This is a short review by Chris Kelty (2009) discussing two books written by the anthropologist Johannes Fabian. The review focuses primarily on Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive (published in 2008, notably before social media really took off). While Fabian's ethnographic research is largely focused on language and popular culture in Africa, the book is discussing a digital archive (and open access journal) he founded. In particular, he focuses on a transcrirpt and description of a ritual that a healer performed at his house. The task Fabian sets himself is to write a "late ethnography" (prompted by encountering the document in the archive), trying to painstakingly reconstruct what he remembers and can reconstruct in the form of a commentary (at the same asking what commentary as a form needs to become). In his review, Kelty approaches the research and archive from his interest in internet culture, copyright, remixing and free/open source software (rather than an africanist). This helps me draw out the kind of analysis and arguments I could be making about my work on the Formosa Archive project. For example: though commentary is a form of remixing, participation (in the ritual, even 30 years ago) is still an integral part for making anthropolgical knowlege; documents are not just to be uploaded but raise the question what they can teach us ("‘document’’ is derived from Latin docere, to teach", Fabian remarks); but as Kelty argues, not only the documents teach, but also the archive: "The archive is not the thing itself; it is just the material that was once in-accessible: the demand to write something that synthesizes it still remains. But what form should this subsequent book take?" (Kelty)."What is really at stake in Fabian’s book is the first rigorous rethinking of how research and writing in sociocultural anthropology are conducted today without attempting to invent some new mode or style."--> This is probably the most important question for my analysis as well: what will the subsquent synthesis look like? If it's commentary, in which form? What commentary does the Formosa Archive call for?On a sidenote: the links to the archive in Fabian's book and Kelty's review were both dead. You can still find it via Google but other than moving it from one server to another, the archive hasn;t been updated since 2001."Fabian has recognized the implications clearly: placing all this material online and available for experts to consult necessarily has an impact on what the subsequent book or article should look like. The archive is not the thing itself; it is just the material that was once in- accessible: the demand to write something that synthesizes it still remains. But what form should this subsequent book take? Will it look like the ethnographies we know today? If not, what principles should guide it?" (523)I also liked this bit on expertise:"Fabian’s demonstration of interpretation makes it especially clear that the claims to truth he makes are not based on the act of interpretation itself but, rather, on the laying of groundwork necessary to get to that point. Expertise is a piecemeal, long-term, painstaking project and one that is never complete. On this foundation alone is it possible to make claims that critics of ethnographic method are wont to see as “merely” interpretations of “unrepresen- tative” events and “partial” knowledge. It is this founda- tion that distinguishes a naive from an experienced ob- server’s interpretation of some event: the obsessive filling in of background and context to give meaning to one high- lighted sequence of events. Obviously this is not the only thing that ethnography can do nor is it even the most widely practiced—but it is one of the most powerful."
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