ETHNOGRAPHIES AS TEXTS marcus and cushman:

Good evening/morning to you all. As we have read, the Marcus/Cushman article delves into themes we discussed last session:  writing of/and ethnography.  To me, this article frames the problems of interpretation (of the reader and the writer) and representation of the "Other" in ethnography in an interesting and perhaps a more comprehensible form.

I know we are limited for our in-class discussion of the subject due to the films we will be watching, so I'm going to bring up just a couple of issues that we can hopefully discuss.

Let's talk about dispersed authority and  us-them vs. me-them.


One way that experimental ethnographic writing can break from the previous models - the ethnographic realism - is through what Marcus/Cushman describe (through Clifford) as dispersed authority.  "Dispersed authority is the attempt to overcome the domestication of ethnographic text by the controlling author through the reconciliation that knowledge of other forms of life involves several de facto authors who should have narrative presence in ethnographies".  This would open the ethnography from "a single dominant authority" to a text that would incorporate multiple realities, including the publishing of "native texts".  What are the problems with this methodology?  Can the native voice be written in an ethnography?  Can "dispersed authority" ultimately be achieved in ethnography?  (pp. 43-44)

Much of what the article is speaking to is the way the writer constructs authority in the ethnography.  This is done through many techniques but from what I gather is basically through the manner the writer can express fieldwork experience in writing (of the ethnography) to the reader. A writer has an audience is mind and this shapes the way one writes.  It is a synthesis of interpretation on the part of the anthropologist and the interpretation on the part of the reader.  ".. Ethnographies have been punctuated with explicit us-them differences, in which the "us" is monolithically referred to as the West... and is contrasted to the 'them', which is the specific village, group or culture as subject of the ethnography"(p. 49).
Experimental ethnographies have shifted to a "me-them" form of contrast.  What does Marcus/Cushman mean by this and how does this reposition the reader of ethnographies? 

See you in class.
Christopher