Ethnopoetics and Three Textural Realities

Erin Nelson
Engl 766
September 6, 2005
Ethnopoetics Blog 1

Brian Swann’s assigned introduction does a lot in addressing the question of responsibilities one assumes in trans-acting, crossing cultures, and interpreting texts by these others. Intercultural communication literally has two sides to each story with a third story all its own as the interpretation. For example, the culture being “studied” or translated has a history, set of traditions, and accepted set of social norms just as intricate and engrained in the culture’s identity and literal formation as that of the culture translating or studying. In other words, regardless of how similar aspects of two human cultures may be, when all is said and done they are immensely and irreconcilably different. The stories of one’s elders, be it those of a statesmen or chief are the very reason that each culture remains uniquely individual. In my opinion these stories, including legends of a culture’s creation, are indirectly their own creation. Differing cultures simply would not exist without a vast array of just such stories. While it is these stories of ancestors and differing beliefs of creation that makes one culture different from another, it is often the social norms of a culture which formed as a direct result of these stories and beliefs that flags one culture as differing from another.
It is perhaps the realization and acceptance of our different stories that sets the best stage for a meaningful and accurate crossing of cultures and healthy interpretation of the literature and text of “other.” It is necessary to realize that I will never be able to appreciate or fully understand the words of a Native American healing ritual in the same light as a native person of the culture whose very identity revolves around those words and the subconscious implications they bring as a fundamental part of who and what the native is in this world. This is not to say that these words, actions, or traditions hold no potential of value or meaning for me as a non-native person. These stories offer me and those of other cultures an unyielding opportunity for interpretation, self-reflection and a meaningfully interpreted familiarity with a culture not my own—as it is human nature to look for and identify features of one’s self in “other”. I think that Swann addresses this idea best in referring to the words of Mikhail Bakhtin—“language…lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s…the word does not exist in a neutral or impersonal language…but rather exists in other people’s mouths, in other peoples’ contexts, serving other peoples’ intentions: it is from there that one must take the word and make it one’s own.” It is important to see the interpretation’s brought to us through the study of ethnopoetics as unique and individual takes on a completely separate and individual idea of previous interpretation. Essentially, when studying ethnopoetics one is interpreting an interpretation—after all is not all text, written or oral, simply the necessary interpretation of reality which a culture needs in order to thrive and prosper?