Book Review: A Collection of Creative Anthropologies: Drowning in Blue Light and Other Stories

edited by Eva Van Roekel and Fiona Murphy, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

Review by Montserrat Algarabel

One of the reasons I decided to get my PhD in Anthropology was because I found academic writing too stiff. When I was studying my bachelor’s in Sociology, I wondered why this discipline’s widespread use of writing was so very dry. Perhaps it simply followed the demands of a scientific approach to writing in order to be precise and to the point: no metaphors or allegories, no witty remarks, no plays on words, no humour, no feelings allowed. My initial intuition then, and more so now, was that academic writing could benefit from experimenting, getting closer to Literature, loosening up, and being more heartfelt, and that Anthropology vis-à-vis Sociology was more open to writing differently and delving into it as a truly creative endeavour.

This shared intuition is precisely what guides the explorations of the Creative Anthropology Network (CAN, part of the European Association of Social Anthropologists), not just related to writing per se, but to the manifold intersections between Anthropology and the Arts. CAN, according to its website, aims at doing anthropology otherwise, and recognises that other languages besides writing (photography, film, poetry, music, theatre, graphic novels, painting, and illustration) present themselves as exciting frontiers for anthropologists to breach. Such multi-genre and multi-modal possibilities are the bread and butter of this book.

Eva van Roekel and Fiona Murphy, this compilation’s editors and CAN’s convenors, are clear of their aim in publishing A Collection of Creative Anthropologies: Drowning in Blue Light and Others Stories. In its Preface, they address the readers: ‘Let this book provoke your imagination. Let the contributions inspire in you a desire for experimentality, for creativity … ’ (p. 2). They want to ‘def[y] imaginaries of academic convention through the cultivation of a mundus imaginalis requiring moments of pause, of introspection, and of discomfort … ’ (p. 2).

I found this book to be peculiar in many ways. For instance, van Roekel and Murphy suggest those reading it to create their own paths of discovery by freely choosing where to start and where to go next; they ask audiences to ‘read [the pieces], re-read, look, read out loud if you wish, and listen deeply’ (p. 5), living up to the book’s promise of travelling ‘through the wilderness of creativity’ (p. 2), which might startle readers’ expectation of an ‘academic’ book and spark their curiosity in equal measure. Another peculiarity of this book (almost an Easter egg for the sharp reader) is van Roekel and Murphy’s short story, ‘Ordinary Art’, an unofficial behind-the-scenes account for this very compilation. Through fictionalised characters bearing resemblance (I imagine) to the authors themselves, ‘Ordinary Art’ details how the book came to be and the obstacles it faced. Van Roekel and Murphy also point towards the inevitable connection between anthropologists, their writings, their work, and their personal lives (however chaotic, overworked, and even precarious the sum of all these might result in at some point), so exploring their ‘creative voice’ becomes powerful in order to ‘render feelings intelligible, vivid, and present without the demand of providing clarity to something that is, in fact, unclear’ (p. 107).

As anthropologists and social ‘scientists’ we are all about the human experience in sociocultural contexts, despite how broad and vague that sounds, with all its messy emotions and manifold contradictions. Besides, we are trying to figure out the ins and outs of our disciplines when researching and writing, how to navigate human relations in and out the field, how to recognise our senses and emotions, our ethical and political commitments, while grappling with the pressures of academia regarding performance and productivity, and with the demands of life itself, all its challenges and unforeseen events, what Bronislaw Malinowski termed the imponderabilia of everyday life (p. 317). Such a complex state of affairs for those doing ethnographic research (or for anyone writing) is well put in Alisse Waterston’s story ‘Observations’, published in this book, through her character Elena’s field diary: ‘More confusions: This split between “life” and “the field.” The lines are blurred … Where is the spot, the moment when I leave life behind and become the ethnographer?’ (p. 87).

Intimate and moving at times, A Collection of Creative Anthropologies is quite diverse in terms of what might be called genre, despite the fact that all pieces are connected to anthropological themes and/or ethnographic fieldwork in some capacity. Whether anthropologists themselves and their collaborators are turned into characters for fictional short stories (‘Where Wild Strawberries Grow’ by Helena Wulff and ‘The Debt’ by Veronika Groke); or the ethnographic process, together with its findings and ethical challenges, make up the plot of the piece (‘The Story of the Man with Three Braids’ by Michael Jackson); the craft of Anthropology is present throughout this compilation. The short stories in this book might take the guise of fairy tales (‘Four Musicians and the Fates’ by Kayla Rush), include non-human protagonists in the realm of folklore and mythology (‘Roots’ by Miriam Adelina Ocadiz Arriaga and ‘The Púca’ by James Cuffe), and even explore eco-sci-fi narratives (‘A Stranger to the Weave’ by Anand Pandian). In sum, A Collection of Creative Anthropologies shows how writing otherwise (p. 320) and using the arts (such as poetry, theatre, painting), informed by an anthropological background, is indeed possible.

Anyone in academia who has felt a creative calling is this book’s audience. Many pieces in A Collection of Creative Anthropologies will surely resonate with researchers, especially young ones, who have felt drawn to the arts but thought these had no place in formal anthropological or ethnographic undertakings. Moreover, any social ‘scientist’ who has questioned their writing might also find this book eye-opening. How do anthropologists relate to writing and to the written, printed word? Why write? The final text in this compilation, Alisse Waterson’s Afterword, explores these questions in a touching piece that recovers insightful examples of creative anthropological writing, from close friends in the field to world-renowned colleagues; quite a fitting closure for this book and for this review, too. Waterson’s protagonist, a professor on the verge of retirement, reminisces on her career and how she will embark on writing once her academic commitments are over for good: ‘She’ll write. She’ll write creatively … She’ll remember the ancestors, the ones she loved, the ones she didn’t. She’ll trust her imagination. She’ll knock the critics off her shoulders. She’ll trust in the process. And she’ll know why she writes. Of this, she is certain’ (p. 321).