“Can there be some kind of reconciliation between stories and science?”

                                                                                                - Stoller p.188

After having many conversations in both this class and others about the nature of writing and the thickness of the lines between poetry and prose, fiction and fact, and after reading Sunstein who flirted with including subjectivity and experience in ethnographic writing, and being both frustrated and wowed by the concept found in “The Loss of the Creature” that everything is conditional and dependant upon the view and frame, and then reading Paul Stoller’s piece, “Ethnography/Memoir/Imagination/Story” I have come the same conclusion I asserted earlier in the course, and that is objectivity is dead and the only difference between writing genres is the form and audience.  I have come to the conclusion that poetry can be written and read the same as narrative; there is no difference between a story, a memoir, and an ethnography.  The difference is how they are perceived by the audience.  Like Walker Percy argued, if the thing is studied in a lab, the thing is changed; its aura is lost, as Benjamin might argue.    

I live in a postmodern world, a world where lines are hazy divisions unclear, a world where subjectivity reigns and binaries are a thing of the past, but I understand that not everyone lives in this same world.  There are still departmental boundaries in universities.  The US still has class divisions.  And even as recent as last week we argued that there were perceived differences between races in this class.  So, if the world is ever going to be truly post-racial, postmodern and stories and science are ever to reconcile and stop ignoring their similarities, there needs to be a middle ground between the binary.  Perhaps that middle ground is ethnography?  Perhaps ethnography can be used to bridge that gap between fact and fiction, and perhaps more people will become familiar with the work of Thomas Kuhn and accept the fact that science too is subjective and comes out of the human condition.  Perhaps as Stoller argues, “ethnography can sometimes be a bridge that connects two worlds, binding two universes of meaning”. 

You may think I’m making too big a deal out this, and perhaps I am, but in my mind many of the worlds problems were created out of divisions, divisions between religions, country lines, political views, gender and race lines.  It has only been when we cross those lines and come to equal understandings and abolish that division that peace can be made and happiness reign.  I’m not saying that ethnography is going to create world peace.  That would be silly, but what I am suggesting is since we create our world out of social meaning and meaning comes from language, if the lines between language and genres of writing are torn down, if story and science reconcile, perhaps that will open up space for other lines to be torn down.  Perhaps it is a start? Perhaps if we could head the lyrics of Diverse and see the world through the eyes of a blind man, perhaps then we could separate the social constructs from what we see in front of our face?  People will never be free unless they can look at the world every time as if it is there first, or “through the eyes of a blind man” because our implicit socially constructed biases change the meaning of our vision and what we see.  Accepting the fact that lines between genres is fading and that subjectivity reigns is a start. 

“If you could see through the eyes of a blind man,

for a vision like that I’d request and entire life span,

would it change who you are,

how you feel,

what you think? Who I am?”

The answer is yes.  It would change everything.