Abstract

A book review of The Art of Life and Death: Radical Aesthetics and Ethnographic Practice

Highlights

  • The book’s most central themes regard the contingency, situatedness, and dynamism of human experience, and the subsequent utility of non-static, phenomenological ethnography

  • “Depending on the person, it might be a certain quality of light, turn in the weather, shade of green, or shape of a building that calls to mind his or her regret over a particular word spoken out of turn, a failed dream, or an unfinished conversation” (p. 127). Such a sensitivity to what may trigger certain streams of consciousness appears apt in the context of working with the elderly. This point has ethical implications, reminding us that the questions that we ask in the field may recall unwanted fears, repressed memories, or things best left unsaid

  • Similar to arguments made by Nigel Rapport (2012), Irving shows how the tendency to compartmentalize people according to their shared upbringing, ethnic group, sexuality, or so on can mask the idiosyncrasies of their biographies, fantasies, and bodies

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Summary

Introduction

The book’s most central themes regard the contingency, situatedness, and dynamism of human experience, and the subsequent utility of non-static, phenomenological ethnography. An attunement to how people react to visual and sensory stimuli can open doors for creative methods magnifying people’s attachments to times and places beyond their immediacies; for instance, in my own work with young people, using a world map to discuss diasporic geographies and perceptions of travel (Loewenthal and Broughton, 2018).

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