Shayari Bazar

Indeed ethnography and theory resemble nothing so much as the two arcsof a hyperbola, which cast their beams in opposite directions, lighting up thesurfaces, respectively, of mind and world. They are back to back, and darknessreigns between them. But what if each arc were to reverse its orientation, so as toembrace the other in an encompassing, brightly illuminated ellipse? We wouldthen have neither ethnography nor theory, nor even a compound of both. Whatwe would have is an undivided, interstitial field of anthropology. If ethnographictheory is the hyperbola, anthropology is the ellipse. For ethnography, when itturns, is no longer ethnography but the educational correspondences of real life.And theory, when it turns, is no longer theory, but an imagination nourished byits observational engagements with the world. The rupture between reality andimagination—the one annexed to fact, the other to theory—has been the sourceof much havoc in the history of consciousness. It needs to be repaired. It is surelythe task of anthropology, before all else, to repair it. In calling a halt to the proliferationof ethnography, I am not asking for more theory. My plea is for a returnto anthropology.