I watched Through Navajo Eyes before reading the assigned articles and had a lot of questions that, for the most part, were answered by the readings. I thought the films were beautiful and like Maureen wondered why silent black and white film was chosen as it gives the films a certain feel that I think needs to be taken into account when looking at them as autoethnographic.
I think they were incredible to watch because of their beauty but also because of each film was so different from the next. They made me want to give everyone a video camera and see what they could come up with. For instance, "Intrepid Shadows" stood out to me as the most abstract of the five(I think there were five... two on one tape?) films. I don't think in it makes sense in any way to argue that these five films constitute a complete ethnography of the Navajo people, but I think it is probably better to think of anthropological studies as just pieces or small recordings from a culture rather than subscribing to the camp of attempting to understand an entire people by interpreting a two month visit with them.
I also thought the question of what can fall under the canopy of autoethnographic was in interesting one. As Pooja wrote, according to Mary Louise Pratt...
"if ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations."
I think that these films may be an example of the beginnings of autoethnography, but that's such a tricky thing to really define. How can these texts ever really be autoethnographic? Through Navajo Eyes was a project that was conceived by ethnographers and carried out by them. Even their involvement in teaching the Navajo people involved in the project to use video cameras can be seen as problematic. I think it may have been Daniella who mentioned in class during one of our discussions that problem of technology in autoethnography. Unless two cultures who were matched technologically trade autoethnographies it's hard to really call the films essentially comissioned by Western anthropologists autoethnographies.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
First thoughts on the Navajo project
Before the readings I thought that a third person had edited the documentaries and I was really confused, now I know that they tough them how to edit and that makes more sense to me. I took a lot of notes while I watched the films so I would remember and try to analyze what I saw but it really didn’t make a lot of sense to me. There are some beautiful shoots like the one of the book and the wind blowing the pages or the wheel in “Intrepid shadows”.
The readings made me think of my own process of learning to film of how I used to shoot differently when I had less knowledge of visual time, of how I see now some of my old footage and to me it seems more realistic, naïve. I wonder how more or less knowledge would have changed the Navajo Project? Maybe it was better not to teach then that much who knows or maybe you need to know the rules to break them.
I understand the time and the importance of the project but I don’t know anything about their culture and I don’t see how they could draw conclusions out of it. We learn language in our first 5 years of life and even though not everyone is a writer or a good storyteller. I don’t think it was possible with this project to determine “how members of another culture use film” not that was the end or I even know exactly what was the end.
The readings made me think of my own process of learning to film of how I used to shoot differently when I had less knowledge of visual time, of how I see now some of my old footage and to me it seems more realistic, naïve. I wonder how more or less knowledge would have changed the Navajo Project? Maybe it was better not to teach then that much who knows or maybe you need to know the rules to break them.
I understand the time and the importance of the project but I don’t know anything about their culture and I don’t see how they could draw conclusions out of it. We learn language in our first 5 years of life and even though not everyone is a writer or a good storyteller. I don’t think it was possible with this project to determine “how members of another culture use film” not that was the end or I even know exactly what was the end.
Notes on Week 5 materials on "Autoethnography"
Dear all:
Since we didn't have a chance to meet today, here is some info to help contextualize the link between the Through Navajo Eyes project from 1966 (which you're blogging about) and the readings on Indigenous Video Movement which would follow in the 1970s-1990s (which you'll be reading for Wednesday):
It's important that we think historically about the Navajo Project and the Indigenous Video Movement, and situate them as products of specific historical, political and technological events:
The Navajo Project is considered by many (and indeed declares itself) to be the originator of the model of "handing over the camera to others". When thinking about Worth and Adair's research objectives, do keep in mind that this project predates the "poststructuralist" turn in ethnography (Marcus-Cushman, Fabian) by 20 years. It also predates the emergence of Screen/Film Theory as a discipline and "visual anthropology" as a sub-field of ethnography with devoted conferences and journals. The Navajo Project, along with the "participatory ethnography" method of the filmmaker Jean Rouch in the 1950s played an important role in legitimizing the practices of "shared anthropology" and also in legitimizing film as an object of academic study.
The Navajo Project was also an important moment in the history of the "politics of representation" -- "culture" would become a keyword in the 1970s and onward, and with the emergence of cultural studies, poststructuralism, and discourses of multiculturalism, "diversity" would also become a major academic buzzword in the 1980s and onward. So before designating the project as "racist," we need to keep its historical context in mind.
A series of events intervene between the Navajo Project and the Indigenous Video Movement, which would adopt the "autoethnographic" (more on this below) model in the 1970s and onward. One major event involved the postcolonial movements toward self-determination, and the radicalization of the academy in the 1960s, all of which led up to the poststructuralist turn in anthropology in the 1980s.
The 1970s and 80s also saw some largescale changes in the global dissemination and penetration of mass media. One important development was the emergence of VIDEO technology in the form of cheap, portable, and user-friendly camcorders. 16mm (used in the Navajo project) and 8mm were popular as amateur filmmaking technologies before then, but there was no real "equivalent" of video until video. Broadcast TV and VCR technology were another major and aggressively marketed force--there was a lot of excitement in the late 1970s and 80s, well into the 90s, around public access TV, pirate radio, community TV, alternative video, guerilla TV, deep dish TV etc. While on the one hand this has been described by some scholars as an intensification of what was felt to be "American imperialism" in the form of syndicated American TV and film programming, there was simultaneously the possibility, others like Frota and Faye Ginsburg argued, of having locally produced media from remote places no one had even heard from before, at a relatively affordable rate.
The Frota piece should evidence this sense of celebration and excitement around the new and relatively democratic-seeming possibilities surrounding video--these rapid technological changes were thought to have a real potential for transforming representational politics. Indigenous Video was felt to be a change both at the level of the economic base and the ideological superstructure; hence the emphasis on providing access to "others" to the means of production of discourse. Technological changes in media have obviously happened very quickly since then, with the emergence of digital technologies, social networking, which we're not really going to get into. But the Indigenous Video Movement should give you a picture of the excitement around "democratic social media" at a moment well before Web 2.0.
But in order to critically examine the phenomenon of Indigenous Video on Wednesday, we need to consider what kinds of assumptions it made about the relationship between media and political change. When reading, try to consider what aspects of the Navajo Project's research interests Indigenous Video scholars like Frota want to turn away from, and the stakes of the same. How does Rachel Moore critique this? How are the aims and problematics of the Through Navajo Eyes project and Indigenous Video distinct from each other?
Finally, here is some background on the term "autoethnography," which is used to describe this week's materials on the syllabus:
This term is used differently by different scholars. The sense in which I've used it is derived from the scholar Mary Louise Pratt, who coined the neologism "autoethnography" in her seminar critique of European travel-writing: Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992). She describes autoethnography as follows: "if ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations." Pratt's understanding of autoethnography, which emphasizes transculturation, hybridity, and ideological struggle in cross-cultural representation, provides a theoretically sophisticated rubric through which to revisit the impetus behind Worth and Adair's notion of "biodocumentary" in Through Navajo Eyes. How does the discourse of Indigenous Video scholars like Frota dovetail with or depart from Pratt's understanding of autoethnography?
A less predominant use of autoethnography is the use of the term as a shorthand for self-reflection or reflexivity in ethnographic work. For instance Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner propose "evocative" or "autobiographical" narration on the part of the ethnographer as a postmodern strategy for challenging devices of "ethnographic realism" like empirical evidence, self-present voice, and coherent subjectivity.
Rey Chow (who we'll read next week) has recently appropriated the notion of autoethnography in her book Primitive Passions (1995) to describe situations where cultural or ethnic "others" engage in an act of self-othering or self-orientalization in a bid to enter into a profitable situation of exchange with the West. She argues this is done by drawing on marginalized or deviant groups within the other culture, and reifying those groups' subalternity as a means of rejuvenating and modernizing the image of the dominant social groups. Chow locates this self-orientalizing tendency as the flipside of the liberatory impulse of autoethnography, whose advocates typically assume that something in a state of repression needs to be "set free" or "liberated".
Since we didn't have a chance to meet today, here is some info to help contextualize the link between the Through Navajo Eyes project from 1966 (which you're blogging about) and the readings on Indigenous Video Movement which would follow in the 1970s-1990s (which you'll be reading for Wednesday):
It's important that we think historically about the Navajo Project and the Indigenous Video Movement, and situate them as products of specific historical, political and technological events:
The Navajo Project is considered by many (and indeed declares itself) to be the originator of the model of "handing over the camera to others". When thinking about Worth and Adair's research objectives, do keep in mind that this project predates the "poststructuralist" turn in ethnography (Marcus-Cushman, Fabian) by 20 years. It also predates the emergence of Screen/Film Theory as a discipline and "visual anthropology" as a sub-field of ethnography with devoted conferences and journals. The Navajo Project, along with the "participatory ethnography" method of the filmmaker Jean Rouch in the 1950s played an important role in legitimizing the practices of "shared anthropology" and also in legitimizing film as an object of academic study.
The Navajo Project was also an important moment in the history of the "politics of representation" -- "culture" would become a keyword in the 1970s and onward, and with the emergence of cultural studies, poststructuralism, and discourses of multiculturalism, "diversity" would also become a major academic buzzword in the 1980s and onward. So before designating the project as "racist," we need to keep its historical context in mind.
A series of events intervene between the Navajo Project and the Indigenous Video Movement, which would adopt the "autoethnographic" (more on this below) model in the 1970s and onward. One major event involved the postcolonial movements toward self-determination, and the radicalization of the academy in the 1960s, all of which led up to the poststructuralist turn in anthropology in the 1980s.
The 1970s and 80s also saw some largescale changes in the global dissemination and penetration of mass media. One important development was the emergence of VIDEO technology in the form of cheap, portable, and user-friendly camcorders. 16mm (used in the Navajo project) and 8mm were popular as amateur filmmaking technologies before then, but there was no real "equivalent" of video until video. Broadcast TV and VCR technology were another major and aggressively marketed force--there was a lot of excitement in the late 1970s and 80s, well into the 90s, around public access TV, pirate radio, community TV, alternative video, guerilla TV, deep dish TV etc. While on the one hand this has been described by some scholars as an intensification of what was felt to be "American imperialism" in the form of syndicated American TV and film programming, there was simultaneously the possibility, others like Frota and Faye Ginsburg argued, of having locally produced media from remote places no one had even heard from before, at a relatively affordable rate.
The Frota piece should evidence this sense of celebration and excitement around the new and relatively democratic-seeming possibilities surrounding video--these rapid technological changes were thought to have a real potential for transforming representational politics. Indigenous Video was felt to be a change both at the level of the economic base and the ideological superstructure; hence the emphasis on providing access to "others" to the means of production of discourse. Technological changes in media have obviously happened very quickly since then, with the emergence of digital technologies, social networking, which we're not really going to get into. But the Indigenous Video Movement should give you a picture of the excitement around "democratic social media" at a moment well before Web 2.0.
But in order to critically examine the phenomenon of Indigenous Video on Wednesday, we need to consider what kinds of assumptions it made about the relationship between media and political change. When reading, try to consider what aspects of the Navajo Project's research interests Indigenous Video scholars like Frota want to turn away from, and the stakes of the same. How does Rachel Moore critique this? How are the aims and problematics of the Through Navajo Eyes project and Indigenous Video distinct from each other?
Finally, here is some background on the term "autoethnography," which is used to describe this week's materials on the syllabus:
This term is used differently by different scholars. The sense in which I've used it is derived from the scholar Mary Louise Pratt, who coined the neologism "autoethnography" in her seminar critique of European travel-writing: Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992). She describes autoethnography as follows: "if ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations." Pratt's understanding of autoethnography, which emphasizes transculturation, hybridity, and ideological struggle in cross-cultural representation, provides a theoretically sophisticated rubric through which to revisit the impetus behind Worth and Adair's notion of "biodocumentary" in Through Navajo Eyes. How does the discourse of Indigenous Video scholars like Frota dovetail with or depart from Pratt's understanding of autoethnography?
A less predominant use of autoethnography is the use of the term as a shorthand for self-reflection or reflexivity in ethnographic work. For instance Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner propose "evocative" or "autobiographical" narration on the part of the ethnographer as a postmodern strategy for challenging devices of "ethnographic realism" like empirical evidence, self-present voice, and coherent subjectivity.
Rey Chow (who we'll read next week) has recently appropriated the notion of autoethnography in her book Primitive Passions (1995) to describe situations where cultural or ethnic "others" engage in an act of self-othering or self-orientalization in a bid to enter into a profitable situation of exchange with the West. She argues this is done by drawing on marginalized or deviant groups within the other culture, and reifying those groups' subalternity as a means of rejuvenating and modernizing the image of the dominant social groups. Chow locates this self-orientalizing tendency as the flipside of the liberatory impulse of autoethnography, whose advocates typically assume that something in a state of repression needs to be "set free" or "liberated".
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Response, "Through Navajo Eyes"
Frankly, I feel the authors of this project took themselves a little seriously.
"A working hypothesis, then, for our study was that motion picture film, conceived photographed, and sequentially arranged by a people such as the Navajo, would reveal aspects of coding, cognition, and values that may be inhibited, not observable, or not analyzable when the investigation is totally dependent on verbal exchange ..." (page 28)
It appears to me they set up production so they could attempt to crack the subsequent films like some sort of code.
But then, who is to say a culture has a monolithic aesthetic code? After spending the past year in a program in which 14 people were making individual films, I can say after every screening there were 14 opinions about what we had just seen. Could there be a book titled "Through American Eyes?"---or why do we assume our own perspectives to be more nuanced than those of populations "such as the Navajo"? (And I note they too own "American eyes.")
Later they do draw conclusions from the construction of various shots: For instance, there are few close-ups of faces because of the Navajo respect for privacy.
But this is a value that they were already aware of, and so I'm unsure how the filming has necessarily brought out the "inhibited, not observable."
Viewing the films brought up several important questions in my mind: Why did they decide not to include any diegetic or non-diegetic sound? Why did they use black and white film, when it was the 1960s? Who did filmmakers intend their audience to be?
I can't say these were particularly 'enjoyable' shorts to view, nor did I leave with a greater understanding of the Navajo. Though I don't think this was necessarily the point: They seem created more for anthropological analysis than for general audience consumption.
This in itself is an audacious equation: Rather than studying objects of cultural expression, the ethnographers prompt creation of non-traditional objects and then analyze them for cultural meaning.
While the authors did admit to being haunted by the question of "why" they were making the films, they never seemed to seriously doubt their "hypothesis" of what these films would ultimately reveal.
I'm not convinced the results are particularly revelatory.
-posted by Maureen
RESPONSE to Povinelli/Week 4
In response to Jen’s question on the role of Ethnography in discrediting indigenous perspectives or creating an ethnocentric binary between indigenous societies and the western world i would say that is an age old question that has it pros and cons and one that cannot be simplified easily, as I’m sure many ethnographers are still grappling with this question. The field of Ethnography has and continues to serve as a tool in better understanding the “natives” or the “other’s” experience and has become, in effect, the description of indigenous non-European peoples by Euro-Americans, which in short are descriptions of so-called primitive people, thus creating the ethnocentric binary and gap between them. However, its danger lies when the Ethnographer approaches his/her field of research with pre conceived notions and attempts to reconfirm them by fixation and overemphasis of such notions. This is what I believe leads to misinformation or lack of concrete information. However, my feeling is that they should be praised for trying rather than be blamed for failing. In Povinelli’s cases, she delves into the heart of the Aboriginal community and her work challenges Western notions of “productive labor” and longstanding ideas about the role of culture in subsistence economies. Her work and analysis shows how everyday activities shape aboriginal identity and provide cultural meaning. In addition, raises serious questions and issues about the validity of Western theories about labor and their impact on the identity of the community.
Ethnographers have a responsibility towards the people and culture being studied. There will be mishaps along the way, but self awareness and constant updates on ethical human research and c is vital in preserving the native’s story and transporting it to the rest of the world.
Ethnographers have a responsibility towards the people and culture being studied. There will be mishaps along the way, but self awareness and constant updates on ethical human research and c is vital in preserving the native’s story and transporting it to the rest of the world.
Response to Through Navajo Eyes
This film explores the experiment with a culture reluctant and unfamiliar to technology. A trio of anthropologists and ethnographers set out to film this indigenous population along with two other groups in Brazil. Preserving their culture identity without the power of film destroying it, the group does get a look into this culture and their way of life in the “modern society”.
Looking at this film I was interested in the way the Navajo people kept their original culture roots even though technology was on their land. To clarify in Monica Frota’s reading, Frota explains, “Because the Navajo did not find film to be of any particular relevance to themselves, the project fell outside the most fundamental parameter that defines the existence of indigenous media experience”. From my understanding, the ethnographer filmed this culture in their familiar setting doing everyday tasks without the use of technology disturbing their lives or the environment around them.
Further, even though this film was an experiment through indigenous cultures the main question of keeping the line of culture identity and self-representation throughout the whole film. Language is not the issue with the group; moreover it is the approach and understanding of why ethnographers wanted to study this culture. They are not out to “prove” anything, they are out to find a culture and to see how they experience technology through their eyes, as well as are that we take for granted, sometimes everyday and exploring that phenomenon further.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
RESPONSE to Povinelli/Week 4
In response to Erin’s question about the relationship between the bricoleur, the hunter-gatherer, and the gleaner – I found myself thinking of this question in terms of the individual’s relationship with his/her environment.
As we’ve discussed, Lévi-Strauss posits that since the Bricoleur is forced to make do with whatever is at hand, his universe is “closed.” The Bricoleur’s productivity is thus one of appropriation. By contrast, engineers have the ability (the “transformative power”) to create new tools and materials for specific purposes. Their world is therefore “open.”
For Povinelli, the Belyuen’s interactions with the land around them are not only productive, but world-forming in a broader sense. Though the labor of hunter-gatherers has been often portrayed as “unable to coagulate fully in things or landscapes,” the intentional, appropriative activity of hunting-gathering challenges and ultimately changes the meaning of productive action in Western theories of culture and society. “For Belyuens, hunting gathering is an activity and a discourse; it is a form of production in the fullest cultural and economic sense of this term…”
The gleaners in Varda’s film posit yet another model of productivity from the bricoleur and the hunter-gatherer. I was particularly interested by the characters in the film for whom gleaning was not in any way associated with their survival, but a conscious and intentional choice to reject the world of capitalist production/consumption. The michelin chef, the junkyard artist, the man in the rubber boots (a kind of urban hunter-gatherer) – all intentionally appropriated the waste of others to create new materials and tools that never existed before. In this fashion, they further complicate the bricoleur/engineer distinction by transforming – or ”opening up” -- their worlds according to their own rules of appropriation and reuse.
As we’ve discussed, Lévi-Strauss posits that since the Bricoleur is forced to make do with whatever is at hand, his universe is “closed.” The Bricoleur’s productivity is thus one of appropriation. By contrast, engineers have the ability (the “transformative power”) to create new tools and materials for specific purposes. Their world is therefore “open.”
For Povinelli, the Belyuen’s interactions with the land around them are not only productive, but world-forming in a broader sense. Though the labor of hunter-gatherers has been often portrayed as “unable to coagulate fully in things or landscapes,” the intentional, appropriative activity of hunting-gathering challenges and ultimately changes the meaning of productive action in Western theories of culture and society. “For Belyuens, hunting gathering is an activity and a discourse; it is a form of production in the fullest cultural and economic sense of this term…”
The gleaners in Varda’s film posit yet another model of productivity from the bricoleur and the hunter-gatherer. I was particularly interested by the characters in the film for whom gleaning was not in any way associated with their survival, but a conscious and intentional choice to reject the world of capitalist production/consumption. The michelin chef, the junkyard artist, the man in the rubber boots (a kind of urban hunter-gatherer) – all intentionally appropriated the waste of others to create new materials and tools that never existed before. In this fashion, they further complicate the bricoleur/engineer distinction by transforming – or ”opening up” -- their worlds according to their own rules of appropriation and reuse.
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