Poetry and Ethnography

A Dialogical Approach

Bibliographic Data

ID2471809
AuthorsDennis Tedlock (University at Buffalo, State University of New York, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume24
Issue2
Pages155-167
Publication date1999-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology & Humanism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1548-1409 • E-ISSN: 1559-9167
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ahu.1999.24.2.155
OpenAlexW2169124031
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited16

Every act of speech or writing has a poetic dimension. This applies to discourse among ethnograpic others, dialogues between others and ethnographers, and ethnographic speaking and writing. Beginning in the 1930s, anthropologists separated ethnographic issues from linguistic and poetic ones, and the critique of representations has focused on the ethnographic side of the divide. Field encounters are treated as if they took place in a world of pure presence, with representational distortions coming afterwards. Yet one of the most widespread poetic practices among the others calls attention to the lack of transparency in langauge. The dialogical potential of language is used to balance each representation with an alternative representation, producing poetry that is built on a process of translation rather than made to resist translation

Art · Dialogical self · Epistemology · Ethnography · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Sociology · Transparency (behavior · Anthropology · Computer Science · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy