A Genre of Failed Novelists and Poets

Exploring Ethnography through a Narrative Lens

Bibliographic Data

ID2968832
AuthorsNoha Fikry (0000-0002-6213-5045, University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume47
Issue1
Pages55-68
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology & Humanism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1548-1409 • E-ISSN: 1559-9167
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anhu.12356
OpenAlexW3199359396
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited23

Guided by Ruth Behar's provocation to explore how ethnography was born out of the writings of novelists and poets and building on a special issue of Anthropology and Humanism on the art of ethnography published in 2007, I explore the histories, potentials, and boundaries of ethnography as a genre and craft. Relying on narrative theory as a resource that can enrich ethnography, I provide a close reading of several ethnographies, focusing on issues of character, time, and plot. I argue that a focus on narrative helps ethnographers put in conversation multiple selves' shifting roles in ethnography. Narrative provides tools to put in dynamic dialogue these different selves, animate our texts, and write more accessible and enjoyable ethnographies. On another level, consulting with narrative theory is a reminder to claim all our ancestors and take pride in ethnography as a queer genre whose strength lies in its openings and porous boundaries

Aesthetics · Art · Autoethnography · Craft · Ethnography · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Pride · Reading (process · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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