Ethnography, travel literature, and literary ethnography (1)

Find the frog in vernal pool. Spring 2022. Photo by Jeff Titon.

 I was interested to see, in the first volume of the ninth edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature (2016), a section with the heading Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings (Vol. 1, pp. 641ff). The section’s introduction begins, “Broadly defined, the genre of literary ethnography is the written description of peoples, cultures, and societies. . . . Virtually all of the earliest ‘American’ literature offers instances of ethnographic and naturalist writing, as the sustained European encounter with the Americas that begin in 1492 provided writers with a treasure trove of new material” (641). My interest was piqued, first of all, by the use of the word ethnography outside of the anthropological/ethnomusicological/folkloristic context in which I know it. Inside that context, although ethnography is defined as the written description of the culture, or some aspects of the culture, of a social group, it is not regarded primarily as literature or even as a literary genre. Instead, it aspires to be systematic, its reliability grounded and guaranteed by thorough documentation. Systematic ethnographic descriptions to a certain extent resemble inventories--these are the ways the group thinks of kinship relations; these are their laws and traditions; this is how their government is organized; these are their rituals and ceremonies; that sort of thing. This kind of ethnographic description is later used as evidence for cultural analysis, cultural comparisons, and cultural histories. 

Yet when ethnographers become narrators, portraying as much as describing, telling anecdotes based on their personal encounters, anecdotes that encapsulate the meanings and offer grounds for interpretation--not analysis--of this or that cultural behavior, then our tales take on literary qualities, because they exhibit such things as individual characters, settings and scenes, point-of-view and narrative reliability. But because truth-telling is our goal, it would be highly unusual for any ethnographer, narrating in the first person, to present themself as an unreliable narrator and impossible to offer up an ethnography as fiction, unless it were meant as satire or comedy--in which case, the audience would need to be let in on the ruse sooner or later. Or not; there are some famous exceptions, such as Carlos Castaneda's once-popular narrative ethnographies on the teachings of a Mexican shaman he called Don Juan.

I was, also, curious about the deliberate juxtaposition of ethnographic and naturalist writings in this section, suggesting that describing “peoples” is, or at least was, during the early European colonization of the Asian, African, and American continents, not altogether different from describing esoteric plants and animals. Such a juxtaposition also reflects empire, but is it a recognition of similarities in these literatures, "ethnographic" and naturalistic, of the 17th and 18th centuries? Or might it reveal a residual settler colonialism in the Anthology editors' thinking? More on that in a later blog post. Third, I was struck by the Anthology editors' apparent reluctance to use the accepted term "travel literature" to describe this kind of writing. Travel literature is an ancient genre; portions of Herodotus' history fall into this category, while perhaps the 13th-century Travels of Marco Polo is the most famous example, both from a period that predates European colonialism. Anthropology, and to some extent ethnomusicology and folklore, have a history of ambivalence toward travelers' accounts of exotic lands and peoples; on the one hand, they may contain new information that makes a genuine contribution to knowledge; on the other, the travelers are amateurs after all and therefore their observations cannot be taken at face value. Indeed, as the 20th century wore on, professional, advanced degreed anthropologists increasingly got out of their studies and into the "field," traveling themselves to the field sites where the peoples lived whose cultures they wished to describe. They thought of themselves as scientists, and made a distinction between themselves and the untrained amateurs, tourists whose observations were haphazard, their judgments subjective and often prejudiced; whereas these scholar-scientists considered themselves objective documentarians and analysts pursuing knowledge in a thorough, systematic, unbiased and objective fashion. 

This conception of ethnography as a scientific endeavor began to unravel during the period of the great social movements of the latter 1960s and early 1970s, and by 1990 or so many cultural anthropologists, if not archeologists and linguists, had largely abandoned the idea that their methodology was ever scientific in the sense of the ideal that it was impersonal, objective, unbiased, and replicable. (Of course, critics of science also claimed that objectivity was a myth in all scientific endeavor, even natural science.) Indeed, in the face of post-colonial independence movements, cultural anthropologists began to realize that their field was part of the legacy of empire; that in many cases access to "other" cultures in faraway lands was possible (and relatively safe) only because of the protection of colonial governments. And in the 1980s, cultural anthropology (and, a little later, ethnomusicology) became a locus for debates over such things as cultural appropriation and theft; the relevance of post-structuralist thinking; and of course the literary qualities of narrative ethnography--and whether narrative ethnography was fiction, or whether it was only "like" fiction. It was in the context of these old debates--advanced but never settled--that I first pondered the term "literary ethnography" and its application to the literature of travel and exploration written by European explorers and colonists in the New World beginning in the late 15th century. I'll say more about these topics in a subsequent blog post.

Representing ethnographic ambiguity in fiction

Photo by Jeff Todd Titon, Maine, 2011.

    It’s become a commonplace to speak about the truth of fiction, which is to say that fiction does better in representing experience than verifiable fact. As a blogger wrote recently for the Paris Review, “The truth of fiction allows the reader not only to believe that the story has happened to the narrator, but to believe that it is happening to himself as well.” I was reminded of this when asked about why, in response to an invitation to write a piece on an assigned subject for a journal that publishes scholarly essays, I submitted a short work of fiction.
    The original invitation came to write an essay for a special issue of a journal devoted to scholarship on music and culture. The issue's theme was to be “Connecting with Communities.” My initial response was to say no. In my reply I mentioned five published essays and one keynote address, from 1985 until now, in which I’d pontificated on how and why we scholars should be connecting and collaborating with musical communities, not just studying them. “So,” I concluded, “I feel as if I've already had many opportunities to present on this subject, and that the world doesn't need to hear anything more from me on it, at least not in another essay. I thank you for thinking of me, and wish you well with the special issue.”
    The editor wasn’t done with me yet. “I wonder,” she kindly wrote back, “if you would consider another form of contribution to this special issue. . . Might there be some creative way you might be interested in sharing your ideas with us in relation to the context of the issue? Especially as we seek to integrate innovative ways of conducting research / creating and sharing knowledge.”
    "Creative way?" I’m not sure if she was aware that years ago I'd tried my hand at fiction before a scholarly audience and, given this leeway, might try again. At any rate, when I submitted a short story, she wrote to ask me to share my thoughts about why fiction? and to say that these thoughts could accompany the story.
    Again, my first reaction was to say no, that the story I submitted should stand or fall on its own. But when I’d presented a piece of fiction to a scholarly audience before, I realized that even if I didn’t want to offer an explanation, the audience deserved one. I hadn’t done it then, but decided to try to do it now. The editor interviewed me and we considered it within the context of multidisciplinarity or, with apologies to Wallace Stevens, the advantages of more than one way of looking at a blackbird.
    We’ve been living, for the past few decades, in a time when in certain circles it is difficult to maintain a stance of scholarly objectivity, a time when the world seems to have dissolved into competing narratives, ways of representing people and things, ways of making sense of experience, ways of telling a truth. We even hear this from media talking heads, usually in the pejorative sense, as “so-and-so’s narrative” of reality. In the US, the Republicans have their narratives, and the Democrats theirs; Fox News has its narrative, MSNBC a different one.
    The difference between these narratives and fiction is, of course, that fiction does not pretend to describe something real. It may be true, but it can't be real in the sense that it corresponds directly to something that happened in the factual world, even if it is derived from real events. Citizen Kane is a fiction based on truths in the life of William Randolph Hearst, but it is not real. You could not find a real Charles Foster Kane, living or dead, even though Hearst, upon release of the film, prohibited its mention in any of his newspapers. And needless to say, most fiction is more made-up than that.
    A scholarly essay persuades by being true to facts, ideas, and logic; but fiction seeks assent in the reader’s experience, real or imagined. It may persuade, but it does not seek to do so. It offers the reader (and the writer) a different advantage: an opportunity to imagine, feel and, perhaps, resolve some of the ambiguities inherent in experience.
    Or not resolve them. I think that fiction writing offers the scholar a chance to explore feelings and understandings, sometimes contradictory ones, and hold them in a state of suspension, a liminal state on both sides of a threshold. Let me offer an example from the first piece of fiction I read before a scholarly audience. It was in 1979, at the New England chapter meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. I derived this fiction from events and experiences at a large folk festival some years earlier. A blues singer, Big Joe Williams, refused to perform blues on the porch of a building constructed especially for this festival. The building looked like a country church and served mainly to present religious music. Of course, it wasn’t a church; but it looked like one, and religious music had been and would be presented there. For blues singers of Big Joe’s generation, it was a sacrilege to sing blues in church, so he refused.
    It happened that I was employed by this festival as a presenter, someone who interprets the performers for the audience, and also, at times, serves as a companion for them. I’d had some experience with blues musicians—had even performed for a couple of years in a blues band, and had written my PhD dissertation on blues—so I was assigned to hang out with and present Big Joe. But he wouldn’t be presented on that church stage. I explained the situation to a high official at the festival, suggesting that we simply move Big Joe to a different stage. But it turned out that logistics wouldn’t permit it, and I was instead directed to persuade him to perform. “It’s not a real church, after all,” I was told. “It’s only a building made to look like one. Just make sure he understands the difference.”
    Impossible. For Big Joe, it was a real church. Real enough, anyway: the performance of gospel music inside had consecrated it as such. I was stuck in the middle and could comprehend both viewpoints, even though I was sympathetic to Big Joe and upset with the festival official who should, I thought, have moved heaven and earth—and said so to Big Joe, who that night changed his mind and performed on that church porch the next day anyway. And now I’ve just explained the liminality of this experience, for Big Joe and for me as well. But 35 years ago I decided to represent it, indirectly, and for that scholarly audience, in a piece of fiction, a murder mystery narrated not by me or even a stand-in, but by a hard-boiled detective--so that the scholars might experience it vicariously themselves and, if I were successful, assent to that liminal position and connect it with their own liminal experiences.
    I’m not sure if the story that I submitted to this journal will be as effective. It’s much more a made-up product of my imagination than the story I wrote about the festival. It’s about a bird watcher—but then I don’t want to explain it or try to interpret it here, now. We’ll see if it can be contextualized in that special issue. As faithful readers of this blog will have guessed, it has to do with bird song, with presence, and with co-presence; and in more ways than one it’s about connecting with communities. I think I'll leave it there, for now.