The rhetorical turn in contemporary art and ethnography

Abstract

This special themed issue, published over two consecutive issues of Critical Arts (October and December 2013), aims to revisit the ethnographic turn in contemporary art by inviting papers from theorists, artists and critics, to engage critically with the ethnographic perspective in their own work or in the work of other contemporary artists. This introductory article briefly recapitulates some of the issues explored in the first themed issue and introduces the second by situating the ethnographic turn as part of a larger rhetorical turn within the human and social sciences. The main argument is that the crisis of representation can be reframed as a focus on the inevitable rhetoricity of representation, implying that one cannot avoid rhetoric in the description and delegation of culture. This argument is related to the different contributions that constitute this issue.