Expanding the canon
Expanding the canon: the case for the reflexive inclusion of epochal memoirs as forms of auto-ethnography, and for utilising the work of non-anthropologists
By Daniel Guthrie
In his 2022 book, A Waiter in Paris, Edward Chisholm details his experience working in a Parisian restaurant – an occupation he found to be “governed by archaic rules and a petty hierarchy” (Chisholm, 2022, pg. 12). In this work, he not only analyses the restaurant structure from within, but also describes the p the stratification in the restaurant and in broader society. He gives his reason for writing the book as to give a voice to an invisible workforce, and make people reflect on the lives, and quality of life, of the people who serve them. I define this type of writing - an account of a specific lived experience of the author - as an 'epochal memoirs'
When I first read the text earlier this year, I was enamoured, and described it to others as a ‘pseudo-ethnography’. It contains all the features an ethnography should: details of the site of survey (both the bistro itself, and of the decrepit hotel and shoebox room-rentals he resided in); detailed accounts to conversation between himself and the various research participants he engages with (other waiters, the elderly sommelier, the dictatorial manager, and the willowy, elegant hostess he falls for); and conclusions drawn from his study (about the structure of French society, and the need for greater acknowledgement of catering staff). Yet, despite these features, I added the prefix of ‘pseudo’, relegating the trove to a mere piece of entertainment.
I now realise I should’ve taken it seriously, and properly entertained its serious purpose. I had succumbed to the haughty trappings of the ivory tower of academia; I didn’t take the book seriously because it would not be put on my reading lists, it would not be picked up by the LSE library, and I bought it from a regular bookshop (the wonderful oddity that is Word on the Water) rather than from a digitized list of academic resources. I argue that valuing texts based purely on their adherence to anthropological forms and standards is detrimental to the discipline. Why should a piece of work have to be published in Current Anthropology to have anthropological relevance? Why must a phonebook of noted pedagogues be listed under the ‘Bibliography’ section before a text is even considered to be of value? In a discipline so dedicated to analysing hierarchies in order to undermine or question their foundations, why is our internal hierarchy so entrenched?
The answers to these questions are murky and abstruse. Indeed, in writing this article, I became engaged in an internal struggle about whether to include citations, and furthermore, whether to cite academics. Would it emphasise my point if I constructed my argument without reference or inclusion to the institutions I just lambasted, or would it instead display some petulancy that rests in my subconscious if I refused to acknowledge value in the hard work of learned professionals, and the norms they have adopted? I concluded it would be to my detriment to not pay some regard to academia – some work does provide benefit to my argument. Yet I have tried to use academic citations descriptively, to illustrate my points with greater clarity rather than to prove that what I believe has value.
I have came to the conclusion that some anthropologists may not be ‘Anthropologists’, and this is no bad thing. By this I mean that some work that could be considered ethnographic may not be produced by people who have studied anthropology and intend to do fieldwork in a standardised way – it comes about from wanting to platform their, and others, experiences. Entering an environment with the status of ‘researcher’ carries with it a host of assumptions, from colonial ideas of the enlightened being as the centre of knowledge-production, to the inevitability that people act differently when they know they are being observed. The value of experimental approaches to ethnography is recognised by some anthropologists, as evidenced in the text Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Sciences (Bejarano et al., 2019). Whilst initially being the project of two institutional anthropologists, the contribution of their research assistants was so significant they were listed as co-authors. The assistants themselves were undocumented immigrants, alongside being activists for the rights of undocumented peoples (Bejarano et al., 2019). The effect of participating in anthropological research, despite not being trained or even knowing what anthropology was before interacting with the academics, was transformative; by the end of the project, “ethnography had changed them and they had changed ethnography” (Bejarano et al., 2019, pg. 13).
This illustrates the value of contributors to the canon ‘finding’ anthropology, and not being subject to the regiment of Malinowski, Boas, Geertz, and Foucault. However, I believe the argument can be taken further, to encompass those who are not intentionally participating in anthropological research. The value of work like Chisholm’s, or its spiritual forefather, Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, is that the authors authentically straddle a participant/observer divide, and as such, develop a far more honest portrait of the subject matter.
Another reason to expand the canon in this manner is to diversify it. This would not function exclusively to reintroduce “anthropology’s long-neglected ancestors” (Mogstad & Tse, 2018, pg. 57) – figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, or Ella Deloria - but also to absorb literature such as slave narratives, or first-person accounts of colonial India from the Indian perspective. These writings are foundational accounts for many of the issues of racism and colonialism still being discussed in anthropology. It would expand the discipline if we treated these texts as valid ethnographies, rather than ignoring them and instead referring to the host of canonical intellectuals. It would also radically alter the base of epistemology, with anthropologists humbly taking a seat and seeing what the primary knowledge of those subjugated by western powers can teach us. Even if research participants are deeply involved in formulating theory, it is the labour of the anthropologist in interpreting their words and actions that is deemed to be of real value. This reproduces a power dynamic in which the research participants are not given the regard they deserve. Respecting primary sources that are fundamental to the issues anthropology justifies itself with is not only crucial to expanding the canon, but also vital in efforts to decolonise the discipline and decentralise power from the western institution.
Critiques for expanding the canon in the way I have argued could come in a variety of forms. One of these may be the issue of form – these texts are not written how anthropology is normally written. They do not vie for academic credibility, instead emphasising readability, or descriptive value. Yet these forms may not be as dissimilar as initially thought. Anthropologists such as Faye Harrison have constructed readable and intellectual texts, and the necessity to have a dictionary within reaching distance as you choke trying to digest convoluted multi-syllables should not mean the article is more academically valid. Similarly, some may object to the writing being in the first person, arguing anthropology should use more scientific, detached language. Autoethnographies are regularly written in first person and have been a staple of anthropology for decades – texts such as Becoming, belonging, and the fear of everything Black by Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg work as both a study of bureaucracy, and a deeply personal epochal memoir about the difficulties of navigating a society as a black mother with a black child who has Downs Syndrome (Ocasio-Stoutenburg, 2021). What should be emphasised is the use of general anthropological methodologies, such as those Chisholm uses – if you can extract conclusions about the site of study, the actors within these sites, and the composition of society that created these conditions, your work should be entertained as scholarship.
It can also be argued that the same scrutiny is not devoted to epochal memoirs as is applied to anthropology from the institution. However, ethnographies exist where locations cannot be mentioned, and names and significant details are changed; such is the case in studies of drug dealers of government operations. This necessary secrecy makes it impossible to perform checks on their truthfulness. We rely on the honesty of our peers and their findings, especially given the emphasis of anthropology on finding a new point of research, both geographically and theoretically. I would argue that if an epochal memoir reaches any degree of popularity, it is subject to a far greater degree of scrutiny than most anthropological work.
To bring this argument to a close, I believe epochal memoirs that exhibit general anthropological traits but do not openly deem themselves as anthropological should be included in the canon. From introducing new, fluid, and invested methodologies of ethnographies, to departures from the general form of anthropological writing, and the decentralisation of power from the western institution, the inclusion of these works could open the doors of anthropology. Formulating flexibility within the rigid rules that validate certain forms of anthropological knowledge over others could rescue anthropology from its state of perpetual crisis. To overcome our ethical dilemmas about the purpose of anthropology, we must embrace knowledge produced from the bottom up.
Bibliography
Bejarano, C. et al. (2019) Decolonizing ethnography: Undocumented immigrants and New Directions in social science. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Chisholm, E. (2022) A Waiter in Paris. London, London: Octopus.
Mogstad, H. and Tse, L.-S. (2018) “Decolonizing Anthropology: Reflections from Cambridge,” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 36(2), pp. 53–72. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2018.360206.
Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L. (2021) “Becoming, belonging, and the fear of Everything Black: Autoethnography of a minority-mother-scholar-advocate and the movement toward justice,” Race Ethnicity and Education, 24(5), pp. 607–622. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.1918401.