This is an excellent and succinct explanation for ethnography and the new forms which it is taking, such as in the case of this blog in which I convey factual narratives related to my fieldwork, but written in a semi-fictional register.
Elena Avila, Identity, Modern Medicine and an Interview with her Daughter
The palimpsestic commentary-like pieces of writing that I am sharing here on Elena, as a process in itself, show me how generative her whole life seems to be for so many people. It's so much the case, that with only a few mentions of her name, her story, or a blog post, people start to bring their own ideas, comments, their memories of her, or connections they have made to traditional knowledge systems that parallel my experiences with Elena. I feel the need to keep underlining that this has all been about relationship. Elena always emphasized that working with a genuine curandera was cocreative work, something very personal and relational. This was also what she pointed out as an element of modern biomedicine that had mostly died out. So, it fascinates me that even at a meta level, as I go about working through this material years after her death, her life story tends to magnetize a great deal of interpersonal exchange and relationship building. That's unsurprising,...
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