"That Commonality of Feeling": Hurston, Hybridity, and Ethnography

Abstract

Preparing manuscript of Mules and Men, Zora Neale Hurston wrote to her mentor, anthropologist Franz Boas, full of tremors, lest you decide that you do not want to write introduction. She knew that book contained much unscientific matter, according to ethnographic conventions, but she also assured Boas that the conversations and incidents are true (Letter to Boas, 20 Aug. 1934). Though not based strictly on hard facts presented in scientific format, Hurston's text captured much more than a traditional ethnography could capture. Her ethnographic texts invite fuller analysis of what they reveal about African Americans and all Americans. Thus far, three main trends in Hurston scholarship have examined her ethnographic works. Recent scholars have acknowledged Hurston's innovative combination of fiction and anthropology. For instance, D. A. Boxwell argues that Hurston reinvented anthropology (608), prefiguring postmodern ethnography by challenging scientific objectivity of ethnographer and asserting her active presence in text. Similarly, Sandra Dolby-Stahl maintains that mixed-genre approach makes text appealing to an audience beyond ethnographers. Other scholars contend that Hurston desires to salvage what is unique in African American culture. Mary O'Connor sees Hurston emphasizing specificity and difference of African American rural (149), and Susanna Pavloska posits that Hurston uses anthropology a means of isolating African American culture from accretions resulting from years of appropriation by white cultural mainstream (79). Finally, critics also have struggled with Hurston's controversial statements on race, such as this one from a draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road: [I]nstead of Race Pride being a virtue, is a sapping vice (249). In essay How Feels to Be Colored Me, Hurston also remarks, But I am not tragically colored.... do not belong to sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it (153). Analyzing Hurston's racial stance, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese argues that Hurston attempts to transcend race and victim status (197). Deborah Plant views Hurston as having an individualistic standpoint that not only emphasizes her own self-determination and self-definition, but also promotes those same qualities in others (4). Samira Kawash sees Hurston developing a new definition of community that challenges both the fixity and boundedness of such categories as race and nation and ... premise of autonomous individual whose supposed authenticity would exclude flux of ever (179). While these studies have advanced our understanding of nuances in Hurston's ethnographic works, reexamining her texts in light of two cultural theorists, her contemporary and mentor Franz Boas and our own contemporary Homi Bhabha, reveals further implications of this ethnographic work as mixed genre, cultural record, and racial commentary. Boas's direction strongly influenced Hurston during her time at Columbia and after. In presenting her ethnography, she followed his dictum to apply scientific to everyday: [A] clear understanding of principles of anthropology illuminates social processes of our own times and may show us, if we are ready to listen to its teachings, what to do and what to avoid (Anthropology 11). Hurston echoes Boas's contention in The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) that there is no close relation between race and (196); she articulates a similar stance in a draft of Dust Tracks: After all, word 'race' is a loose classification of physical characteristics. It tells nothing about insides of people (249). Affirming Boas's division of race from culture and his ideas of cultural relativism, Hurston also employed what anthropologist Melville Herskovits deemed Boas's major theoretical contribution: [T]he concept of culture as a dynamic, changing force, to be understood only if is recognized as a manifestation of 'mental life' of man (72). …