Abstract: sky on the morning of April 30,1882, and he could compare them in his memory with the veins in the marbled binding of a book he had seen only once, or with the feathers of spray lifted by an oar on the Rio Negro on the eve of the Battle of Quebracho. Ireneo Funes had a prodigious memory (he remembered only every leaf of every tree in every patch of forest, but every time he had perceived or imagined that leaf) but he was utterly incapable of general ideas: Not only it was difficult for him to see that the generic symbol 'dog' took in all the dissimilar individuals of all shapes and sizes, it irritated him that the 'dog' of three fourteen in the afternoon, seen in profile, should be indicated by the same noun as the dog of three-fifteen, seen frontally (p. 136). Despite his meticulous memory, Funes was not very good at thinking. Thinking, Borges reminds us, to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract. In the teeming world of Ireneo Funes there was nothing but particulars?and they were vir tually immediate particulars (p. 137). Ethnographers around the world face a dilemma similar to Funes. Too many par ticulars, too many immediate concerns, too many stories, too many voices, sounds, smells, bombard us throughout our field research experience and obfuscate our vision. How are we to see? If she is to avoid
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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