Ain't I an Anthropologist by Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall

Author:Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2023-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

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Mules and Men

“Negro Folklore … Is Still in the Making”

Contemporary Black feminist anthropologists have called for a consideration of Hurston’s anthropology within contemporary critical frameworks such as global or transnational perspectives (Mikell [1990] 1999, 66; Bolles 2001, 31). This approach, they suggest, might inform the disciplinary consideration, if not contemporary recuperation, of Hurston’s ethnographies within the anthropological canon. I offer an alternative response to that call, which instead considers Hurston’s ethnography Mules and Men within the historical contexts of its production. These contexts include a demand for studies among early African Americanists that would appeal to non-academic audiences by featuring narrative dialogue in ways that paralleled the widely popular literary realism found in fiction of that time, along with a critical interest in treating these narratives as data to illuminate traditional beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Black people.1 Hurston’s representation of African American culture in Mules and Men challenged common myths of Black inferiority. She demonstrated that, while shaped by the legacies of slavery, plantation life, and African retentions, Black cultural traditions are not determined by these contexts. They remain dynamic and evolve: “Negro folklore is still in the making” (Hurston [1934] 1995, 836). Hurston’s assertion that African American culture is generative and complex challenged prevalent attitudes that “Negro” culture was essentially derivative and uncomplicated in its expression.

Readings of Hurston that do not explore the more immediate professional context in which she worked tend to obscure the critical conversations with which she engages within and through her ethnographies. In addition, as her letters reveal, Hurston was aware that she was producing ethnographic works for a popular audience that would include specialists and generalists who would “reference” her findings in future studies (Kaplan 2002, 308, 389).2 Therefore, I must ask, should we compare Hurston’s professional/ethnographic authority against a standard that she never sought to emulate? When Hurston wrote Mules and Men, for example, are we to assume that she was without critical agency, wholly subject to the demands of her publisher, patrons, and mentors? Should we presume that she was merely resigned to write a “text” that, consequently, defied ethnographic conventions and eclipsed its cultural content, as so much of the literature concerning her ethnographic production and anthropological experiences suggests? Can we, instead, imagine that Hurston put pen to paper and deliberately crafted (from her exhaustive field notes) a distinctive statement about Black folk life and culture within her ethnographies? Can we imagine that her content (and approach) was informed by, and even revised, prevailing concepts of culture during the period? What were those concepts? What was her statement? This chapter reveals some of the ways that Mules and Men can be read as an ethnographic representation of Black folk life and culture when the historical contexts of its production are more closely considered and when Hurston’s intellectual agency is centered.

Hurston’s ethnographies are often evaluated as highly unusual, receiving either “twice as much praise or twice as much blame,” in Hurston’s words, because they are read apart from trends in the study of African American culture during the era of their production ([1928] 1995, 827).

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