These categorical unreliable narrators were thought to lack self-awareness, make mistakes, misrepresent themselves or others, or unwittingly tell lies in such a way that repositioned both the author and the assumed reader as distant interpretive authorities, credulous as to the validity of the narrative. For comparative religions it is usually the “believer”, while in medical anthropology it is typically the “patient”. In early fieldwork, this role was often filled by the “native”. Ultimately, the Unreliable Narrator is not so much a tool of deceit but a balancing act between representation and believability – what the author can actually tell us about a person or event and to what degree that representation can be considered accurate.Īs anthropologists, and specifically as ethnographers, we often find the problem, one might even say the specter, of the Unreliable Narrator permeating our own attempts to tell the stories of others. While Booth strongly implies that an unreliable narrator is simply one whose values differ from those of the author, he also understands the archetype as a function of irony and acknowledges it as a narrative construct rather than a moral judgment of a particular character’s personal failings (1961). He defines such a narrator, whether in literature, theater, or film, as one whose credibility is seriously suspect.
I was recently thinking about Wayne Booth’s model of the Unreliable Narrator. Walters’ work on Shaligrams and especially her upcoming book on her blog, Peregrination. Her current research addresses issues of political practice and ritual mobility in the high Himalayas of Mustang, Nepal among Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims who venerate sacred ammonite fossils, called Shaligrams.
Holly Walters, a cultural anthropologist at Wellesley College, United States.Her work focuses on religious experience and ritual practice in South Asia.
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