"Je Est un Autre": Ethnopoetics and the Poet as Other
Author(s): Jerome Rothenberg
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 96, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 523-524 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/682296 . Accessed: 17/04/2014 22:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Wiley and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 141.213.236.110 on Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:03:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Forum "Je Est un Autre": Ethnopoetics and the Poet as Other JEROME ROTHENBERG University of California, San Diego Today I want to proclaim my own otherness & proclaim it for what it is. [Pointing to head &6 heart.] There are many "others" in me. [Pause.] Before there was ethnopoetics there was the world. I mean to say that we emerged from the second worldwar & knew that it was bigger than that. The world, I mean. The world as Europe was not the world the mind now knew. And something had happened that let the mind know many worlds-each one of which was "other" to the mind. Europe was also "other." America was "other." What was exotic & what was near to hand were "other." You & I were "other" to ourselves, our minds. The mind the mind knew was a final otherness: a habitat of minds & worlds. (This emerged. The world emerged it.) What you know is what you are. What the mind can hold is what the mind is. Enough, the mind says. There is a politics in this & yet there is no politics. There is a knowledge here that mixes real & unreal, that opens. There is also the trembling headiness of a world in which, Rimbaud told us, "I" is an "other." What did he mean by that? What do I mean? "I" is "other," is "an other," is "the other." (There is also "you.") If the mind shapes, configures the world it knows or holds, is there an imperial/colo- nizing mind at work here, or is this mind as shaper & collager still pursuing its old work: to make an image of the world from what appears to it? And what appears to it? The world. American Anthropologist 96(3):523-552. Copyright ? 1994, American Anthropological Association. 523 This content downloaded from 141.213.236.110 on Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:03:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions [96, 1994] [96, 1994] 524 524 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 2 The ethnopoetics that I knew was, first & last, the work of poets. Of a certain kind of poet. As such its mission was subversive, questioning the imperium even while growing out of it. Transforming. It was the work of individuals who found in multiplicity the cure for that conformity of thought, of spirit, that generality that robs us of our moments. That denies them to the world at large. A play between that otherness inside me & the identities imposed from outside. It is not ethnopoetics as a course of study--however much we wanted it-but as a course of action. "I" is an "other," then; becomes a world of others. It is a process of becoming. A collaging self. Is infinite & contradictory. It is "I" and "not-I." "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I is infinite. I contains multitudes." Said Rimbaud/Whitman at the very start. It is from where we are, the basis still of any ethnopoetics worth the struggle. For those for whom it happens, the world is open, & the mind (forever empty) is forever full. There is no turning back, I meant to say. Here the millennium demands it. JEROME ROTHENBERC is Professor, Departments of Visual Art and Literature, University of California, San Diego, LaJoUa, CA 92093. Whose Cultural Studies? RENATO ROSALDO Stanford University What follows is the text of a talk given to literary scholars at a December 1992 Modern Language Association forum called "Cultural Studies and the Disciplines: Are There Any Boundaries Left?" It reflects on the possibilities and anxieties aroused by cultural studies for anthropologists and ethnic studies faculty. It also tries to explain the potential of anthropology and ethnic studies to members of English departments who, at times, see themselves as the owners of cultural studies. RECENTLY A SPEAKER CAME TO MY HOME INSTITUTION and promised to tell us about cultural studies. The turnout was tremendous. Graduate students came wondering whether or not to invest their careers in cultural studies and curious faculty members came hoping to find out what it was. Courses on cultural studies, not to mention the Illinois megaconference, have been similarly mobbed, most probably for similar rea- sons. In certain quarters cultural studies raises apprehensions about the dimly known and the vaguely threatening; in other quarters it promises to solve all problems and satisfy all customers. Faculty members who "do" cultural studies often feel marginalized and beleaguered because they have come under attack from departmentally confined 2 The ethnopoetics that I knew was, first & last, the work of poets. Of a certain kind of poet. As such its mission was subversive, questioning the imperium even while growing out of it. Transforming. It was the work of individuals who found in multiplicity the cure for that conformity of thought, of spirit, that generality that robs us of our moments. That denies them to the world at large. A play between that otherness inside me & the identities imposed from outside. It is not ethnopoetics as a course of study--however much we wanted it-but as a course of action. "I" is an "other," then; becomes a world of others. It is a process of becoming. A collaging self. Is infinite & contradictory. It is "I" and "not-I." "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I is infinite. I contains multitudes." Said Rimbaud/Whitman at the very start. It is from where we are, the basis still of any ethnopoetics worth the struggle. For those for whom it happens, the world is open, & the mind (forever empty) is forever full. There is no turning back, I meant to say. Here the millennium demands it. JEROME ROTHENBERC is Professor, Departments of Visual Art and Literature, University of California, San Diego, LaJoUa, CA 92093. Whose Cultural Studies? RENATO ROSALDO Stanford University What follows is the text of a talk given to literary scholars at a December 1992 Modern Language Association forum called "Cultural Studies and the Disciplines: Are There Any Boundaries Left?" It reflects on the possibilities and anxieties aroused by cultural studies for anthropologists and ethnic studies faculty. It also tries to explain the potential of anthropology and ethnic studies to members of English departments who, at times, see themselves as the owners of cultural studies. RECENTLY A SPEAKER CAME TO MY HOME INSTITUTION and promised to tell us about cultural studies. The turnout was tremendous. Graduate students came wondering whether or not to invest their careers in cultural studies and curious faculty members came hoping to find out what it was. Courses on cultural studies, not to mention the Illinois megaconference, have been similarly mobbed, most probably for similar rea- sons. In certain quarters cultural studies raises apprehensions about the dimly known and the vaguely threatening; in other quarters it promises to solve all problems and satisfy all customers. Faculty members who "do" cultural studies often feel marginalized and beleaguered because they have come under attack from departmentally confined This content downloaded from 141.213.236.110 on Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:03:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions