Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific

During the years he spent conducting fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, Bronislaw Malinowski became convinced that foreign cultures should be studied in their entirety, as fully integrated, “organic” structures. In what follows, I explore his attempt to achieve this objective, with regard to a spec...

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Main Author: Scott, Bede
Other Authors: School of Humanities
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171317
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1713172023-10-19T01:13:58Z Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific Scott, Bede School of Humanities Humanities::Literature Cultural Difference Anthropology During the years he spent conducting fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, Bronislaw Malinowski became convinced that foreign cultures should be studied in their entirety, as fully integrated, “organic” structures. In what follows, I explore his attempt to achieve this objective, with regard to a specific cultural practice, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). I begin by discussing his use of certain tropes, discursive techniques, and narratorial modes that are more often associated with the genres of travel writing and adventure fiction. I then address his conviction that even the most mundane features of social and cultural life carry ethnographic value, allowing the anthropologist to produce a comprehensive overview of any given culture. As I argue, however, this totalizing impulse is frustrated on more than one occasion in Argonauts, when Malinowski encounters various “opacities” that cannot be so easily assimilated into ethnographic discourse, thus revealing the limits of the very omniscience that he claims to be pursuing. 2023-10-19T01:13:58Z 2023-10-19T01:13:58Z 2023 Journal Article Scott, B. (2023). Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Prose Studies. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01440357.2023.2231109 0144-0357 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171317 10.1080/01440357.2023.2231109 2-s2.0-85170379072 en Prose Studies © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::Literature
Cultural Difference
Anthropology
spellingShingle Humanities::Literature
Cultural Difference
Anthropology
Scott, Bede
Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
description During the years he spent conducting fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, Bronislaw Malinowski became convinced that foreign cultures should be studied in their entirety, as fully integrated, “organic” structures. In what follows, I explore his attempt to achieve this objective, with regard to a specific cultural practice, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). I begin by discussing his use of certain tropes, discursive techniques, and narratorial modes that are more often associated with the genres of travel writing and adventure fiction. I then address his conviction that even the most mundane features of social and cultural life carry ethnographic value, allowing the anthropologist to produce a comprehensive overview of any given culture. As I argue, however, this totalizing impulse is frustrated on more than one occasion in Argonauts, when Malinowski encounters various “opacities” that cannot be so easily assimilated into ethnographic discourse, thus revealing the limits of the very omniscience that he claims to be pursuing.
author2 School of Humanities
author_facet School of Humanities
Scott, Bede
format Article
author Scott, Bede
author_sort Scott, Bede
title Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
title_short Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
title_full Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
title_fullStr Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
title_full_unstemmed Strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in Argonauts of the Western Pacific
title_sort strange mythologies: cultural and linguistic opacity in argonauts of the western pacific
publishDate 2023
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171317
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