Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology. A British Perspective

Craith, Máiréad Nic; Kockel, Ullrich

doi:10.3917/ethn.144.0689

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…From Rapport's perspective, Foster's novels were as true to reality as Rapport's own fieldwork. Indeed, the combination of fieldwork and literature seemed essential to provide a holistic picture of British culture and society (Nic Craith and Kockel 2014). In a similar vein, Richard Handler and David Segal were attracted to the Jane Austen's novels.…”

Section: Literature As Resourcementioning

confidence: 99%

Literary Anthropology

Craith

Fournier

2016

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This special issue on anthropology and literature invited proposals for original contributions focusing on relationships between anthropology and literature. We were especially interested in the following questions: what role does literature play in anthropology? Can literature be considered as ethnography? What are the relationships between anthropology and literature, past and present? Are anthropology and anthropological motives used in literature? We also looked for critical readings of writers as anthropologists and critical readings of anthropologists as writers. Moreover, we wanted to assess the influence of literature on the invention of traditions, rituals and cultural performances. All these different questions and topics are clearly connected with the study of literacy, illiteracy and popular culture. They also lead to questions regarding potential textual strategies for ethnography and the possibilities of bringing together the field of anthropology (more associated with the social sciences) and literary studies (traditionally part of the humanities).As a result of our call for articles we received more than twenty-five proposals, which shows the vitality of the field and its relevance for anthropologists today. Although it was difficult to select from these different proposals, we realised that some of them were more historical while others focused more on the contemporary. Some proposals were more preoccupied with the literary texts themselves while others emphasised the social and cultural contexts in which these texts were written. An important criterion in our selection is the geographic origin of the proposals, as the relationship between anthropology and literature varies according to the national and regional academic traditions. Throughout this volume, we have endeavoured to balance different perspectives and regions, offering a comparative insight on texts and contexts, past and present, in different countries.

show abstract

Section: Literature As Resourcementioning

confidence: 99%

Literary Anthropology

Craith

Fournier

2016

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…I engage the ensuing psychological burden brought about by the encounter with the 'white gaze' (Fanon, 2008). As a complement to the autoethnography, I make use of literary fiction as a method of analysis, in order to highlight the way in which literature can stimulate the formation of analytical insights (see Craith & Kockel, 2014) and, I draw on film. In so doing, I expand on Nirmal Puwar's work on the space invader by manifesting the various modalities and techniques through which a body is kept out of place.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

On being a space invader and the thing around my neck

Abrahams

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents itself as an autoethnographic reflection on my positionality as a veiled, South African Muslim of Cape Malay descent and lower middle class background, attempting to navigate access to white educational space, as part of my doctoral research in Flemish primary schools. I explore what it means to be racialized as ‘other’ whilst also assuming a position of ‘authority’ as researcher, and occupying a particular space (positioned as neutral and secular) as a ‘body out of place’ (Puwar, 2004), in which a symmetry can be seen between myself and those categorised as ‘other’. The aim of this article is to reflect on how this occurs through certain processes, namely: (in)visibilisation; reprimanding; compartmentalisation; and, interpellation. I also reflect on the body of the anthropologist and the idea of the ‘objective researcher’ in order to illuminate how the mechanisms of racialization work. I engage the ensuing psychological burden brought about by the encounter with the ‘white gaze’ (Fanon, 2008). As a complement to the autoethnography, I make use of literary fiction as a method of analysis, in order to highlight the way in which literature can stimulate the formation of analytical insights (see Craith & Kockel, 2014) and, I draw on film.

show abstract

“…Ne bih da na ovom mestu ulazim u dublje teorijsko razmatranje već više puta razmotrenog i diskutovanog, obostrano plodnog, odnosa između antropologije i književnosti (v. npr. Poyatos 1988;De Angelis 2002;Łebkowska 2012;Nic Craith and Kockel 2014;Nic Craith and Fournier 2016;Brandel 2019, i dr.). Istakla bih m išljenje Vita Laterce da od trenutka kada su antropolozi shvatili da fikcionalna, a još više ne-fikcionalna književnost često nudi detaljne etnografske opise, kao i analize društvene realnosti, antropolozi su počeli da literarna dela proučavaju kao vrstu etnografije (Laterza 2007, 124).…”

unclassified

Viennese Hallways in Darko Markov's Bleak Vision

Antonijević

2020

EAP / IEA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper analyzes the novel Twilight in the Viennese Hallway 2 (Old Boska) (2013) by Darko Markov, a migrant-writer from Vienna. The novel describes the way of life and culturological characteristics of Serbian immigrants in Austria through two generations – the gastarbeiter as the older immigrant stratum of migrant workers in the 1970s and 1980s, and the younger, well-educated people who immigrated in the 1990s, fleeing the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the dire economic situation in Serbia due to inflation and international sanctions. Through the seemingly simple storyline about the marital and romantic problems of the protagonist – a young intellectual from Belgrade who arrived in Vienna in the 1990s, the author constructs a dense narrative network of the main character's various experiences, describing the difficulties of adjusting and coping in a foreign country. The protagonist simultaneously comes up against two worlds with different value systems – on the one hand, that of the gastarbeiter, his compatriots, whose way of life, attitudes and behaviors he often finds strange and unacceptable, sometimes even irrational, and on the other hand, the prejudices, intolerance and lack of understanding exhibited by Austrians not only towards him but also towards other immigrants. His path crossing that of various other characters, the protagonist himself undergoes changes in his search for meaning and for his place in a foreign land. In his description of characters and their actions Darko Markov uses the literary technique of realism, relying to a great extent, by his own admission, on real-life persons and events. His mimetic narrative technique can thus be characterized as faction – a blend of fiction and facts, enriched with numerous ethnographic descriptions of the traits, behavior, appearance, speech and value system of the gastarbeiter and other migrants in the Austrian capital. In that sense Markov's novel belongs to the genre of ethnographic prose as it abounds in anthropologically and ethnologically relevant themes and motifs. In a wider sense, the novel belongs to migrant literature defined in terms of the theme, characters and content relating to the life of migrants, and, secondly, the author who is himself an immigrant. The paper first provides a literary-ethographic analysis through the structural elements of its composition – the plot, the characters (attributes, actions and motivation), the narrative time frame and the space that Serbian immigrants in Vienna inhabit and move around in. It then proceeds to analyze through anthropological interpretation some of the novel' motifs and themes, specifically, the problems of ethnic prejudice, integration into the host society, the marginal position of immigrants through two types of marginalization – exterior marginalization in the form of their socio-economic status, and interior marginalization through exoticization and stigmatization, and also the question of language as an important ethnic and cultural marker.

show abstract

Blurring the Boundaries between Literature and Anthropology. A British Perspective

Cited by 9 publications

References 18 publications

Literary Anthropology

Literary Anthropology

On being a space invader and the thing around my neck

Viennese Hallways in Darko Markov's Bleak Vision

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About