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Americ(K)An Dreaming

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Americ(K)An Dreaming Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming Americ(k)an Dreaming 1 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming 2 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming 3 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming Table of Contents I. Paradigm Shifting (5-9) II. Bridging Truth and Fiction: Faction? (10-18) III. On Ethnofiction (19-37) a. Ethical “Factious” Storytelling (19-25) b. “Factious” Storytelling (26-28) c. In Factious Storytellers We Trust (29-30) d. What is Ethnofiction? (31-32) e. Why Ethnofiction? (35-37) IV. On Ethno-histo-fiction (38-60) a. Ethno-histo-fiction? (37-43) b. Ethno”histories” of the American Dream (44-48) c. Ethno-histo-fiction, Dreamers, and Dreamworks (49-60) V. Americ(k)a (61-88) a. Americ(k)an Heterotopias (61-70) b. A Tale of Two Americ(k)as (71-88) 4 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming I. Paradigm Shifting Today, like yesterday, anthropology finds itself in a state of crisis. It stares into its ever-dysmorphic reflection in the mirror: eyes never quite able to see clearly, mouth never quite able to find the right words—an ever-imperfect translation. It responds the only way it knows how: by being its own greatest critic. Anthropology basks in an uncomfortable state of crisis, of endless self- problematising, to adapt to the present. After all, anthropologists have taken on perhaps the most complex task in the world: to study what makes us human. Just as the human race and its needs change, anthropology must be vigilant in its dynamism, ever-becoming, ever- paradigm shifting. In The Structure of Science Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (1962) introduces paradigm shifts as fundamental to scientific revolutions.1 A paradigm, broadly defined, refers to both an "entire constellation of beliefs, values, and techniques… shared by the members of a given community" and "one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle- solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.”2 It is both "sufficiently unprecedented" to attract adherents and "sufficiently open-ended", leaving problems for its practitioners to identify and resolve.3 While Kuhn spoke of scientific revolutions, his 1 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). 2 Ibid, 175. 3 Ibid. 5 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming framework applies to various inquiry-based disciplines with the goal of advancement. If anthropology ‘is’ a paradigm, and as anthropologists, we are always (and should be) pushing for paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift is necessary when "rules (of a paradigm) no longer define a playable game."4 Its members are tasked with "conceive(ing) another set that can replace them", carpenters who "(re)design their instruments and (re)direct their thoughts" for this shift to occur so that novelties can emerge and discoveries can be generated.5 With an alteration of community perspectives, it follows that the "structure of postrevolutionary textbooks and publications" should also shift.6 Such revolutionary paradigm shifts begin when a community "rejects a one time- honoured scientific theory in favour of another incompatible with it."7 Kuhn asserts that it is often crisis—"the common awareness that something has gone wrong" that "precedes revolution", whether this crisis is brought upon by the community's work or new instruments.8 This produces a "consequent shift in the problems… for scrutiny" and standards of "problem" and "problem solution."9 The "world within which scientific work was done"10 experiences a transformation. Then, these paradigms will be composed of a 4 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 15. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid, 6. 8 Ibid, 181 9 Ibid, 6 10 Ibid. 6 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming "different bundle of experience that will thereafter be linked piecemeal to the new paradigm but not to the old."11 The paradigm has shifted. Anthropology's history, though relatively recent, has been an endless waltzing— paradigm-shifting. I emphasise the verb component in Kuhn's term, as paradigm shifts result from a community's active "doing". He points out, “tacit knowledge" is learned by “doing science” rather than by “acquiring rules for doing it”12. Time and time again, anthropologists have responded to our paradigms states of crises by reevaluating our ideological and methodological tool-kits and redirecting our ways of thinking, doing away with past theories and methods in favor of the new. We have witnessed the dismantling of colonial Victorian anthropology's ‘exoticised Other’ in favour of Bronislaw Malinowski's (1922) participant observation—ethnography with and of the everyday, only for Zora Neale Hurston (1927; 2018) to challenge this hierarchical dynamic in participant observation and use of folk fiction to convey truths about racial struggle. As it dipped into a Reflexive Turn, we watched Clifford Geertz (1973) tackle the notion of ‘universal culture’ head-on by advocating for subjective construction of cultural meaning through his use of interpretive modes and thick description. James Clifford (1986), jumping in sync with anthropology as a literary genre while steering away from ‘fundamental truths’, offers his notion of ‘partial truths’, highlighting the ‘real’ truth- value of subjective, inherently incomplete accounts. Today, as anthropology encounters the challenges and opportunities brought upon it by new age media, it finds itself leaning into 11 Ibid. 12 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). 7 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming its next step: as new identities, voices, and issues surface, who can, or should tell these stories and how? Before I became an anthropologist, I was a writer. Now wearing both hats, I am drawn to the anthropological discourse surrounding truth and fiction. The Reflexive Turn rendered the paradigm built on ‘universal’ truths incompatible by highlighting our subjective positionalities as ‘culture’ writers. While this put anthropologists' pens under an increasingly critical lens, the floor remains open for anthropologists to conceive novel approaches to storytelling, translating lived experiences, and ‘writing culture into being.’ Now more than ever, doing ethnography demands a set of new rules. There is plenty of room for creative experimentation. Kuhn references Francis Bacon, "Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion", suggesting that new theories, regardless of whether they are deemed suitable upon later evaluation, are ‘good’ in that they can aid the revolutionary process. Trials and errors are not only valuable to anthropological paradigm shifts because they ensure truths "do not evade us".13 They allow both practitioners and critics to join the anthropological waltz, evaluate our methods, discover ‘truths’ between the lines, and help us find our rhythm. Revolutionary sociocultural and political movements have put our ideals and identities in the limelight, demanding that we contribute to these paradigm shifts by practising reflexivity in re-designing our methods and practices. To contribute to anthropology's paradigm-shifting, I explore the role of ethnofiction in walking the line 13 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). 8 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming between truth and fiction and writing ‘against’ and ‘with’ culture in exploring shifting understandings about ‘The American Dream’ and re-imagined ‘Americ(k)an Dreaming’. In the following experiment in ethnofiction, I fuse the ‘true’ with the ‘believable’ and ‘fieldwork’ with ‘poetry’ to challenge readers to problematise anthropological perspectives on biases, truth, and fiction in both sleeping and waking dreamworlds. I intend to show how this experimental mode of ethnography can effectively respond to ‘the American Dream’—as a revered ideology or scrutinised myth, as an identity marker or cursed lucid dream, as put to the grave or as alive in as ghostly, residual breathing into waking and sleeping ‘Americ(k)an’ dreaming. Do our everyday lives challenge the dream? And, if so, how? As this "intrinsically revolutionary process is seldom completed by a single man and overnight" 14. the aim of my thesis is not to provide answers. My greatest hope for my work is that it can serve as a route, prompting insightful seeking and critical questioning on the road to better, brighter, and perhaps more "truthful" (or believable) somewheres. 14 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 7. 9 Esther Fan ANTH 370 Americ(k)an Dreaming II. Bridging Truth and Fiction: Faction? In calling for paradigm shifts, Kuhn touches on ‘truth’ as a necessary point of contestation and motive behind thought revolution. The condition that “any description must be partial”15 grounds and drives theoretical advancement across disciplines. “History often omits from its immensely circumstantial accounts just those details that later scientists will find sources of important illumination” 16, Kuhn notes, remarking that while “Observation and experience can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief”, “they cannot alone determine a particular body of such belief.”17 He further asserts that “an apparently arbitrary element… is a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by
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