Bedtime Stories
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Abstract
Conventional ethnographies portray a reality with limited complexity—from the singular perspective of the ethnographer observing the object engaged in events external to the observer. The multiple voices or personalities of the ethnographer are never invoked nor is the complex relationality of the object(s) and the ethnographer(s) to each other and to their situatedness in a context that is dynamic and dependent on their presence. In contrast to such ethnographies, in this article it is the process of investigation into the central question—the puzzle concerning the nature of the mother-child relationship—that is the main diegesis. This is a description; an investigation into the parallel, complex emotional relationship between a mother and child; an unfolding of the intertwined development of two characters' feelings and sometimes conflicted emotions, probing into the nature of the relationship of the characters in which the historical and psychological depths of that relationship are revealed. In unraveling the nature of this relationship, the rigid, separate and hierarchical polarity of other and self (ethnographer) is deconstructed. There is, in fact, no simple monolithic self to act as a referent to an equally monolithic other. The revelation undermines the construction of such an other and uncovers the dilemma inherent in the entire ethnographic enterprise which masquerades as representation. The inevitable categorization, distillation and oversimplification of reality in any such representation belies its complexity.
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