Zora Neale Hurston's Construction of Authenticity Through Ethnographic Innovation (Critical Essay‪)‬

"Breaking out of anthropology's dominating box required experimentation with new forms of writing and knowledge. It required listening to other voices." (Knauft, 1996: 19) Educated as an anthropologist, Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston's literary works reflected her ethnographic training, as she used field research, language, and dramatic expression to illustrate an authentic cultural history. Her play "Mule Bone," which was collaboratively composed with Langston Hughes between May and June 1930 (Hemenway, 1991: 162), embraced the anthropological method to engage in the candid inscription of Eatonville's folklore. Hurston demonstrated that ethnography is, as modern anthropologist James Clifford described, "hybrid textual activity: it traverses genres and disciplines" (1986: 26). She resisted the established dramatic practices of her predecessors by employing novel artistic techniques that reinvented the fields of theater and anthropology. Hurston's anticipation of postmodernism established her as an innovative leader in a field that so often precluded progression in an effort to sustain continuity. (1) It was not until the mid 20th century that ethnographic liberalism pervaded the field and other ethnographers emerged who wrote about cultures as native members of the society. As anthropologist Marcel Griaule, author of the 1948 book Conversations with Ogotemmeli_stated, ethnographers who write as members of the society are continuously able to discover "something more beautiful, more shaped, more solid" (Clifford, 1988: 87). Hurston's immersion in the community that she studied led her to compose the first authentic portrayal of African Americans in theater. She used the prism of ethnography to impart integrity to the stage. Her play "Mule Bone" fused anthropology with literary originality that analyzed a social structure through oral tradition and narrative.