Streger På Nattehimlen: Om subjektivitet og fiktion i antropologisk analyse

Abstract

This article draws on a study of female sterilization in Northeast Brazil, carried out between 1997-2000 and published in 2004. Reflecting upon her previous work the author argues that literary writing, including assumptions on the never fully comprehensible subjectivity of the Other, may be a phenomenological study in itself and a helpful method in anthropology. Writing forth the subjectivity of one's interlocutor lays bare the associations, which tie together the anthropologist's observations and sensations of the Other's - presumed - inner world. Without such an exposure the anthropologist may naively continue her work, as if no leap into guesswork had taken place. Despite focusing particularly on the anthropological use of the phenomenological approach, the author finds this potential naivety in any anthropological analysis that takes the "native's point of view" into consideration. On the other hand, the risk of being self-centered and irrelevant may be the only alternative. Hence, the conclusion of this article, though differently expressed, is: Better leap with open eyes than stay indifferent to the world.