experimental ethnography

is grounded in a critical, non-nostalgic understanding of the fate of techniques of radical critical aestheticism (such as montage, negative dialectics, and brechtian theater).

the responsibility of experimental ethnographers (or theorist of ethnography) is to understand the fate of certain techniques of radical critical aestheticism (such as montage, negative dialectics, and Brechtian theater) in their earlier appearances and to ensure that their current application does not represent a nostalgia for aesthetics against a villainous positivism (387)

is contrasted to traditional ethnography in that traditional ethnography is about discovery and description of new groups it depends on preexisting, more conventional narrative treatments and is parasitic on them. Such ethnography is a comment on, a remaking of, a more standard, realist account.

Such a revision of ethnography changes the understanding of what ethnography is generally about. In the past, ethnography has been associated with discovery, that is, with describing specific groups of people who have not been treated before. Restudying such groups has not been the norm in anthropology, and the full matrix of existing representations (by missionaries, travelers, journalist, the people themselves, etc.) within which an ethnographer produces his own text has always been downplayed. 'One tribe, one ethnographer' has per (399) Experimental ethnography thus depends on preexisting, more conventional narrative treatments and is parasitic on them. Such ethnography is a comment on, a remaking of, a more standard, realist account. Therefore, the best subjects for modernist ethnography are those which have been heavily represented, narrated, and made mythic by the conventions of previous discourse. Part of the experimentation is in revealing the intertextual nature of any contemporary ethnography... it works through already constituted representations by both the observed and previous observers. Modernist ethnography does not enact discovery, in the classic sense. It forgoes the nostalgic idea that there are literally unknown worlds to be discovered. Rather, in full, reflexive awareness of the historical connections that already link it to its subject matter, modernist ethnography makes historically sensitive revisions of the ethnographic archive while remaining conscious of the complex ways that diverse representations have constituted its subject matter. Such representations indeed become an integral part of modernist fieldwork. (399)

experimental ethnography, n.Definitions

experimental ethnography