A01=Vincent Debaene
academic
anthropology
Author_Vincent Debaene
authorship
belles lettres
Category=DSB
Category=JHM
claude levi strauss
college
community
cultural
culture
diary
educational
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
ethnology
europe
france
french
geneology
genre
georges bataille
global
higher ed
historical
history
interdisciplinary
international
literature
marcel mauss
memoir
monograph
museum
phenomenon
philosophy
professor
roland barthes
scholarly
science
scientific
surrealist
textbook
university
western world
Product details
- ISBN 9780226106908
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 04 Apr 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Anthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary account. In Far Afield - brought to English-language readers here for the first time - Vincent Debaene puzzles out this phenomenon, tracing the contours of anthropology and literature's mutual fascination and the ground upon which they meet in the works of thinkers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. The relationship between anthropology and literature in France is one of careful curiosity. Literary writers are wary about anthropologists' scientific austerity but intrigued by the objects they collect and the issues they raise, while anthropologists claim to be scientists but at the same time are deeply concerned with writing and representational practices. Debaene elucidates the richness that this curiosity fosters and the diverse range of writings it has produced, from Proustian memoirs to proto-surrealist diaries.
In the end he offers a fascinating intellectual history, one that is itself located precisely where science and literature meet.
Vincent Debaene is associate professor of French at Columbia University. He is the critical editor of the Pleiade edition of the collected works of Claude Levi-Strauss. Justin Izzo is assistant professor of French Studies at Brown University.
