiosity fosters and the diverse range of writings it has produced, from Proustian memoirs to proto-surrealist diaries. In the end he offers a fascinating intellectual history, one that is itself located precisely where science and literature meet.
Review
“This remarkable and ambitious work expertly takes both a long-view and close-ups of the main currents of twentieth-century French anthropological research and thinking. Travel writing, anthropologys relation to surrealism, the dissolution of science-literature unity in belles-lettres, and structuralism into post-structuralism are all systematically addressed with great insights, great turns of phrase (caught well in translation), and fresh interpretations.”
Review
“Richly detailed and brilliantly argued, Far Afield portrays mid-twentieth century French anthropology as a complex negotiation of ‘literary and ‘scientific pressures. Debaene offers acute readings of classic and lesser-known works in a sustained engagement with fundamental problems of cross-cultural representation.”
Review
“A dazzling study. . . . it cannot be confined to literary analysis. If it is read with so much pleasure, it is precisely because as it delves into the heart of these works, far from sinking into sterile dissection, it offers on the contrary the opportunity for an ambitious reflection on the respective histories of anthropology and literature, and on the complex links woven over time between the two disciplines.”
Review
“Brilliant, demanding book. . . . deeply researched. . . . beautifully translated.”
Synopsis
This seminal collection of essays critiquing ethnography as literature is augmented with a new foreword by Kim Fortun, exploring the ways in which Writing Culture has changed the face of ethnography over the last 25 years.
Synopsis
These seminal essays place ethnography at the intersection of interpretive anthropology, cultural studies, social history, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism. They grapple with issues of power and poetics in contemporary situations of globalization, post-coloniality, and post-modernity. Since its publication in 1986, Writing Culture has been a source of generative controversy and innovation in anthropology. It continues to inspire scholars and activists across the humanities, social sciences, and arts who are concerned with experimentation and ethics in cultural analysis.
This anniversary edition is augmented with a new foreword by Kim Fortun, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, exploring the legacies of Writing Culture in the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
and#147;Humanists and social scientists alike will profit from reflection on the efforts of the contributors to reimagine anthropology in terms, not only of methodology, but also of politics, ethics, and historical relevance. Every discipline in the human and social sciences could use such a book.and#8221;and#151;Hayden White, author of Metahistory
About the Author
James Clifford is Professor, History of Consciousness Department, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. George E. Marcus is Chancellor's Professor, Department of Anthropology, at the University of California, Irvine.
Table of Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Introduction
The Ethnographers Two Books
Science and Literature: A Genealogy
I Ethnography in the Eyes of Literature
1 The Birth of a Discipline
Breaks and Discontinuities
Fieldwork
Ethnographys Prestige
2 The French Exception
The Speculative Origins of French Ethnography
Everything involving the exercise of the mind”
Malinowski: A Counterexample
3 Rhetoric, the Document, and Atmosphere
From the Science of Customs to Total Social Facts
Evocative Documents
The Supplement to the Ethnographers Expedition
The Impossible Return to Belles Lettres
The Human Document and the Living Museum
4 A literature that is not meaningless like our own”
Some of the innocent flavor of the original text”
LÎle de Pâques: 1941, 1951
Mauss, Fieldwork, and Ethnographic Documents
5 The Lost Unity of Heart and Mind
The Philosophical Voyage as Paradise Lost
From the Enlightenment to the Renaissance
A New Humanism"
II Ladieu au Voyage
6 Ceci nest pas un voyage”
Travel: Polemics, Prestige, and Legitimacy
The Ethnographer, the Adventurer, and the Tourist
Spatializing Cultural Difference
LAfrique fantôme and Tristes Tropiques: Impossible Intimacy
This is not travel writing”
7 Les Flambeurs dhommes:
The Ethiopian Chronicles of Marcel Griaule
The Ethnographer and the Littérateur
The Inadequacies of the Ethnographic Document
The Impossible Evocative Document
Excursus: Sociology and Cruelty
Ethnography and Cultural Knowledge
8 LAfrique fantôme: Leiris and the Living Document”
The Impossible Foreword
Reading LAfrique fantôme
From Communion to Representation
Theatricality and the Family
Living Document, Phantom” Africa
9 Tristes Tropiques:
The Search for Correspondence and the Logic of the Sensible
The boat entered the harbor at 5:30 in the morning”
From Conrad to Proust
From the Deserts of Memory to the Science of the Concrete
History, Entropy, Entropology”
Doorways that reveal other worlds and other times”
III Literature in the Eyes of Ethnography
10 Literature, Letters, and the Social Sciences
Lanson, 1895: The Dispossession of the Artist by the Scientist
The Man of Letters and the Social Division of Labor
Humanities, Sciences, and Counterrevolutionary Thought
Lanson, 1904: From Literature to Science
11 Disputes over Territory
Ramon Fernandez, 1935: A Conversation between
the Scientist and the Essayist
Breton, 19481966: You will never really know the Mayas”
Bataille, Barthes, Blanchot, 1956: The Reception of Tristes Tropiques
12 19551970: A New Deal
The End of the Documentary Paradigm
Ethnography and Literature in the Real World”
(Post)colonial Literature and the Ethnographic
The Terre humaine” Series: Literature from Within and Without
Barthes and Structures”
Barthes, 1967: From Science to Literature
Conclusion
Literature
Ethnography
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index