"Lissa": An EthnoGraphic Experiment

Dominika Ferens

Abstract


The paper analyzes a recent experiment in the collaborative production of ethnographic knowledge and the use of the graphic novel form as an alternative to the conventional academic monograph. Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (2017) is discussed here as a useful tool in the age of globalization for building recognition of the need to protect the lives of people other than our immediate kin, tribe, race, or nation. The paper argues that both the collaborative research behind the story and the formal experimentation stem from the authors’ sense of accountability to their informants. By telling a story about distant others who are given names and faces, Lissa’s authors encourage readers to develop empathy across borders.

Keywords


graphic novel; ethnography; vulnerability; body illness

Full Text:

PDF

References


Behar, R. (1993). Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story. Boston: Beacon Press.

Berlant, L. (2004). Introduction: Compassion (and withholding). In L. Berlant (Ed.), Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (pp. 1-14). New York: Routledge.

Brettell, C. B. (Ed.). (1996). When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography. Westport: Bergin & Garvey.

Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso.

Chagnon, N. (1968). Yanomamö: The Fierce People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Chandler, D., & Reid, J. (2016) The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Clifford, J., & Marcus G. E. (Eds). (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dragone, F. (Director). (2018a). The Making of Lissa. [Film]. Retrieved February 13, 2020, from https://vimeo.com.

Dragone, F. (2018b, February 18). The Making of Lissa: Still Time – an ethnographic Novel. Teaching Culture [Blog]. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from http://www.utpteachingculture.com/.

Felski, R. (2018). Identification and critique. In F. Kelleter, & A. Starre (Eds.), Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method, and Practice (pp. 155-164). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

Ferens, D. (2010). Ways of Knowing Small Places: Intersections of American Literature and Ethnography since the 1960s. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.

Flight, T. (2019). Why The Wire is the most brilliant TV show ever. Retrieved March 25, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlYDCuJ-c8s.

Fraser, N. (2010). Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gibbons, A. (2012). Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature. New York: Routledge.

Hamdy, S., & Nye C. (2017a). Creative collaborations: The making of Lissa (Still time): A graphic medical ethnography of friendship, loss, and revolution. Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, Anthropology. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from http://somatosphere.net.

Hamdy, S., & Nye, C. (2017b). Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Hamdy, S., & Nye, C. (2018a, June 7). Drawing culture, or ethnography as graphic art: The making of Lissa. American Anthropologist: Journal of the American Anthropological Association. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from http://www.americananthropologist.org.

Hamdy, S., & Nye, C. (2018b). Drawing the Revolution: The Practice and Politics of Collaboration in the Graphic Novel “Lissa”. ADA: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 14. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://adanewmedia.org/?s=The+Practice+and+Politics+of+Collaboration+in+the+Graphic+Novel+.

Hymes, D. (Ed.). (1974/1969). Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Vintage.

Jameson, F. (2010). Realism and utopia in The Wire. Criticism, 52(3-4), 359-372.

Jebens, H., & Kohl, K.-H. (Eds.). (2011). The End of Anthropology? Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing.

Lawless, E. J. (1988). Handmaidens of the Lord: Pentecostal Women Preachers and Traditional Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

"Lissa": A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from http://lissagraphicnovel.com/.

Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Dutton.

Marcus, G. E. (2017). Foreword: Lissa and the transduction of ethnography. In S. Hamdy, & C. Nye (Eds.), "Lissa": A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (pp. 11-14). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. M. J. (1986). Anthropology as Cultural Critique: The Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial.

Mead, M. (1928). Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow.

Shostak, M. (1981). "Nisa": The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.2.83-97
Date of publication: 2020-07-14 13:48:35
Date of submission: 2020-03-15 15:20:44


Statistics


Total abstract view - 1003
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 779

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020 Dominika Ferens

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.