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Ethnographic Significance of Indigenous Fiction: An Anthropological Reading of Narayan's Kocharethi: The Araya Woman

Kavimani N. and
Dr. R. Chandrasekar

Abstract

Ever since the Literary Turn of the 1980s, anthropology has been associated with various disciplines that document human experiences. Among them, fiction arguably has prominence as many influential anthropologists have also been fictional writers themselves. Works based on fieldwork experiences offer authentic insights into the societies they depict since the authors witness the realities firsthand. Rooted in real-life observations, such works often function as fictionalised ethnographies, incorporating details that may not appear in formal anthropological records. In this case, fictional works by Indigenous writers can also lay claim to be ethnographic due to their emic approach to societal depiction. These works provide rich, detailed descriptions that allow readers to grasp the social significance of cultural acts, a concept Clifford Geertz referred to as ?thick description.? Geertz?s idea emphasises the interpretation of the multiple layers of meaning within a cultural practice. Narayan's Kocharethi: The Araya Woman portrays the Malayarayar community that inhabits the Western Ghats of Kerala. This paper seeks to analyse the novel as a work of Indigenous fiction, highlighting its anthropological qualities and demonstrating how it serves as a form of '''thick description.'

Keywords:Ethnography, Indigenous Fiction, Clifford Geertz, Narayan's Kocharethi: The Araya Woman, thick description

Introduction

In the introduction to the much-acclaimed work Writing Culture, James Clifford presented a transformative argument that "ethnographic writing can be properly called fictions in the sense of something made or fashioned" (6). This argument, which challenged the traditional understanding of ethnography, was the crucial starting point for exploring the connection between Anthropology and Literature. It inspired academia to question the differentiation between objective ethnographic material and a subjective literary piece if ethnographies have fictional characteristics. Clifford's statement is an invitation to investigate the boundaries between the two disciplines by looking at their nature. Clifford also mapped the scientific rigour of ethnography within linguistic levels as adherence to particular stylistic formats. Contemporary approaches to ethnography consider Anthropologists as writers of fiction who manipulate the art of rhetoric to persuade readers to take a specific position (Watson 249). Perceptive from these views is that the modalities of presentation in ethnography and fiction mainly cause their differentiation. Eriksen says that novels "which are simultaneously the production of society and the contribution to the self-definition and reification of that society, has the additional virtue of presenting some ethnographic evidence" (172). However, he warns about the status of ethnographic material in fictional works. Mention must be made of the intended meaning of the word 'fiction' used in this paper. It need not be confused with the imagination or fictitious character of the genre in general. Instead, fiction here is a type of realist semi-fictional work rooted in verifiably ethnographic data of a community it represents. Written by indigenous writers, they are dense in their portrayal of the community. Taking its cue from fiction?s ability to record the ethnographic data of the society under the description, this paper attempts to read Kocharethi: The Araya Woman through an Anthropological lens. Using Geertz's 'thick description' as its analysis theory, this paper construes fictional space as an authentic ethnographic record that offers an emic perspective.

Literary Turn, Ethnography and Fiction
The Literary Turn of the 1980s reassessed Anthropology's shared ties with other disciplines while evaluating its development. As a result, two different perspectives within the field have become prominent. One perspective turned the anthropologists toward different genres of literature, intending to unearth anthropological data and encouraging them to take literary endeavours. At the same time, the other looked for the literary characteristic of anthropology itself. Arguably, this was spearheaded by James Clifford and his party in the famous book Writing Culture, which analysed anthropology to unearth its literary qualities. Looking at the process behind gathering ethnographic data and its publication, Clifford contended the scientific status of Anthropology. He points out that the ethnographer's personal experiences are removed by the compulsion to maintain impersonal standards in ethnography: "The subjectivity of the author is separated from the objective referent of the text. At best, the author's personal voice is seen as a style in the weak sense: a tone or embellishment of the facts. Moreover, the ethnographer's actual field experience is presented only in very stylised ways. States of serious confusion, violent feelings or acts, censorships, important failures, changes, of course, and excessive pleasures are excluded from the published account" (13).

According to Clifford, removing the ethnographer's personae from the written manuscript and other strenuous stylistic strategies only confirms the objective standards. It restricts the scientific rigour of the discipline within the suggested formation of the manuscript. In that case, it necessitates questions of inadequate representation to maintain standards and disassociation of authors' personae from their inherent knowledge before publishing. Keeping a diary alongside the ethnographic record is shared among all the researchers employed in fieldwork. (Malinowski's diary, published after he died in 1967, is the best example). While the ethnographic records reach the publication stage, the researcher's personal experiences are left untouched, as diaries are considered less factual and, therefore, insignificant. In an interview, Amitav Ghosh says that after submitting his dissertation, he was left with a "nagging sense of dissatisfaction" because everything he considered important about his experience in Egypt was left unsaid. He further states that this dissatisfaction is common to every ethnographer and that they are "haunted by experiences" (536-537). It must be noted that the above is a response to the question regarding the publication of Ghosh's novel In An Antique Land, which he wrote based on his fieldwork experiences in Egypt.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Kavimani N.
Research Scholar,
Department of English
SRMV College of Arts and Science
Coimbatore - 20.
kavilit56@gmail.com
&
Dr. R. Chandrasekar
Associate Professor and Head
Department of English
SRMV College of Arts and Science
Coimbatore - 20.
rcvidyacbe@gmail.com
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