Between Anthropology and Literature: Interdisciplinary Discourse

193 Pages·2002·0.71 MB·English

by  R. De Angelis

Between Anthropology and
Literature
In this original volume, literature becomes both a creation and creator of culture
with anthropology as the observer/reader/interpreter. The dual role of literature
and the repositioning of anthropology allow for a multiplicity of possibilities in
reading, writing about, and interpreting people, places and perspectives, real or
imagined. Crossing the traditional boundaries of the canon, the authors consider
fiction, poetry, and drama and cover an array of literary and anthropological concerns
from the more palpable ethnographic studies to the liminal discussions of ritual. In
an exciting new approach, they bring together in a common space those elements of
both disciplines that remained disparate only because they remained separate.
The collection suggests that these two core disciplines are not static, bounded
entities but instead fluid sites of shifting cultural currents and academic interests;
that neither literature nor anthropology is a unified, self-contained discipline; that
critical discussions in each field do not emanate from a single center but originate
from a variety of sources and intersect at various, sometimes non-contiguous, points.
Most importantly, the essays conclude that the origins, sources, and intersections of
the two disciplines are constantly revised, reconceived, or replaced, breaching
boundaries that lead not to chaos but rather to creativity and new possibilities of
understanding and explicating texts, both literary and anthropological.
The authors of this volume all address the ways in which the language of social
science fuses with that of the literary imagination and contributes to the ongoing
debate on the merits of interdisciplinarity. The essays fit excellently with the current
interest in cultural studies and challenge students, both undergraduate and graduate,
to see texts not as isolated artifacts, but as parts of a larger global and cultural matrix.
Rose De Angelis is Associate Professor of English at Marist College and was editor
of the book series Anthropology and Literature from 1996–2001.

Between Anthropology
and Literature
Interdisciplinary discourse
Edited by Rose De Angelis
London and New York
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2002 Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-21805-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-27364-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–28714–6 (Print Edition)
In memory of Fortuna De Angelis (1931–1997)

Contents vii
Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
PART I
Anthropology and literature as ethnography 9
1 The ethnographic novel: finding the insider’s voice 11
JANET TALLMAN
2 “Splendid disciplines”: American Indian women’s
ethnographic literature 23
ROSEANNE L. HOEFEL
3 A woman’s work is never done: business and family politics in
Umbertina and “Rosa in Television Land” 43
ROSE DE ANGELIS
PART II
Anthropology, ritual and literature 55
4 Rituals to cope with change in women’s lives: Judith Minty’s
Dancing the Fault 57
JANET RUTH HELLER
5 The subversion of ritual in the theatre of Paloma Pedrero 69
SUSAN P. BERARDINI
viii Contents
6 “And love thee after”: necrophilia on the Jacobean stage 82
RICHARD W. GRINNELL
7 Staging the social drama of Maghrebi women in the theatre
of Fatima Gallaire 99
JAN BERKOWITZ GROSS
PART III
Anthropology and literature as travelogue 119
8 Oriental imprisonments: Habaneras as seen by nineteenth-
century women travel writers 121
LIZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT
9 Travelers possessed: generic hybrids and the Caribbean 133
IVETTE ROMERO-CESAREO
10 Anthropology and literature: of bedfellows and illegitimate
offspring 158
MARIO CESAREO
Index 175
List of contributors ix
Contributors
Susan P. Berardini is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Pace University. Her research
currently focuses on contemporary Spanish theatre, Spanish cultural studies,
metatheatre, and the function of ritual in theatre. She has recently published “El
toreo como via de la identidad en Invierno de luna alegre” for Iberoamericana in
Madrid, “Huellas mitológicas en el teatro de Paloma Pedrero” in Gestos, and “La
isla amarilla: (Re)vision and Subversion of the Discovery” in a collection entitled
A Twice-Told Tale.
Mario Cesareo is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Vassar College. His
published work includes theatre semiotics, Argentine novelistic production under
militarized neoliberalism, Latin American cinema under globalization, Black
Liberation Theology, and nineteenth-century slave narratives of the English
Caribbean. His book, Cruzados, mártires, y beatos: emplazamientos del cuerpo colonial,
on colonial cultural studies was published by Purdue University Press in 1995.
He is currently co-editing a book on the poetics of social movements.
Rose De Angelis is Associate Professor of English at Marist College and was editor
of the book series Anthropology and Literature. Her interests include Ethnic and
American Literature and Gender Studies. Her work on the cultural construction
of the Italian female in fiction has appeared in Forum Italicum and Italian Americana.
A recent article on the sociocultural impact of names, “‘What’s in a name?’:
Conflicted Identities in Black and White,” was published in Shades of Black and
White.
Richard W. Grinnell is Assistant Professor of English at Marist College. His recent
work on the relationship between drama and the witchcraft persecutions of the
late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries in England has been published in
Essays in Theatre, Studies in the Humanities, and The Upstart Crow. He is currently
finishing a book entitled English Demonology and Renaissance Drama: The Politics of
Fear.
Jan Berkowitz Gross is Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages at Grinnell
College where she teaches courses in French language and literature, contem-
porary francophone cultures, and theatre. Recent work includes a study on the
depiction of violence and trauma by French women playwrights and multiple