Critical Review 3b

A review of some salient points in “Confronting the Field(note) In and Out of the Field,” by Gregory Barz:

Fieldnotes mediate experience and ethnography by capturing elements of experience in a text.  That text can be referred back to as an artifact of experience and is thus integral to the process of reliving, analyzing, and ultimately communicating ethnographic material.  Memory is changed by the act of remembering and even more by the act of interpreting.  Fieldnotes, therefore, fossilize fresh, uninterpreted memories and initial reactions and offer the ethnographer the flexibility to interpret her experience over a period of time and flesh out ways and contexts in which to understand and communicate material.

Considering fieldnotes from this perspective allows Barz to develop a polyphonic dialogue between his own notes, reflections, and analysis.  Fieldnotes provide a dynamic stage on which to continually “renegotiate ideas, restructure hypotheses, question conclusions, and re-evaluate particular stances I have adopted.”  They provide the framework for an ongoing process of interpretation and epistemological inquiry.

Fieldnotes construct a scaffolding around memories and initial reactions.  They can then be reexamined and interpreted.  But the actual memories around which they are constructed are subject to considerable manipulation by the manner in which they are textualized and the act of review.  So how do you write fieldnotes that comprehensively reflect your experience given that you can’t anticipate your future reactions to the material?  How do you create fieldnotes that provide ample material for interpretation?  How do you account for everything given that you might forget or creatively reimagine anything?!