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7: Narrative Dissonance: Conflict and Contradiction in Hurston's Caribbean Ethnography
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Chapter 7 Narrative Dissonance: Conflict and Contradiction in Hurston's Caribbean Ethnography Zora Neale Hurston's southern roots and anthropological traing make her a key figure in this study. She and Katherine Dunham knew of each other and had even met when Hurston attended a party thrown by Dunham in Chicago, but personal differences and regional separation kept them largely apart. Nonetheless, their careers overlap in ways that are remarkable and noteworthy . Like Dunham, Hurston worked with Melville Herskovits, Franz Boas's student and colleague. She assisted both men in the two summers preceding her graduation from Barnard by measuring the heads of African Americans in Harlem in order to disprove the assumption that Blacks lacked the cranial capacity and intelligence ofpeople ofEuropean descent.1 Hurston's contributions to Boas's project of providing a scientific basis for disproving notions of racial inferiority included not only the study ofHarlemites' physiognomy, but also the collections of Negro folklore she would go on to produce. Boas used these materials as evidence for his argument that "historical events rather than race appear to have been more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty, and it follows [that] the achievements ofraces do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than others" (225).2 The anthropological theories that he articulated etched a permanent imprint on Hurston whose own writing revealed their academic affinities. For example, in her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, she wrote: "It seemed to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms, yes. Circumstances and conditions having the power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no:'3 Boas and Herskovits's influence on Hurston extended beyond the concept of cultural relativism to include the importance of African survivals in New World Black cultures. Prompted by this research focus, Hurston applied for and received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation "to make an exhaustive 142 Chapter 7 study of Obeah (magic) practices ... to add to and compare with what I have already collected in the United States:'4 ByApril1936, she was in Jamaica collecting folklore and writing. Her research agenda took her along many ofthe same routes followed by Dunham just a year earlier.5 Like Dunham, Hurston aimed to represent African American and Afro-Caribbean cultures in a populist format , thus she did not limit herself to writing academic texts for scholarly venues . In addition to staging concerts, such as The Great Day, that showcased the songs and lore she collected during her folklore collecting trips in Florida, she also tended to include in her ethnographies, Mules and Men and Tell My Horse, contextualizing details about social dynamics among her informants, and between herself and her informants that were designed to capture the interest of the nonacademic reader. In a letter dated August 20, 1934, in which she asked Franz Boas to write the introduction to Mules and Men, Hurston wrote, "So I hope that the unscientific matter that must be there for the sake of the average reader will not keep you from writing the introduction. It so happens that the conversations and incidents are true. But of course I never would have set them down for scientists to read. I know that the learned societies are interested in the story in many ways that would never interest the average mind. He needs no stimulations. But the man in the street is different" (Kaplan 308). The "unscientific matter" added to the richness ofMules and Men, which represents Hurston at her best as a folklorist. The narrative is full of details ofFloridian Black life. It also paints a precise picture ofthe negotiations Hurston had to perform in order to ingratiate herselfinto the life ofthe communities she studied, and provides a complex analysis of the social dynamics within each of those communities. On the other hand, Tell My Horse, the ethnography she wrote upon her return from the Caribbean, provides a more conflicted representation of Hurston as ethnographer, and a more problematic depiction of the societies under scrutiny. Joyce Aschenbrenner argues that Dunham was more successful at integrating herselfinto the peasant and elite social circles ofHaitian society , resulting in a narrative that is more nuanced, subtle, and respectful than Hurston's. In contrast, Hurston seemed unable or unwilling to get close to any individuals other than the urban elite and American expatriates that she relied on as her informants. Despite the obvious flaws of this narrative...