Typewriters, cameras and love affairs
The fateful haunting of Margaret Mead
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20207664 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tara Blake (Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author), Janet Harbord (0000-0002-0581-2193, Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 215-227 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Media Practice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-2753 • E-ISSN: 2040-0926 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1386/jmpr.9.3.215_1 |
| OpenAlex | W2053644345 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
In the 1930s anthropologist Margaret Mead added photography and film to her written ethnographic method. Working in Bali with her third husband, Gregory Bateson, Mead intended the photographic to provide an accurate record of a culture. But the photographic failed to re-produce Bali. Instead, it actively produced the Balinese as ghostly subjects that escaped capture. In adding photographic technologies to her method, Mead enacted a supplementation, in Derrida's terms an addition that changes the nature of the original subject. In supplementing the written word, Mead exposed a lack in the original method of inscription, a weakness that had always been there. A series of correspondences are drawn between this case study from anthropology and the contemporary addition of audio-visual practice to written PhDs. In the process of acquiring institutional recognition, the supplement (audio-visual practice) provokes a crisis for the original term (the written doctoral thesis)
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Audio visual · Ethnography · Library science · Multimedia · Photography · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Photography and Visual Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |