Ethnography, art, and death

Abstract

A ndrew Irving University of ManchesterA problem facing anthropologists, given the centrality of memory and imagination to all social life, is how to access memory and the imaginary when there is no independent access to consciousness. Moreover, the discipline has 'largely failed to distinguish itself' in response to understanding HIV/AIDS (Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 2001: 163). In response to these observations I would argue that orthodox approaches are limited and we need to create new forms of collaborative research and representation with regard to understanding experiences of illness. Accordingly this article attempts to bring to life the interior dialogue of persons living with HIV/AIDS through performance by 'mapping' the city of Kampala through its emotions and memories rather than buildings and streets.This article attempts to blur the lines between ethnography, art, and performance in the pursuit of memories about illness and death in contemporary Africa. It uses the notion of ethnography as a particular type of performance to create mnemonic contexts that are 'already underway' but would not exist without the intervention of the anthropologist or local informants' willingness to inhabit unaccustomed roles. Establishing these kinds of 'staged' encounters within the field potentially opens up different kinds of dialogue between informants and their surroundings; as events happen and dramas unfold, habitual roles are re-cast and the field is 'made strange' for locals and anthropologist alike, creating the possibility for different types of intentionality, interaction, and understandings of people's 'everyday' thinking and being. The ethnographic context that is created through such performances is one in which memories, presuppositions, social roles, and statuses are continually made explicit and publicly available, thereby raising the possibility that 'something like a drama' might emerge 'from the otherwise smooth surfaces of social life ' (Turner 1982: 9).Other than by Victor Turner, my attempt at creating this type of fieldwork site is influenced by the work of the experimental theatre company Forced Entertainment 1 on urban landscapes and the innovative ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch's attempts to access the imaginary. Moreover like these artists' works, the staging of fieldwork performances can be repeated amongst people living in radically different social

Introduction: Themes in the Study of Death and Loss in Africa

“…Although the demographic and economic impact of HIV/AIDS has yet to be fully grasped, it is already evident that wide-scale AIDS mortality has profoundly influenced reproductive decision-making, reconfigured kinship structures and domestic economies of care, altered livelihood strategies and exacted an immense toll on already overburdened public health systems (Nattrass 2003;Iliffe 2006). More subtle but no less significant has been the emergence in some parts of Africa of new discursive frameworks through which the relationship between life and death (Niehaus 2007;Irving 2007;Robins 2006), to the dead and diseased body (Fassin 2007), and to the dying process (Klaits 2010) can be both imagined and expressed.…”

Bridges

“…Here, movement is a creative act of poesis that continuously generates complex amalgamations and juxtapositions of perception, emotion, image, texture, taste, and aroma within the flow of daily life, through which people actively create their lived and sensory experience of the present (Irving 2007(Irving , 2010(Irving , 2011a.…”

“…What is the empirical content and character of their thoughts? As with any crowded scene, people may be engaged in diverse, or even radically different, forms of inner speech and imagery, ranging from the trivial to the tragic (see Irving 2007Irving , 2009Irving , 2010Irving , 2011b, but the extent to which we can identify commonalities and discrepancies of experience from outward appearances remains an open question.…”

The Lives of Other Citizens

“…As documented in Ethnography, Art and Death (Irving 2007), a person might be walking around a city looking for a place to commit suicide or alternatively might be contemplating the radical uncertainty of being while sitting in a café or walking down a crowded street having recently been diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness (see Irving 2010Irving , 2011. In such cases, the person remains a social being and is required to act in a communal public space, but their thoughts and concerns are not necessarily externalised or apparent to the wider world.…”