Suchergebnisse

In this essay, I address the question of Sebald's interactions with ethnography from three interlinked perspectives. I begin by analysing Sebald's reading of ethnographic texts in the 1970s and 1980s, using his own annotated copies of works by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Norbert Elias, and then situate this reading within the context of Sebald's professional life during the same period. I go on to examine the comments on ethnography and related forms of representation that occur in Sebald's literary criticism of the 1980s. These imply a critique of many of ethnography's central practices: the 'salvage paradigm', the participant observer, and the effects of power produced by representing an unfamiliar Other to a metropolitan audience. I close by tracing the transformations of ethnographic discourse in 'Max Ferber' (the last story of Die Ausgewanderten / The Emigrants ( DA/TE)) and in The Rings of Saturn ( RS), and show that Sebald's prose involves a partial adoption and partial critique of ethnographic representation.

'Islamic Fundamentalism' by Lawrence Davidson is reviewed.

'The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder' by Bassam Tibi is reviewed.