Contaminations and Ethnographic Fictions Southern Crossings |
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Author:
| Hemer, Oscar |
Series title: | Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-3-030-34924-0 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2020 |
Publisher: | Springer International Publishing AG
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Imprint: | Palgrave Macmillan |
Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $79.99USD $69.99 |
Book Description:
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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...
More Description
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.