Paper short abstract:

This paper stresses memory and the importance of forgetting in writing ethnography and practising fieldwork, exploring the role of recall within but also beyond the field, with particular focus on those occasions where I have subsequently discovered my memory of events to have been incorrect.

Paper long abstract:

Past ethnographies have often been framed by images of landscape: we learn about the geographical position of the people we are about to be introduced to before moving swiftly on to learn about the specificities of their lives. More recently, ethnographies have frequently added another element to the framing of the text: reflexive passages -- sometimes incorporating elements of personal memory -- introduce the reader to the ideological positions and preconceptions of the writer. Both of these ways of locating ethnography are useful but tend to fade into the background once we enter the main body of the work.

In this piece I wish to explore the importance of memory (and therefore, also the importance of forgetting) in writing ethnography and practising fieldwork. By definition, therefore, I am exploring the role of recall within but also beyond the field. Rather than claiming that ‘memory’ constitutes a single subject in its own right, however, I want to explore some of varied ways in which it has had an impact on my own work, with particular focus on those occasions where I have subsequently discovered my memory of events to have been incorrect, where I have failed to make obvious connections between pieces of writing separated in time, or where I have only subsequently realised the connections between fieldwork interests and personal experience. Some of these comments themselves build on previous work I have done exploring the connections between fieldwork experiences, discussed in a paper I called ‘The Multi-Sited Ethnographer’.

How can one interpret such lapses of memory? And how can we use scholarly work on memory to examine them? In exploring these issues, I move from considering the usefulness of a Malinowskian notion of charters for the present, to reflecting on more embodied theories of learning and memory, to evaluating some of the more recent cognitive approaches in the field.