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Dialogues: anthropology and literature

2024; Wiley; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/1467-9655.14104

1467-9655

Siddratul Muntaha Jillani, Kiran Nazir Ahmed, Liliana Colanzi, Jessica Sequeira, Elisa Taber, Rex Lee Jim, Anthony K. Webster, Najet Adouani, Andrew Brandel,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

The relationship between anthropology and literature has attracted renewed theoretical energy in recent years (Brandel 2020; Debaene 2014; Fassin 2014; Reed 2018; Wulff 2016), developing and deepening connections with, for example, anthropological theories of art (Reed 2011), religion (Furani 2012), subjectivity (Olszewska 2015), and ethics (Bush 2017), as well as with allied fields and traditions, including postcolonial theory (Sadana 2012), Bourdieuan sociology (Dalsgård 2021), media theory (Rosen 2022), and ordinary language philosophy (Brandel 2023). Among the most fruitful trends in current research has been a revitalized emphasis on the possibilities for collaboration between writers and anthropologists, which has generated critical debate on the ethical and political limits of conventional methodologies (Schielke & Shehata 2021). The following set of conversations reflect and refract these trends in different ways, while proposing further openings for future work, particularly around questions of translation, creativity, care, and particularity. Each of these dialogues took place between anthropologists and writers with long-standing relationships, as members of collaborative research teams, co-authors, companions, mentors, and fieldwork interlocutors. Their differences in form reflect their range of commitments and approaches to the study of creative language practices. Participants were provided with an initial set of orienting questions and provocations, including about what brought the groups together, about the basis for the comparisons they draw between their work, and a reflection on whom they write for and why. They were edited and assembled with the help of one of the editors, Adam Reed. This series of conversations took place over the phone and voice messages between fiction writer Siddratul Muntaha Jillani, from the village Noora I Sharif in Sindh, and Kiran Nazir Ahmed, an anthropologist, from the city of Islamabad, Pakistan. They became friends when Kiran was doing her fieldwork in 2013, thus they know each other well. This conversation explores questions such as what are the parallels and contrasts between fiction writing and ethnographic writing? Who does each write for and why? Ahmed translated this series of conversations from Urdu into English and edited it for clarity of thought, checking the final product for Jillani's approval. Siddratul Muntaha Jillani (SMJ) Kiran Nazir Ahmed (KNA) When you asked me to ponder these questions, my first thought was I'd take a week or so, and respond. But then I realized that when we do that, we end up doing everything else, and not that thing that we're supposed to do. We unconsciously push it aside, thinking we'll do it later in a much better way. But the questions and answers have their own dynamic; the more spontaneous thoughts are, the better it is. It is messy, of course, but there is a beauty in it and we can clean it up later. So, I'm going to give you bayhungam [disorderly] answers [laughing]. Let's start with how you compare anthropologists and fiction writers? What do you see as the parallels or contrasts? Anthropologists study people, the knowledge of humans, and so do fiction writers, because fiction writers write stories about people. So fiction writers are half-anthropologists too, because they are writing about humans and anthropologists are half-fiction writers, because they are a witness, they witness stories. So, while anthropologists are not kahani nigaar [story writers], they are naazirs [witness or observers]. Like you noted (in one of our earlier conversations) that an anthropologist writes what he sees but the fiction writer is free. So the fiction writer writes about the inner (landscape), while the anthropologist is limited in a way. The anthropologist will write about the facial expressions, etc., but the bonds of feelings (and affect) – that is the domain of the fiction writer, which is something the writer has with her characters. In other words, you can divide zaahir [apparent, outer, visible] and baathin [internal, inner]. The first one is zaahir and the other is baathin. This is why these two disciplines can have very strong connections with each other. I remember, during my fieldwork, when we went to the shrine of Lal Shehbaz Qalandar [a Sufi saint], we both saw a man dancing the dhamaal [a form of dance particular to South Asian Sufis]. Looking back, that moment showcases what you've brought out. To me it was captivating as I witnessed his joyful self-abandon. You, on the other hand, weaved this into your character and wrote about how he must be feeling as he danced with such abandon. To me that's a good example of the anthropologist as naazir and writer as the kahani nigaar. In this context, the anthropologist Didier Fassin comes to mind. He delineates between truth and reality as 'concepts in profound and permanent tension' rather than interchangeable or equivalent notions.1 The real is essentially what has happened or exists in actual life, whereas the true is that which has to be retrieved and reclaimed from convention. Thus, reality is horizontal because it exists on 'the surface of facts', and truth is vertical because it can only be discovered 'in the depths of inquiry'.2 So, while there is a gulf between the two – fiction writers have creative licence to create whatever story they want; anthropologists are limited to what they witness – the gulf is not that wide. Even anthropologists assemble, create from what they see. Some interviews are given more space to highlight certain aspects; others never make it past the transcription file. So in this sense this is an assembling too, a subjective telling of what you witness. An anthropologist's creativity is definitely a part of their work. Like with a doctor, the medicine they give is usually the same but some are better healers than others. So the anthropologist also looks at things through their own lens. Like one time I had to write about a city in America. And I was told that Tarar [an Urdu fiction and travelogue writer] has written about that area in his travelogue, and I said Tarar might have looked at it, but he would have looked at it through his own vantage point, his favourite corner. Maybe I would have been more attentive to the market, and maybe he to the park. So each writer and creator may be writing about the same thing, but their vision and their khayal [imagination/thought] are always a little different, and the vantage point you choose, that is through your creativity. So for anthropologists, we've already decided that an anthropologist is half-fiction writer too: the information they gather is stories about lives, and that's a part of fiction, so this is why anthropologists are half-creators too. A fiction writer also is sometimes not a complete creator. Let's talk about our own work now. I'll start with the first meeting, our first encounter. You know the first stage of any relationship is through words, and in the second stage you start to feel and sense, and you talk through what you are sensing and words can't really encompass that. Your emotions and feelings are far beyond words, so you can express them through words but those words are just the beginning, it's just the entry way, like a doorway has opened but the home inside that door, you can't express that through words, you can only sense and feel. If you develop an understanding with a person, so that you feel you can be an open book in front of them, this way you can let them enter with ease. So I let you enter my story, and not just enter it, but also open the entire book before you. That means a lot to me. When I began my fieldwork with fiction writers, I was very unsure. There was no particular place or space where I could approach them collectively. But the first phone conversation with you and the playfulness of it acted as a gravitational anchoring of sorts. I just followed the path as it appeared and somehow all of our conversations became a book. Once before too, I said that your work has a story, it doesn't read like a research but like a story. So for me, as a writer, it's a big thing. One thing I really liked about you as an anthropologist is that when people conduct interviews, they'll usually ask predetermined questions. But you went with the flow that the respondents wanted to go with. It was almost like you invited them and said, come, let's sit together. I'll give you your favourite chair and then you answer my questions. Because you knew that if you force them into your favourite chair, they would not respond freely. So you gave people that flexibility, that space. So sometimes, when I saw you having those conversations with writers, it seemed to me like you were asking people, run in any direction you want and let me see where you go. I think this is something intrinsic within anthropology as a discipline, and the credit goes to you as a person too. In a sense, the question is the mother and the responses are the children, and you as a mother did it very naturally. In the context of your own work, I was wondering how you convey its esoteric aspect and the alternative realities it addresses. When a person is writing something, like the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said once, the first decision is that of the heart, and it's the right decision. Because the writer knows what they're writing, is it complete fantasy or is it not. So the creator knows this, but because they don't have sensory evidence for it, they get confused. Like with some things, the creator may say, this just can't be, it's not possible. Like if I say that the sky has a certain chair above it. The sky is not my ground, it's not my base, so I'm not in a position to say this, a scientist is. So the creator knows, and when I was writing this novel [Ik Jahan Aur Hai], there were some events that I had experienced myself or had been experienced by the people around me. But there were some events for which I wanted evidence, but yet, at another level, I knew this can happen on this earth, in this existence. Because when you believe in a person's power and you know physics, etc., Hawking and Einstein, they are all from this world, this earth. And when a human has all the minerals, they have this power, the biggest one is that they can contradict (and critically examine) their own view. So there are always possibilities, like if our spirit leaves the body during sleep and if your body and spirit are different, like we have examples of Hindu sadhus who could fly. So there were events whose evidence I wanted, but I knew it's possible, rare and not common but possible. Let's move on to what anthropology can learn from creative writing, as a form of writing and as a form of knowledge making about the world. And what can creative writing learn from anthropology? See, anthropologists can learn from fiction writers, because anthropologists look at things that they observe, what they can see, how this community lives by the sea, what kinds of clothes do they wear, what is the colour of the earth over there, their ways of living, language, ways of looking at the world, it's all fine. But there are other aspects that only a fiction nigaar can understand. Like their desires – anthologists don't write about desires, they'll write about the ways of living and being but not the inner desires. Fiction writers relate to what people dream of, how they feel their hasrathain [deprivations]. The sensitivity to their past, the hopes they have for their future, so all this is written through stories by fiction nigaar. Fiction nigaar have a different way of relating to humans: they try to go within them. The fiction nigaar tries to enter that inner door. Fiction writers can learn about the outer from anthropologists, culture, language, ways of living, ways of being, past, present, how changes have affected them, how they passed through something. So these zameeni haqaaiq [earthly facts], this is something that fiction nigaar can borrow from anthropologists. The human mind is such that whichever work or profession you adopt, it starts to flow and focus on that direction/path. Just this morning, I was telling someone, you know, the human body it's under your control; if you don't use it, it will stay still. But the human mind is not in your control; if you don't use it (focus it), it will go in the direction it wants. And usually it's the direction that is your weakness or what you fear. And it will become a problem for you. So it's best if you give work to your mind (to focus on). So when a human wants to write, to write a story, the mind helps you write it and slowly the person starts to accept that, yes, I am a writer, and I think and write about people, so that's the first chapter or first stage. But then you have to move to the second stage, which is beyond words. See, we forget that language is not just the one you learn from hearing other people around you who speak it, but there is also another one that you learn from your observation – the one you learn by reading faces with your eyes – and both these languages give you the ability to express yourself. Reading and writing can be very beneficial in this. Reading and seeing/observing. Your eyes will find new people, new stories, they grasp at them, and then the second thing is your own parhath [reading, learning]. This parhath introduces you to new entry points, new doorways, and as your vocabulary increases, your expression grows richer. This parhath is the same as anthropologists' research to observe and work. Parhath is a kind of research, and writing is the expression of that research. This way characters emerge, they open up before you. The deeper you go into them, the more meherbaan [generous/beneficent] they become for you. On the other hand, if you ignore them, or are not attentive, characters can fade like old memories. They don't disclose their aspects and you can lose them. So writing stories is a matter of great attunement and sensitivity; and requires a great commitment. You said once, if you try to trick the story, manipulate it or contrive it, the story will trick you back. So it's important to attune to the rhythm of the story and where it wants to go. This really resonated with me in my work as an anthropologist. To let the ethnographic 'story' go where it wanted to and take the form it wanted to take. And once you let go, and stop trying to follow a framework or a predetermined pathway, it really does take you in an authentic direction. In a sense, it changes from 'my work' to 'work coming through me', but then there is the question of audience. I mean, at one level, we write for personal reasons. Each quest, whether its ethnographic or fictional, is about some personal question or quandary. So it is a personal trajectory, but at the same time we create to share these stories with others. So, why do we write these stories, and whom do we write them for? In other words, how do you see the role of the audience? Do you have that in mind when you're writing? When I write for digests, I do have the digest reader in mind, and I think that this reader will like this story or not relate to that one. Or that there is a readership that will like this character or not the other one. So when I am writing I do have it in mind, and it's actually a lot of fun to go against it. So I'll be thinking to myself, they are going to hate this character of mine, but I'm still writing it. But when I write for the literary magazine, I have the literary circle in mind. Similarly, when you're writing a television script, you have that viewership in mind, the content department will say this, or the channel will try to bring this in, but the viewer will like this part, so, it's true we write stories for ourselves, but we show and tell them to others. But I would add that we also write them for others too, and we want that attention, that our story should be read and heard, the character we are presenting should be 'seen'. Basically, that the way we see the world should be seen by others too, this is our wish. Someone once asked me, can you write a scene in your story about a certain place, if you were to read a travelogue about it? I said, yes, I could write it, but the problem is that the side of the building that the travelogue writer liked may not be the one I would like. I might be more focused on how it feels to be inside that building, or I might be more absorbed in the fencing outside and the travelogue writer on the furniture, so each set of eyes is drawn to a different aspect (of the same thing). So each person has a particular way of looking at things and describing them. Like when someone comes to my village, they each look at it differently. Like when Shagufta (another writer) came to Islamabad, she said, but what's there in this city. It's just rocks and hills, don't we have this in Hyderabad already? I laughed so much. I said I've never been to Islamabad, but I like it for different reasons. And she said, I don't know why you like it, even the weather is as miserable as it was in Hyderabad. I'm going off on a tangent, but each person looks at things in their own way and each person wants to show their lens, their vantage point, to others. This question is always in the mind of the creator, that what will the readers think of this, will they be able to relate themselves to this or not. This is often, but a lot of times we write things that people most people may not relate to. But each character has at least one reader who can establish a relationship with that character. Of course the number varies, some characters have more and some less, but no character is without any relatability. I think the biggest test for a writer is to not think if the reader will want to read it or not. The thing is for the writer to say, come with me, let me tell you about this too, this can also happen. It's not bad to write what the reader wants to read sometimes, but if you get stuck in this, then you can only write what will become popular – you have to write without the pressure of how it will be received. For me, at its simplest level, I keep my 20-year-old self in mind when I write. But at another level, there are three different orbits that you have to cater to also. As a Pakistani anthropologist writing in English, there is the Western academic audience, the one in Pakistan or the South Asian region, and then the community itself that you have tried to represent. As you stated, each audience has its own dynamics and its own expectations. Perhaps the task here is to 'translate' the story in terms you feel would be understandable in the orbits you are writing for, but to not let go of the rhythm and flow of the story itself. Yes, you have to be true to your story. See one truth is that which you see as truth. You try to polish your work, and keep polishing it, but you should only polish it to a certain extent. I believe that creation that is spontaneous is the best. Any creation has its strengths as well as weaknesses, but even the weaknesses have their own beauty, so you have to understand your story, which way does it want to go. Keep your ideology to yourself, and if the story is going in its own direction by itself, then let it go. And this can only happen when we listen to the rhythm of the story, and its result is always good and takes us seriously. If we want to exploit our story in a sense, take undue advantage of it, and are only worried about of what benefit it will be for us, how it will increase our status in a certain orbit – in other words, if we are trying to use the story as a means to an end, exploit it in a way – then we will not get anywhere. You need to love your story unconditionally; the relationship has to be unconditional. Overall, I think both anthropologists and fiction writers try to bring about myriad ways of being human, diverse ways of articulating the experience of being human and alternative realities that exist for each of us. This is partly what drew me to work on women fiction writers who write for digests. Each seemed to be articulating a different expression of both what it means to be a Pakistani woman, lived realities if you will, and the imagined possibilities of this being. Overall, then, I think both anthropology and fiction writers have the same path, of wanting to bring forth myriad ways of being human. Yes, and when you look at it, as humans we live our lives telling stories, and eventually when we die we ourselves become a story. And maybe all of human existence is simply a story. Let's end with that Urdu verse that states it beautifully farz karo ham ahl-e-wafaa hon, farz karo divane hon farz karo ye donon baaten jhuti hon afsaane hon Let's suppose we come from a place of true connection/let's suppose we're mad. Let's suppose these are both false suppositions, let's suppose all this is just fiction.3 This dialogue between literature and anthropology focuses on translated fictions that expand what is meant by both translation and fiction. First, they require cultural as well as, or instead of, literary translation to represent and communicate between linguistic worlds. Second, while they transform real people, places, and events into fictional counterparts, rendering them meaningful by giving them the shape of a story, they also re-create the speech of those individuals with such accuracy that they cannot be strictly considered works of the imagination. An example of such a defiant translated fiction is Eisejuaz, which tells the story of a Mataco prophet called upon by the Lord to nurse a Criollo wig-salesman, Paqui, back to health. Originally published in Buenos Aires by Sudamericana Press in 1971, this is one of the first Argentine novels written by a non-Indigenous author, Sara Gallardo, from the perspective of an Indigenous first-person narrator, Lisandro Vega, his Spanish name, or Eisejuaz, his Wichi name. The verisimilitude of the narrator's vernacular continues to spawn investigations (like this dialogue) into the boundaries between writing, translation, and ethnography. Gallardo listened to and refracted a life led in a linguistic world other to her own into a fiction that renders the ways of being in, and understanding, that realm able to transform its readers. The real person that inspired the fictional narrator of the novel can be identified from Gallardo's non-fiction oeuvre. The article 'La historia de Lisandro Vega' (The story of Lisandro Vega), was published on June 27, 1968 in Confirmado Magazine, prior to the novel. The events, people, and places detailed in the former match the plot, characters, and settings in the latter. Gallardo leaves her profile of the Mataco chief of a Norwegian mission in Embarcación, Argentina, open to further elaboration: 'Esta es la historia de Vega, de su lucha por levantarse y por levantar a su pueblo, y de cómo "todo mi plan ha fracasado y me he quedado solo" No cabe entera en esta página' (This is the story of Vega, of his struggle to rise up and raise up his people, of how 'my entire plan failed and I was left alone'. It doesn't fit whole on this page (Gallardo 1968 [2015]: 275)) Comparing the fictional to the non-fictional versions, with a focus on Vega's quoted speech, offers a glimpse at the collaborative process through which the author and her narrator shaped his life into a narrative structure, and rendered his language and the cosmology it references through word choice. Sara Gallardo and Lisandro Vega have passed away. Speculating how they wrote this novel remains a means through which we (Liliana Colanzi, Jessica Sequeira, and Elisa Taber) developed our writing, translation, and ethnography practices. This dialogue therefore sets off from a discussion of the novel and its invitation to think anew about the politics of voice, colonialism, and decolonial futures. Sequeira is the English translator of Gallardo's El país del humo (Land of smoke, Gallardo 2018) and Colanzi's Nuestro mundo muerto (Our dead world, 2017) that was influenced by Eisejuaz, which Colanzi edited in Bolivia and Taber is co-translating with Mercedes Villalba into English. We will discuss our methods and the theory that informs them to trace the adjoining limits between these disciplines and the shared influence of Eisejuaz on our work. As we are caught between English and Spanish linguistic worlds, we began speaking in Spanish on Zoom, continued emailing in Spanish and English, and concluded by translating the Spanish texts into English. The absent presences of our fourth and fifth interlocutors, Gallardo and Vega, mirror that of their novel's English translation, as of yet in process. Liliana Colanzi (LC) Jessica Sequeira (JS) Elisa Taber (ET) Eisejuaz was written in a Golden Age Spanish, which dates back to the Spanish missions, semantically and grammatically altered by a Wichi, with references to Mataco cosmology. Thus, Gallardo denounces the role of linguistic and religious conversion in colonial processes while reproducing the decolonial possibilities this Spanish-Mataco still holds. She also posits an alternate model for sociability as the aim of Lisandro Vega's prophetic mission. The prophecy is not actualized between the fictional characters but between the real author and interlocutor. Gallardo attuned to and was transformed by Vega's worldview, language, and technique for producing narrative to the extent that they are reproduced in Eisejuaz. Because this novel fits uncomfortably within indigenista literature, it does not contribute to this cyclical movement's assimilation of the Indigenous as component and foundation of a culturally heterogeneous yet singular Latin American canon. I ask us to speculate: How did Gallardo transform this real person and place, as well as the events that marked their life, into a fictional character, setting, and plot? Perhaps we can pay special attention to how she reproduced their way of speaking. Before answering, perhaps I might briefly reflect on this roundtable. It seems to me something marvellous and strange, which exists at the confluence of our interests in writing, translating, and editing. The boundary between literature and anthropology dissolves so easily, perhaps because the study of the human which exists at the heart of both disciplines is so nebulous. There is something like a negative theology about them: just as the divine is only noticed in its absence, maybe we appreciate the human only where it becomes an object or action. Only where it ceases to reflect and abstract and starts a tangible creation. This is where the wavering, shimmering, destabilized lines of definition become something concrete or real. In other words, let's get to the conversation… Coming to Elisa's question, the Indigenous person in the book refers to their own self in multiple ways, and also hears voices from things we might think of as nonliving beings. Hearing voices is often associated with schizophrenia or psychosis, and indeed the voice calls for violence beyond the bounds of the law, outside of what civilized behaviour would expect; of course, the civilization at this time is linked to the colonial reality. So, reading, one starts to ask – What are these voices in the mind? How far should one trust or believe in them, in the protagonist, in oneself? How much stake to put in the reality outside, how much in the world inside one's brain? As a writer and translator, I am familiar with being alone for long periods in my own thoughts, and find pleasure in speaking with the voices of others through the written word, transforming their music into other symbols. Sometimes, however, I have to admit that the fluidity between the internal and external worlds begins to scare me. How did Sara Gallardo, who was fascinated by the ethnographic world of the protagonist, yet seemingly far removed from it by her own socioeconomic background, come up with the particular voice of her disturbed protagonist? I don't know the answer, and can only speculate. (Speculum, mirror, bouncing rays of light.) For all that it was grounded in reality, the character was also a chimera of her mind. The introduction to the edition of Eisejuaz by Elena Vinelli compares the voice of the Mataco Indigenous person to the voices of the modernist novels of Faulkner and Joyce. Maybe the voice was a product of Gallardo's readings and conversations. But maybe (or also?) it was an extension of her own thoughts, her unconscious. The hero is 'un héroe mitad ángel y mitad monstruo'4 (a hero half angel and half monster), wrote Manuel Mujica Lainez in a letter to Gallardo, which also appears in the introduction. The protagonist, always moving between first and third person, confused about the distance he should take from his own self and from the man he is caring for, seems to me the mirror of the artistic creator – forever travelling between their own ego and those of other people, animals, plants, and objects, in a wavering relationship between the 'I' and the apparently 'non-I', which in reality forms part of the same great plane of being. 'Getting into the head' of another being than oneself, whether through translation, transcription, interview, mediumistic channelling, or the imagination, is at the heart of literary activity, but it is so easy to lose oneself along the way – or realize there was never an essential 'self' to begin with. What to do with this terror, I don't know. Speak with others about it, I suppose. Gallardo is fascinating to me because she picks up all of these concerns through a character who speaks in a clipped, staccato, repetitive voice that achieves the hard diamond clarity of mysticism in its relation to the Lord, and avoids some of the pitfalls of indigenismo costumbrista5 that one might find in Rosario Castellanos, a parallel of Sara Gallardo's in some respe