Functionalists Write II
Weird Empathy in Malinowski's Trobriand Ethnographies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2430641 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leo Coleman (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 973-1002 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/anq.2017.0058 |
| OpenAlex | W2787457140 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 20 |
Offered as a sequel of sorts to James Boon's "Functionalists Write, too," this essay examines themes of personhood and aesthetic knowledge in Bronislaw Malinowski's ethnographies, Argonauts of the Western Pacific and Coral Gardens and their Magic. Focused on the texts and their formal procedures, this analysis highlights moments where Malinowski stages his own empathetic identification with Trobriand forms of life. I argue that the representation of identification as a "falling back" into reality as objective alterity, is an important trope in Malinowski's descriptive apparatus. Malinowski's prose produces a doubling of consciousness in the effort to grasp a "real" that traduces Western habits and categories of perception. A close reading of key moments in Malinowski's Trobriand ethnographies leads to a comparison of the functionalist representation of this "other" reality with modernist art, particularly cubism; this comparison is employed to illuminate the ongoing theoretical power of Malinowski's methodological experiments
Aesthetics · Alterity · Art · Emic and etic · Epistemology · Ethnography · Literature · MAGIC (telescope) · Personhood · Politics · Representation · Representation (politics) · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
Man and Culture
Other tribes, other scribes
The ethnographer's magic and other essays in the history of anthropology
Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
Coral Gardens and Their Magic
A Companion to Moral Anthropology
The Gift
Malinowski between Two Worlds
The Mystery to a Solution
Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality
Modernist Anthropology
Crucible or Centrifuge
Functionalists write, too
The Predicament of Culture
Further thoughts on sylvan thinking
Beyond the suffering subject
What Color Is the Sacred
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |