Contaminations and Ethnographic Fictions
Synopsis
In an unusual merging of academic and literary practices, this volume attempts to identify a form (or forms) that is congenial with the subject of interrogation: the world in transition, with South Africa as the main focal point. Approaching anthropology from the position of the literary writer, Oscar Hemer here takes the reader through a kaleidoscope of perspectives—a stream-of-consciousness understanding of “writing the city” of Johannesburg, embedding ethnography in subjectivity; a challenge to binaries both temporal and gendered in examining the growth of the IT metropolis Bangalore to a combusting mega-city; an auto-ethnographic interweaving of fictional reportage with a close-reading of anthropological and philosophical treatises, including Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger and Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, among others—to interrogate themes of transition, identity, purity and variation in the Western Cape. As the form transcends boundaries to create a methodological hybrid, creolization comes to the fore as a theoretical concept and as cultural practice.
- Copyright:
- 2020 Springer
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- ISBN-13:
- 9783030349257
- Publisher:
- Springer International Publishing
- Date of Addition:
- 2020-05-27T09:50:14Z
- Language:
- English
- Categories:
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.