“Impossible Ethnography: Tracking Colonial Encounters, Listening to Raised Voices, and Hearing Indigenous Sovereignty in the ‘New World’”

Abstract:

“If conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the past is admittedly impossible, I contend in this chapter that imaginatively reconfiguring notions of space and time to include past and future eras within the operations of fieldwork might very well constitute indispensable ethnographic research for an anthropology of the contemporary. My imaginary ethnography begins with a discussion of musicologist Gary Tomlinson’s investigation of the impact of Indigenous vocality on the experience of European explorers engaged in the ‘discovery’ of what they considered to be the ‘New World’ (A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity, 2015). I then place historical accounts, namely testimonies by European colonizers about their perception of Indigenous voices, in dialogue with theoretical texts by European philosophers whose work has significantly informed Western ways of thinking about language, speech, song, and music. [I]nvestigating past vocality [thus] provides an opportunity to radically reimagine ethnography and fieldwork beyond their discursive and spatio-temporal boundaries, which can be traced to the colonial legacy of anthropology” (pp. 97-98).

“Virginie Magnat proposes an imaginary ethnography of heightened vocality as an entry point to understanding how futures are imagined and acted upon in everyday life, beyond the spoken and written word, in ways that subvert colonial regimes of power and knowledge construction. [Magnat’s] contribution rethinks—from a performance studies perspective—an ethnography of the possible [and] sketches out an imaginary, dialogical ethnographic approach to research by tacking back and forth between historical accounts and theoretical texts, thereby challenging the traditional positionality of the ethnographer that derives its authority from being present in the field. She traces the genealogy of the devaluation of song in Western epistemologies by focusing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s and Jacques Derrida’s contrasting views on speech, song, and music. In the process, she makes an argument for the importance of nonverbal forms of vocalization in the construction of ethnographic knowledge about futures. For Magnat, such forms of vocality, which cannot be easily rendered knowable by Western modes of understanding, can provide important insights into how futures are imagined and acted upon in everyday life.

Magnat argues that, under certain circumstances, song and other forms of heightened vocality can play an important role in the struggles for self-determination. Indigenous Peoples, she posits, have historically used singing, chanting, and invocation to resist colonial ruling powers and their racist ideologies of European superiority. She argues that, for the European settlers, it was the unrestrained affective power of Indigenous vocality that was deeply unsettling, as it brought into high relief the limits of Western discursivity. Magnat draws on the work of Stó:l¯o scholar Dylan Robinson, who sees song acts as performative utterances that can assert Indigenous Title, build relations, and affirm Indigenous history. To demonstrate the importance of raised voices in the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty, Magnat analyzes sound as it has been utilized by Canada’s ongoing Indigenous Rights movement—Idle No More. By considering song and music as important strategies for a performative politics, Magnat is helping to rethink ethnographic intervention as an affective, ‛intangible efficacy’ that has the potential to mobilize collective agency. As utopian performatives (Dolan 2005), the song actions of Idle No More reveal that we could reimagine our futures collectively by mobilizing mutual knowledge and respect” (pp. 9; 23-24).