Ethnographic Fiction: Anthropology's Hidden Literary Style

Nancy J. Schmidt
African Studies Program Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405

SUMMARY Anthropologists have written fiction based on their field work for as long as they have written ethnography. Yet this fiction, either as an anthropological literary style or as a facet of the history of the discipline has received little serious consideration. A discussion of the reasons for this lack of attention leads to a review of the fiction of Hilda Kuper, and the review provides the opportunity to underscore the importance of ethnographic fiction both as a literary style and as a significant event in the history of anthropology

the relevance of all of it has been neglected in the history of anthropology. Anthropologists have been writing ethnographic fiction as long as they have been writing ethnography. Adolf Bandelier, Ralph Linton, Elsie Clews Parsons, Edward Spicer, Alexander Leighton, Carleton Coon, and Robert Rattay are some of the anthropologists who wrote ethnographic fiction at the end of the nineteenth century or in the first half of this century. More recently Victor Barnouw, Dan Ingersoll, Michael Harner, D'Arcy McNickle, Robert Brain, Robert Ekvall, and Rosamond Vanderburgh, among others, have published ethnographic fiction. Other anthropologists, including Chris Boehm, Paul Bohannan, Charlotte Neely, and Lewis Langness, have written fiction that has not yet been published. More than sixty English-speaking anthropologists that I am aware of have published ethnographic fiction, yet their short stories, novels, and plays have not been the subject of serious systematic study by anthropologists. Some anthropologists have chosen to hide their ethnographic fiction by writing under pseudonyms. For example, Margaret Field's novel on the Ga, Stormy Dawn (1947), was written under the name of Mark Freshfield, and Philip Drucker's story of his experiences in Mexico, Tropical Frontier (1969), was written under the name of Paul Record. Few anthropologists have openly acknowledged their pseudonyms, as Laura Bohannan did with her pen name of Elenore Bowen. If most anthropologists write fiction under pseudonyms, as George Buelow claims in his dissertation, "The Ethnographic Novel in Africa" (1973: 203), then the number of anthropologists who write ethnographic fiction is very large indeed. Other anthropologists have compartmentalized their ethnographic fiction and their ethnography. Such is the case with John O. Stewart who was a successful writer of such ethnographic novels as Last Cool Days (1971) before he became an anthropologist, but who has not combined his roles as ethnographer and fiction writer, and Oliver LaFarge who left anthropology to be a fiction writer after doing fieldwork in Arizona, New Mexico, and Guatemala. However, LaFarge did record his experiences at Harvard, Tulane, and in the field in the short stories in The Door in the Wall (1965) and in his early autobiography, Raw Material (1945), which provide more insight into the relationship between a writer's anthropological training, personal experience, and fiction than is available for most ethnographic fiction writers. Some ethnographic fiction has been hidden, or perhaps more accurately swept under the rug, by anthropologists who felt that it was inappropriate for consideration as ethnography. Such was the case with Jack Driberg's fiction on the Didinga and Zora Hurston's fiction on Afro-Americans during their lifetimes.

More than twenty years ago Melville Herskovits observed: The humanism in anthropology has been masked by the essentially scientific orientation of the discipline as a whole. It is time we recognize its importance in our research and out theory, I960, 1).

Although graphic and plastic art, music, dance, and oral literature have an acknowledged place in anthropology, written fiction does not. Anthropologists have neglected the study of written fiction in the societies in which they have done fieldwork and have for the most part hidden or ignored fiction written by anthropologists. This essay discusses only ethnographic fiction written by English-speaking anthropologists, rather than the general place of fiction in anthropology. Anthropologists who write in French, German, Portugese, and doubtless other languages also write ethnographic fiction. Ethnographic fiction also is written by nonanthropologists who have lived among other societies or who are members of the societies about which they write. Archaeologists write fiction about archaeology and physical anthropologists write fiction about their fieldwork. This body of anthropological fiction is too large and diverse to be discussed in a short essay, but

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Driberg's short stones. People of the Small Arrow (1930), received rave reviews for their authenticity and sensitivity in over a dozen newspapers and magazines, but in A friar, the only anthropological journal to review them, T. J. A. Yates said, "Although there is much new ethnological material in this book, the fictional form of its presentation, so useful in winning the genetal reader's interest, militates against its use by the anthropologist" (1931:136). Zora Hurston's fiction was not given serious attention by anthropologists during her lifetime, although there was some interest in her collections of AfroAmerican folklore. Even her folklore collections, however, were suspect by both anthropologists and literary critics alike because of Hurston's unique way of blending personal experience, folklore research, and creative writing. In her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston said, "I accept any means at my disposal for working out my destiny" (1942:286). Hurston's fiction was too eclectic for anthropologists to consider within a narrowly defined genre of ethnography. The editors of anthropological journals have helped hide ethnographic fiction from the attention of scholars by refusing to consider it for review. The majority of ethnographic novels with which I am familiar have not been reviewed in anthropological journals, although some of them have been widely reviewed in newspapers and popular magazines. When ethnographic fiction has been reviewed in anthropological journals, some reviewers have refused to review it as fiction and have discussed it only as ethnography,1

thus avoiding the fundamental issue of the relationship between ethnography and fiction and the nature of the truth included in each. Although Robert Redfield (1948) called attention to the relationship between fictional and scientific writing styles in the 1940s, little has been written about ethnographic fiction and its role in the discipline of anthropology until recently. Essays by Clifford Geertz (1980), Lewis Langness and Gey la Frank (1978), Gregory Reck (1983), Stephen Webster (1982), and myself (1981), among others, raise a wide range of issues about the relevance of ethnographic fiction, such as the blurring of genres, the truth included in ethnography and fiction, and the styles of describing others' lives as lived reality. None discusses, however the historical and theoretical significance of fiction in either the conceptualization or writing of ethnography. In view of the neglect of anthropologists to give systematic consideration to ethnographic fiction, to gain a historical perspective of the significance of ethnographic fiction in anthropology and for the develo p m e n t of the g e n r e of e t h n o g r a p h i c and anthropological theory, the context in which each anthropologist writes or wrote ethnographic fiction must be reconstructed. Since few anthropologists have articulated their reasons for writing ethnographic fiction, this will be a difficult task. Hilda Kuper is exceptional among anthropologists who write, or wrote, ethnographic fiction. Kuper began her fieldwork among the Swazi in 1934 and began writing both ethnography and ethnographic fiction about them in the 1930s. Kuper started to publish her short stories in South African cultural journals in the 1940s. Kuper's stories appear alongside stories by such well-known fiction writers as Lionel Abrahams, Nadine Gordimer, and Doris Lessing. Kuper is identified as an anthropologist in the byline of several of the stories. She prefaces some stories by indicating that the characters are fictitious, but the incidents are authentic, and she includes herself as an anthropological observer in others. Each story focuses on one person and his or her experience; it deals with "a person" rather than "the person" as does ethnography (Kuper 1970:ix). The stories deal graphically with common South African life situations: witchcraft in "The Tooth" (nd) and "The Amazement of Namahasha" (1957), the influence of prophets of independent churches in "The Orgy" (1948), racism in "The Lord Will Provide" (1947b), the attractions and hardships of urban labor in "Work Missus" (1943; reprinted 1984), and the tyrany of whites over Africans who live in urban townships in "Boy Without a Job" (1944). Each story is humanly realistic in a way that "standard" ethnography never is.

That Kuper considers her ethnographic fiction to be valuable as anthropology is clearly demonstrated by her contribution of a short story, "Bird of the Storm," to Isaac Schapera's Festschrift. In a preface to the story Kuper (1975) states: Superficially it might appear inappropriate to contribute a short story to the Festschrift of a leading anthropologist, renown fot his scholarly and lucid presentation of facts. But I hope that Professor Schapera will accept this as a tribute to my appreciation of his wider intellectual interest, and to his awareness that there is always an element of fiction in fact and of fact in fiction (1975:221). In the preface to her novel, Bite of Hunger (1965), Kuper also mentions the fusion of fact and fiction in her story: The story that follows is fiction, but fiction re-creates the illusions of life. The characters are known to me alone; their reality is my perception of many people who made my world in Swaziland (1965 np). At a symposium on "Literature and Ethnography" at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting in 1981, Kuper said that the best ethnography she ever wrote was her play, A Witch in My Heart (1970). This is a statement of considerable importance from the author of such ethnographic classics as An African Aristocracy (1947a) and The Swazi (1952). However, Kuper's comments in the introduction to A Witch in My Heart clearly show why as a humanistic anthropologist she felt the need to write ethnographic fiction. When I wtote A Witch in My Heart I was not trying, at least at the conscious level, to interpret a specific situation as an anthropologist. To me the situation was less about witchcraft and more about the heatta symbolic heart reflecting deep human emotionslove, hate, jealousy, hope, and despair. It happened that the people about whom I wrote were Swazi, and among them these emotions were expressed in a particular idiom in which witchcraft was an essential and accepted element, a part of the general order and disorder of life (1970:ix). Kuper contrasts the anthropological literary modes of writing more clearly than most other writers of ethnographic fiction. She emphasizes that an anthropologist must focus on social and not personal relationships.

mitments. Her ideas may change without the criticism of inconsistency and her characters may express conttadictions without evoking acrimonious reviews by scholars of other schools. She need not explicitly distinguish between ideas and emotions and may deliberately use the ambiguity of words to extend the reader's perception. She does not have to prove "facts" or test hypotheses, she may allow vision to teplace reality (1970:x). Kuper concludes her comparison of the anthropological and literary approaches: The drama, the novel, the poem, and the monograph complement one anothet, each presenting a different facet of the whitling wotlds around and within the self (1970:xi). Kuper's play and novel both deal with witchcraft in Swaziland in the 1930s. Witchcraft is a subject discussed in innumerable anthropological monographs, but its relationship to individuals can never be shown in ethnography written in its standard, scientific style. Kuper does a masterful job of developing the social and cultural contexts of witchcraft, so that witchcraft accusations are inevitable to all of the main charactets, including the accused witches. She shows how the unusual success of women who deviate from Swazi social norms is interpreted as evidence of witchcraft. The impact of the colonial government on the inability of Swazi to deal satisfactorily with witchctaft is important in both works of fiction, as is the insiduous attraction of Goli (Johannesburg) for those whom must earn tax money, want to prove their manhood, or want to avoid social reponsibilities at home. When Kuper's ethnographic fiction is read in conjuction with her ethnographies of the Swazi, it provides a personal dimension of lived experience that creates empathy for the Swazi and reveals their participation in the human condition. Although she wrote it in the 1950s (Kuper personal communication) based on her experiences in Swaziland in the 1930s (Gluckman in Kuper 1970: vii), she published her "best" ethnography, A Witch in My Heart, only in 1970. It was translated into Zulu and Siswati, used as a textbook in Swaziland Schools, and performed by African students at the University of Natal before it was available for English-speaking anthropologists to read. No anthropological reviewer of which I am aware has considered Kuper's "best" ethnography, or her other ethnographic fiction, as both ethnography and fiction, or its contribution to understanding Swazi culture and culture change. The neglect of Kuper's ethnographic fiction exemplifies anthropology's general neglect of ethnographic fiction. Had anthropologists earlier concerned themselves with ethnographic fiction, there would have been little controversy over the recent atypical ethnographies of Carlos Castafieda, Oscar Lewis, Gregory Reck, and Colin Turnbull. Like writers of eth-

No matter how deeply her experiences and reflections in the 'field' change her perceptions and enrich her personal life, she must strive to be 'objective' by the standatds of her colleagues in the craft. The writer offiction,on the other hand, is allowed greater freedom of expression and imagination. She is expected to personalize general experiences, permitted to develop het own style and eccentricities, and encouraged to avoid technical fotmulations and conventions in making het own com-

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nographic fiction, these authors are trying to humanize ethnography and imaginatively recreate emic realities in ethnography. Failure to recognize and discuss attempts to humanize ethnography, whether they be factual or fictional, is to neglect a core concern of anthropology. The history of American and British ethnography needs to be rewritten to include ethnographic fiction written by anthropologists. Only then will we gain an accurate perception of the art of writing ethnography and of conveying truths about other peoples' lives through written words. We may even discover that the writing of ethnographic fiction has influenced the development of ethnographic method and theory.

REFERENCES CITED Beidelman, T. O. 1971. Review of Kuper: A witch in my heart. Africa 4l(3):251. Buelow, George David. 1973. "The ethnographic novel in Africa." PhD diss., University of Oregon. Driberg, J. H. 1930. People of the small arrow. London: George Routledge. Freshfield, Mark. 1947. Stormy dawn. London: Faber. Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Blurred genres. The American Scholar 49:165-179. Herskovits, Melville J. I960. The humanism in anthropological sciences. Paper presented at the VI International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Paris. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1942. Dust tracks on a road'. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Kuper, Hilda. 1943. Work Missus, (n.p.) Reprinted 1984. Work, Missus? Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 9(2):15-17. Kuper, Hilda. 1944. Boy without a job. Trek 9(11): 13. Kuper, Hilda. 1947a. An African aristocracy. London: Oxford University Press. Kuper, Hilda. 1947b. The Lord will provide. Vandaq l(8):2-6. Kuper, Hilda. 1948. The orgy. Trek 12(2):22-23. Kuper, Hilda. 1952. The Swazi. London: International African Institute. Kuper, Hilda. 1957. The amazement of Namahasha. African South 1(4): 102-7. Kuper, Hilda. 1965. A bite of hunger. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Kuper, Hilda. 1970. A witch in my heart. London: Oxford University Press. Kuper, Hilda. 1975. Bird of the storm. In Studies in African social anthropology, ed. Meyer Fortes and Sheila Patterson, 221-228. New York: Academic Press. Kuper, Hilda, n.d. The tooth, n.p. LaFarge, Oliver. 1945. Raw material. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Lafarge, Oliver. 1965. The door in the wall. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Langness, L. L. and Geyla Frank. 1978. Fact, fiction, and the ethnograpic novel. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 3(1&2): 18-22. Reck, Gregory. 1983. Narrative anthropology. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 8(1):812. Record, Paul. 1969. Tropical frontier. New York: Knopf. Redfield, Robert. 1948. The art of social science. American Journal of Sociology 54(3): 181190. Schmidt, Nancy J. 1981. The nature of ethnographic fiction: a further inquiry. Anthropology andHumanism Quarterly 6(1):818. Seligman, B. Z. 1954. Review of Bowen:Return to laughter. Man 54:145. Stewart, John. 1971. Last cool days. London: Andre Deutsch. Webster, Steven. 1982. Dialogue and fiction in ethnography. Dialectical Anthropology 7:91-114. Yates, T. J. A. 1931. Review of Driberg: People of the small arrow. Africa 4:135-136.

[Editor's Note: This seems an occasion to remind readers that the Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly welcomes the submission of fiction and poetry that deal with anthropological subjects or characters.]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Hilda Kuper for providing me with typescripts of her short stones published in the 1940s and for commenting on an earlier version of this essay. Thanks also to Gerald Obermeyer for his critical comments on the earlier version of this essay.

NOTES 1. For example, T. O. Beidelman's (1971) review of Hilda Kuper's A Witch in My Heart, and B. Z. Seligman's (1954) review of Laura Bohannan's, Return to Laughter.