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Is There a Light in My Eyes?
Author(s) -
Grindal Bruce T.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/ahu.1997.22.2.180
Subject(s) - metaphor , expatriate , confusion , ethnography , field (mathematics) , ethnic group , colonialism , sociology , history , gender studies , psychology , psychoanalysis , anthropology , philosophy , archaeology , linguistics , mathematics , pure mathematics
The ethnographer in the field frequently becomes entangled in the lives of others in ways that are unpredictable and often emotionally shattering. In this montage of scenes, involving a British expatriate family, I present an account of a child, solitary and emotionally disturbed, raised in an environment of ethnic and sexual confusion, cast adrift in an African world. The story is a metaphor, a microcosm of a decaying colonialism, and in the wake of this decay, the emergence of a peculiar form of evil.