The Outsider

The practice of ethnography relegates the anthropologist to an interstitial space of belonging, even when the anthropologist is of the community. This experience is not unique to anthropology, as anyone living a life of intersectionality faces competing claims of communal membership, but what is it about the act of observing with distance that turns us into outsiders? This story is inspired by this intersectionality, twice framed, centered on Kathir, a man who belongs between several worlds: the village and town, Hindu and Muslim, dreams and lethargy, youth and adulthood. That he is also the interpreter and the assistant to an anthropologist appends an additional layer of interstitiality, because such middlemen technicians are often elided in the ethnographic narrative. Consequently, this fictional narrative explores themes of belonging and intersectionality, both in terms of anthropology as well as the subject of anthropology, everyday life

Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Everyday life · Hinduism · Interpreter · Intersectionality · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Subject (documents · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora · Religious Studies