Bruises that won't heal

Melancholic identification and other ethnographic hauntings

Bibliographic Data

ID15082133
AuthorsJennifer Biddle (0000-0002-0962-4552, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author), Jennifer Loureide Biddle
Year2002
Volume7
Issue1
Pages96-110
Publication date2002-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMortality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1357-6275 • E-ISSN: 1469-9885
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13576270120102526
OpenAlexW2092865858
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

This paper takes the form of a fictocritical account of a car accident in fieldwork; an accident used to figure the violent end of the intersubjective, the intercorporeal; the irreducible ambiguity of lived relations, and their effects. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Judith Butler, Shoshana Felman and others, the paper traces the uncertain productivity inherent in the 'melancholic' anthropological imperative to know others. There is an exploration of the violence involved in anthropological research and writing that culminates in the sometimes literal and always figurative 'killing-off' of the Other upon whom the ethnographic endeavour depends. This violence is so taken for granted that it is (almost) unspeakable, but its very sublimation necessitates an equally violent refiguring of language. The anthropological project is fuelled by the problematic and productive effects of 'melancholic identifications' - phantasmagorical hauntings by subjects dead and deadened by ethnographic representations

Aesthetics · Ambiguity · Art · Autoethnography · Ethnography · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Literature · Metaphor · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology

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