Ruth Behar and James Baldwin: Ethnographic Treatment of the Burden of the Author - Essay Example

Number January 10, 2006 Ruth Behar and James Baldwin: Ethnographic Treatment of the "Burden of the Contemporary literary writing and the anthropological discipline of ethnography have spawned a new breed of writing. There is a melding of the ethnocentric writer and the literary ethnographer. The result is an approach to culture and communication that employs rather than avoids empathy, personal experience and a connection to the scenes and people studied. There are two who seem to represent the epitome of each side of this new art. How do they differ in their approach How is their approach similar, and how is this approach different from conventional wisdom in the field of anthropology A closer look at the work of Ruth Behar and James Baldwin reveals insights and truths previously out of reach. There exists this question regarding "ethnography" as a kind of writing, perhaps, as a form of literature. In The Vulnerable Observer, Ruth Behar defines the shifting definition of 'ethnography' in terms of responsibility, poly-vocality, empathy, power and the post-modernist view of the fragmented self. Moreover, she presents ethnography as a means towards a cathartic end for the ethnographer, perhaps as an apology for neglecting self, in the hope of finding someone else's truth, where truth can be shared by all the dwellers in the world, and seeking is the one true power which directs our relational identities, that ultimately colors the "burden of the author." As a "bastard of the West," an "interloper," a "suspect late-comer, bearing no credentials," James Baldwin's burden pointed towards his struggles to adopt, or adapt to, parts of the culture that preceded him. (Baldwin, Notes of a Native a Son, 6-7, 164) Empathy, trust, and love were not ingredients personally practiced by Baldwin, but throughout his literary characterizations, they were pervasive. And, as a literary ethnographer observing America's political and social climate, Baldwin grappled with the same notions as Behar - the need for love, subjectivity, truth, self and the Other, and racism. Both authors share the same literary aesthetic regarding empathetic, heart-wrenching stories that speak to the suffering anthropologist. (Behar, 18)1 They each speak from their own personal experience, their observations intertwined with their own lives, thoughts and feelings. Inseparable the emission becomes a poignant display of the most personal inner-selves of people. Her accounts are far from the arid, authoritative, sterilely objective accounts of conventional anthropologists. They are vivid, evocative and personal. She willingly delves into the heart and soul of the observed, tasting their experiences with a tongue tempered with cutting experiences of her own and thrusts them upon the reader like water upon a desert traveler. Baldwin uses his considerable skill with words to evoke strong thought in the reader. He writes emphatically, like a black preacher, from his heart and out of his love for his people. He writes from his own experience, allowing his to mingle with that of the people he observed in the Bronx. He crawls into the spaces in which people live - real people, the hidden self and brings it to light for all to see - the Negro man in the world - exposed. He spares nothing in his earnest unveiling of the truth. While his strength as a writer is in thoughtful non-fiction and not emotion, he nevertheless is evocative and powerful. Behar treats the burden of the author as the ultimate search for truth, the truth that differently for each individual and can only be known subjectively through connection with ones self and other people. Traditional ethnographic responsibility in anthropology holds that the truth is discrete and can only be gained through objective an impartial observation; that an individuals "filters" derived from personal life experience only serves to obscure the truth and render it unattainable. With all emotional honesty she uses her experience as a Cuban-born, Jewish-Russian, American to traverse the chasm between cultural experiences. Baldwin's burden is one of struggling to find his truth and the truth of the black man alongside the truth of man. Of being black and identifying with the black man and his experience as a black writer, writing from a black perspective and yet simultaneously write as just a man, not black or white, but simply a man. He asserts that Negroes are not treated like men, but as black men. But Baldwin tries to be both and experience life from both perspectives, as a man and as a black man. Can he write about the trials of life as a black man without knowing those on a personal level - that is being a black man, and writing as a black man Can he write with understanding about something he has not experienced, at least without having shared in the emotional experience with another No, he cannot. Each author is guilty of staging their strategies as a "countertransference" in literature. (Behar, (16), perhaps in the form of "relational identities" that help the author and reader understand our human condition. By using emotions connected with personal experience, empathy is created, which helps us to understand and to care about another. The empathy engendered creates relation between the two parties and the observed, the empathy of the observer then causes the observed to relate and possibly transfer emotions as well. Behar uses countertransference when she seeks out those to whom she can relate, those to whom her experience shares some parallel. In Behar's model of the "vulnerable observer" the field researcher actually works through his emotional involvement with the subject. She has related so strongly to her subjects at times as to elicit severe emotional turmoil in herself. While preparing for a field study abroad, she once develop panic attacks and through her work with the subject found that she had identified n earlier traumatic experience with this subject. Behar's personal transformation experienced while working with the survivors of a mudslide in Cuba in the 1990's gave birth to The Vulnerable Observer. Behar's work and life are so intricately intertwined and her relational identity so composed of those she has studied that it would be impossible for transference not to occur. In fact, she counts on it. As for the criticisms of the social sciences, her truth, that she has experienced and shared is too profound to shake her conviction that empathy is the only way to do ethnography. As an ethnographic writer, Baldwin does not write about conditions, economics or political climate. He writes about the personal experience of himself and others and from the standpoint of the many selves inside of each person that are shared; that are connected through experience, emotion and feeling. He focuses on that which plagued his own psyche - that which was connected to the subjects. He wrote from the many I's and Norman Mailer's comment that Baldwin was incapable of saying "you," is directed at Baldwin's personalization of all he witnessed. He writes in multiple voices - all his own. From all of these voices he writes passionately for both American heritage and African heritage. Baldwin's writing, although non-fictional essays are distinguished by his personal style. The question of ethnographic responsibility, the commitment to the truth, is dealt with personally and cathartically by both authors. They each use the experiences of others to complete their own identities. Even so, they seek the truth and seeking the truth is, according to Behar the greatest source of personal power. Behar advocates the use of empathy as the answer to the lingering abstracted question surrounding "ethnographic responsibility" - 'tenderheartedness.' Baldwin emphasizes the need for more abstraction and less empathy in resolving the socially constructed "Negro Problem" - toughmindedness. Baldwin has also used his writing to attack works that he felt damaging to the Negro. In Notes of a Native Son, he discusses the protest novel form Uncle Tom's Cabin.2 The sympathetic tones he felt only further weakened the black man. Baldwin has repeatedly attacked fictional writings about Negroes. His own fictional writing reads like and extended metaphor of black people and sexuality. He portrays the black always as strong and virile. According to Baldwin, "One can never rally know the corrosion of hate, the taste of fear or the misery of humiliation one has lived unless one had lived it. But if the actuality cannot be known, it an be related." For Behar, consistent with her burden, she seeks to find and share with the world the truth that can only be know by others and must be felt. It is a way of connecting people in the world. We cannot know what we have not experienced, but if felt, perhaps we can understand. She speaks of herself as a woman on the border. She is a cross-cultural entity and uses this to move between and among cultures, working with those who are in distress, poverty and illness. She has studied rural communities in Spain and immigrant women living in the United States. Just as she has experienced hardship and suffering in her life, she seeks out and explores the sufferings so that some healing may not place, not only for herself and her subjects, but in relieving some of he world's tensions between peoples of the world. Baldwin's commitment to the truth is to eliminate separation between "man" and "black man." "He finds his birthright as a man no less than his birthright as a black man." (Baldwin) He detested the sympathy that he says keeps the Negro trapped in "the same web of hatred and violence" rather than liberate him. That the black man enforced and intensified his own categorization as a black man through his own defensiveness was a thing Baldwin sought to empower him to break free of. In Behar's The Venerable Observer1, objective observation is set aside an ineffectual way of learning about people. "Autobiography has emerged, for better or worse, as the key form of storytelling in our time. Isn't it a pity that scholars, out of some sense of false superiority, should try to rise above it all" For Behar the ethnographer neglects self in hope of finding someone else's truth. Upon writing that truth can be shared with everyone in the world and this is sharing is the catharsis needed by the ethnographer. Our identities are relational. We exist and understand ourselves only in relation to the world and other in it. Heartfelt seeking, according to Behar, is the true power that directs our relational identities. How does each address the question of ethnography as writing or literature The observer is a self and as such impact the observed (Schrdinger's cat)(Erwin Schrdinger in 1935). Given this principle, it is impossible not to interact. At the least then, we must take into account that the study is impacted and consider and treat the impact in our representation. The new ethnographers would go further and choose to be active participants in the impact. This new treatment keeps the experiment and the treatment of it vital and malleable. Neither can Baldwin separate himself from the question of what is means to be a black man in the world vs. what it means to be a man in the world. He must experience both sides of the coin to know it and to write about it. He must be both. It has been said that what moved a writer to eloquence is less meaningful than what he makes of it. (Kauffman) Baldwin makes a powerful case to strengthen the black man and move him out of his destructive categorization, in which he keeps himself embedded. In The Fire Next Time3 he writes, "It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction." The identity of the self, as relates to others is how we know and relate to the world. This truth is inescapable and bears out all subsequent truths. The people of the world will not come to know truth and respect each other if they cannot feel the truth. It is through feelings and emotion that humans understand and relate to our world. It is through relating that we understand ourselves. It is this inverse principal that defines the study. If we know if by ourselves and we know ourselves by it, we must interact. They old way would have the researcher or writer detach feeling, but this is how we understand and learn. I the new era the writer is a researcher and the researcher a literary figure. The two are complimentary and distinct and yet similar. Truth must be communicated to be of value to the world. For raise understanding it must be communicated in such a way as to evoke feeling and empathy. For this to occur the author must understand through experience and feeling first. This is the truth of people. 1Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. 2Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 3 Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Vintage International, 1993. Works Cited Baldwin, James, Mead, Margaret. A Rap on Race. New York: New York, 1971. Baldwin, James. "Going to Meet the Man," in Early Novels and Stories. New York. Library of America Press, 1998, 933-950. ----------. "Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South," in Vintage Baldwin. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, 78-96. ----------. The Fire Next Time. New York: Vintage International, 1993. ----------. No Name in the Street. New York: Laurel, 1972. ----------. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Griffith, Paul. "James Baldwin's Confrontation with Racist Terror in the American South." Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 32 No. 5 (May, 2002), 506-527. Miller, Elise. "The 'Maw of Western Culture': James Baldwin and the Anxieties of Influence." African American Review. Vol. 38 No. 4, 2004, 625-636. Roth, Paul A. "Ethnography without Tears." Current Anthropology. Vol. 30 No. 5 (Dec., 1989), 555-561. Read More