The reflective gaze: Epistemological contributions to literary journalism in the face of the meta-narrative illusion of the digital age

Abstract

This article reflects on the epistemological contributions of ethnography to literary journalism. The objective is to incorporate the reflective gaze into the debate on literary journalism. It is argued that journalism based on a reflective gaze is a participatory exercise in which subjects, through an exercise of intersubjectivity, try to interpret, narrate and create a world in common. The exercise is dialogical. It is the result of active listening and the assumption that journalists are neither passive nor external to what they experience and narrate. The proposal radically changes the logics of hyper-simulation. It allows the community to appropriate the here and now and abandon the present continuous. The article argues that it is the function of literary journalism to be an alternative to the meta-narrative of accelerated capitalism in the digital age, and to highlight the illusion constructed on platforms by capitalism. The reflective gaze provides the epistemological framework to do this.