Perspectives on Embodiment: The Uses of Narrativity in Ethnographic Writing

AbstractTake as pivotal in anthropological discourse the invention of the category of the Other. Once invented, the category conjures up another realm, a realm inhabited by the Other and estranged from the realm of the self. Ethnographic writings are then constructed to get access to the Other. At issue, then, are how realms of experience are constellated with respect to each other, how they communicate, and how they coalesce. One name for these realm relations is dialogism. Under a dialogic description, the boundaries between self and Other become blurred, along with the boundaries between the universes of discourse they inhabit. Eth-nographic writings formulate relationships between realms in terms of conven-tions of perspective and voice. These conventions are anchored in the body. In particular, a hierarchy of modalities of perception informs a social scientific epistemology. In this article, the realm status of self and Other in anthropological discourse is investigated in three perspectives: the objective, the subjective, and what I call the intersubjective. Problems of access turn out to be artifacts of our invention of the category of the Other. (Ethnographic Writing)