Foregrounding the Subjective in Leiris, Lévi-Strauss, and Malinowski
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7798528Keywords:
Autobiography, subjectivity, anthropology, Leiris, Lévi-Strauss, MalinowskiAbstract
This essay is concerned with the ways in which aspects of anthropology’s historical struggle with subjectivity and language, as explored by Clifford Geertz in Works and Lives, is mirrored in revealing ways in Michel Leiris’ approach to his singular autobiographical project, The Rules of the Game. While conventional wisdom suggests that anthropology and autobiography have little in common, I aim to make clear how the role of author-subjectivity in Leiris is foregrounded in much the same way Lévi-Strauss does in Tristes Tropiques. The essay’s second part studies how Bronislaw Malinowski’s corpus reveals a similar dynamic. I aim to show how such a foregrounding of subjectivity, rather than obscuring the objects or subjects of study, is a means of getting closer to them.
References
Beaujour, Michel. “Michel Leiris: Ethnography or Self-Portrayal? Review Essay of Sulfur 15, Featuring New Translations of Michel Leiris’s Work.” Cultural Anthropology 2, no. 4 (1987): 470–480.
Clarck-Taoua, Phyllis. “In Search of New Skin: Michel Leiris’s L’Afrique fantôme.” Cahiers d’études africaines 167 (2002): 479–498. http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/153.
Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Clifford, James and George E. Marcus. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.
Geertz, Clifford. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Translated by John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. New York: Penguin Classics, 2012.
Leiris, Michel. Phantom Africa. Translated by Brent Hayes Edwards. New York: Seagull Books, 2017.
Leiris, Michel. The Rules of the Game: Volume 2: Scraps. Translated by Lydia Davis. New Haven, MA: Yale University Press, 2017.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Translated by Norbert Guterman. London: The Athlone Press, 1989.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge, 2005.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. “Baloma; the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 46 (1916): 353–430.
Polier, Nicole and William Roseberry. “Tristes Tropes: Post-Modern Anthropologists Encounter the Other and Discover Themselves.” Economy and Society 18, no. 2 (May 1989): 245–264.
Purdy, Jann. “Ethnographic Devices in Modern French Autobiography: Michel Leiris and Annie Ernaux.” Pacific Coast Philology 42, no. 1 (2007): 24–36.
Razinsky, Liran. “Psychoanalysis and Autobiography: Leiris, Freud and the Obstacle to Self-Knowledge. Journal of Modern Literature 44, no. 1 (Fall 2020): 129–147.
Starn, Orin. “Writing Culture At 25: Special Editor’s Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 3 (2012): 411–416.
Thompson, Christina A. “Anthropology's Conrad: Malinowski in the Tropics and What He Read.” The Journal of Pacific History 30, no. 1 (1995): 53–75. DOI: 10.1080/00223349508572783.
Wayne, Helena. “Bronislaw Malinowski: The Influence of Various Women on His Life and Works.” American Ethnologist 12, no. 3 (August 1985): 529-540.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
