Four senses in the Trobriand Islands – the body and writing of an ethnographer Cover Image

Cztery zmysły na Trobriandach – ciało i zapis etnografa
Four senses in the Trobriand Islands – the body and writing of an ethnographer

Author(s): Marta Rakoczy
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Malinowski Bronislaw; sensual turn; cultural practice; bodily practice; literacy; literary genre

Summary/Abstract: In this article I discuss Bronislaw Malinowski’s ethnography in the context of the socalled “sensual turn” in anthropology. I assume that although Malinowski was not a theoretician of the senses, he consciously practiced the “sensual” anthropological narrative later proposed by Paul Stoller. The main purpose of my article is to ask a question which exceeds a refl ection on the classics of anthropology. The question is: what are the anthropologist’s bodily practices and how are they related to various, especially written, forms of representation of fi eld experience? The data for my analysis was sourced from Malinowski’s monographs, his personal diary and his fi eldnotes, which serve to reveal not only the specifi cs of Malinowski’s narrative but also what is hidden behind the scenes of his fi eld experience: bodily practices and the specifi city of the anthropological sensorium. I also aim to show a variety of tensions inherent in the sensual organization; tensions that are associated with certain cultural practices as well as, among others, the literary genres used by anthropologists.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 133-155
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Polish