Deep ethnography

Violence and words in Argentina

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2261603
AutoresE Van Roekel (0000-0001-5180-666X, Social and Cultural Anthropology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume50
Fascículo2
Páginas223-235
Data de publicação2023-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.13141
OpenAlexW4327930847
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas39

Studying atrocities poses many challenges for ethnographers, not least of which is how to represent violent experiences, which often exceed articulation. The atrocities perpetrated during the military dictatorship in Argentina are no exception. Yet, during my fieldwork in Buenos Aires, I found that the violence forcefully surfaced in many ethnographic encounters, as a result of my having accidentally absorbed my interlocutors' psychoanalytic reasoning into my ethnographic praxis. Everyday psychoanalytic practices used among survivors and the relatives of the disappeared, such as catharsis and working through guilt, filtered through ongoing self-reflections and served a crucial role in my emerging understanding of an Argentine "ethics of feelings." I couple this shared psychoanalytic praxis with creative prose as one integral way of practicing an ethnography of violence. Communicating through words that instill rather than explain the vexed feelings engages readers with the indeterminateness of violence and psychic "depths" in Argentina. This way of doing anthropology is what I call deep ethnography-an emergent form of sensing, talking, thinking, and writing about feelings

Aesthetics · Articulation (sociology · Catharsis · Dictatorship · Epistemology · Ethnography · Feeling · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social Psychology