Translated to English by Francisca González Arias
1. Contact zone
The man never said his name. Perhaps he didn’t know it or perhaps he had decided to hide it. Maybe it had never occurred to him that someone else would want to find out. To know.
He appeared one winter morning, lying on the frozen lawn in the back yard. A slight aroma of alcohol on his lips.
[The aroma had been, from the start, merely imaginary.]
I observed him for a long time, astonished. I had stopped in front of the window for no reason, distractedly, with a cup of hot tea in my hands. I would do this often. I was thinking about winter. I was cold. I avoided answering the phone. It was a Sunday.
Undoubtedly, that’s why I imagined the smell of alcohol. Surely because of that I noticed the pale pink color of his lips. Certainly, that’s why I stayed still. A statue. Winter Sundays lend themselves to this.
When he opened his eyes, his eyes opened me.
The words that surrounded this apparition were: Gray. Enclosed by eyelashes. Windy. Big.
His eyes were all that.
I tried to run away. I tried to turn my back on him. I tried to turn back.
[Statue.]
The man raised a hand, and, with the tips of his fingers touching the fingernails of his other hand, he pointed to his open mouth. Then with the forefinger of his right hand he pointed to his stomach. I didn’t know what to do, how to react. Surely my lack of response made him bring the palms of his hands together and place them in a sign of beseeching, or of prayer just under his chin. His very center.
The man knew about need, and about supplication, of that I had no doubt.
II. A very brief history of classic ethnography
1.European and North American ethnography –beginning of the twentieth century to the First World War. Characteristics: the solitary ethnographer. Objectivity. Complicity with colonialism. Fieldwork at the periphery: Africa, Asia, the Americas.
2.Modernist anthropology: from the post-war to the 1970′s. Search for the “laws” and “structures” of social life. Social realism.
3.The anthropology of political awareness: 1970-1980. Interpretation of cultures. Radical critiques: feminist, political, reflexive. Mea culpa: anthropologists question their complicity with colonial processes.
III. Language
“I,” I’d tell him, pointing to my chest.
“I,” he’d repeat, pointing to my chest.
“No, I am your you,” I’d respond. Gripped by wonder. Peeved.
“You,” he would conclude, pointing to his chest.
IV. Something indescribable, something transparent
During the first three weeks the man moved very slowly through the house. Cautiously, as if he had just recovered from a long illness and was not used to his own body, as if he were an adolescent; as if he really came, as I sensed or imagined, from The Outskirts, he exhibited an unusual staggering that made him totter on the floor instead of walk. One could have easily thought that he was drunk if seen from afar. He would also spend a lot of time motionless looking at the ceiling. Whenever he moved, following me with his tottering from room to room, the man would look insistently, and rather apprehensively behind doors, under the armchairs in the living room, inside corners (when he looked at them, corners did indeed have an inside). He seemed to sense the presence of someone else. He seemed to be distrustful. Perhaps for that reason he didn’t speak.
His silence, interrupted at times by sudden incomprehensible enunciations, pleased me. I didn’t want to know, because I knew that, knowing, I would end up opening the door for him so that he would disappear in the same way he had arrived: at night, anonymously, without warning. And also his presence, which I associated with the cold and famine that winter unleashed in The Outskirts, not only suited me, it was also interesting. Although dangerous, the man’s stay in my house attracted the enigma for the first time. In the city, where everyone knew everything, where nothing could be ignored, there was nothing like an enigma to sharpen awareness, your vision, all your senses. Nothing like an enigma to feel alive or to be alert. For that reason I was always observing him. Soon, days and hours, at least the ones that I spent at home, became for me pure observation. Sometimes from the corner of my eye, or other times brazenly, sometimes methodically, or by pure chance, I’d watch him doing and undoing, moving, staying still. I suppose that I called him the Stranger because even though I could recognize whatever he did, it seemed alien to me. Because the man was my Lack-of-Comprehension. In reality, he was my Lack.
He preferred the dark –that was clear from the beginning. And he also preferred lean foods. He hated salt. It was enough for me to note the thinness of his body, and the rapid, perhaps desperate way in which he’d place food in his mouth to know that eating was not a frequent occurrence in his life; an activity that, in any case, afforded him scant pleasure. His squalid body heightened his attitude of a man on constant watch. Whenever he saw a shadow near the windows, whose curtains he himself had drawn, a glint of alarm would appear in his eyes. He’d withdraw then to some other place. The attitude of an animal that flees. That’s what he seemed like: an animal that flees. An animal that tries to evade the timely arrival of his punishment. That kind of suffering. He had the same reaction to unusual sounds or movements that I still wasn’t completely familiar with. Sometimes it was easy for me to imagine that violence pursued him.
From the start the Stranger showed great interest in household devices. He understood perfectly when I warned him that because the water was contaminated, he shouldn’t drink it from the tap, but he was capable of spending an entire morning investigating how a fruit juicer functions, or the secret mechanism that causes an iron to expel steam. He’d listen to music with his arms on his chest, and his eyes closed: a withdrawal into oneself that recalled religious experiences. Soon, however, the television replaced all that. It became his passion. To be more precise: the images on the TV, because, as soon as I walked away, the Stranger would hurriedly lower the volume. He could laugh, groan, shout, or moan for hours on end in front of mute people who raised their arms or moved their lips. On one occasion, upon raising the volume with the remote control, the man covered his ears with both hands and with very quick jumps retreated to a corner of the sofa. The trembling of his body made him whimper uncontrollably. Curled up on the sofa with tears in his eyes, he made that begging motion again. Something indescribable. Something transparent.
V. Postmodern ethnography
1. Crisis of representation 1986-1990: Reflexive/narrative movement. Theories on race, class, gender. The centrality of the concept of “culture” is displaced. What “fieldwork” consists of is questioned. Poetry and politics are inseparable.
2. Current postmodernity: Universal theories replace local theories. To write ethnography is a conscious and a participatory process. Ethnographies are read and commented by “study subjects.” The permission of participants is essential.
3. Ethnographic authority and authenticity: identity between and among subjects. Autoethnography.
VI. The wind from his impassive eyes messes up my hair
“Where are you from?” I’d ask him from time to time, seemingly distracted but with an unfamiliar edge in my own voice. “What’s your name?” I insisted in murmurs, gritting my teeth.
“Tell me something,” I’d ask him afterwards, beseeching, just as he did, I thought. That look. At that moment the wind from his impassive eyes would mess up my hair.
This: The image of a palm tree almost completely bent by the hurricane’s violent wind. A gray day. A tremendously gray day. A winter day.
--crg
