Klaus Neumann Hubert Fichte As Ethnographer

Hubert Fichte as Ethnographer
Klaus Neumann
Universityof Newcastle
Australia
HubertFichte.
Otherwiseknown as Axel, Detlev, Jacki.
Writer:autobiographerand ethnographer.
Jackiis one of Detlev's imitations![Fichte 1979a:70]
A fifty percentorphan.
A fifty percentJew.
Bisexual.
Fifty-fifty.
I am a firstgradehalf-caste, I am an illegitimatechild, and now I am gay, too-that's
a bit much. [Fichte 1979b:36]
Fichte wrote aboutpsychiatryin West Africa.

Fichte wrote aboutprostitutes,hustlers, dropoutsand pimps in Hamburg.
He wrote aboutHubertFichte's life, Detlev's life, Axel's life, Jdcki's and Irma's
lives:
1935-1986.
Lokstedt.Schrobenhausen.St. Pauli. And all the rest of it.
Fichte wrote aboutAfro-Americansyncretismin the Americas.
Venezuela.
Bahiade Todos os Santos.
Sdo Luiz de Maranhdo.
Grenada.
Miami.
Cartagena.
Haiti.
Bermuda.
Santo Domingo.
Over a period of more than 15 years Fichte visited temples, observed initiation
ceremonies,talkedwith priests, diviners, and shamans.Watchedwomen andmen
possessed by Ogum.
Erzulie. Loko. Damballah.Ouedo. Agoud. Taoyo. Zaka. GuMd6Nibo.
263
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264 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY
Avlekete. Aido Ouedo. Oshala. Oshun. Oya. Oloko.

Shango. Sango. Chango. Xang6.
Of course, anthropologists write about other people's cults, manifestations
of other people's religious beliefs, about rituals they would never take part in if it
were not for their professional interest. It's their job. Yet it's not self-evident how
they come to know what they later want to write about.
The writer and researcherhas two options to approachthe descriptionof initiation
ceremonies:
He can himself submit to the rules of the religion and go throughthe initiationprocess-if he does he is bound to observe confidentiality.
If he wants to satisfy the requirementsof scientific description, he has to betraythe
pledge of secrecy-with all the psychological and social consequences entailed-or
he has to betraythe academicdiscipline.
The second option, which I chose myself, is to declare oneself as a writer and researcher,and to collect and comparefrom a distance. [Fichte 1985:230]
Fichte chose to remain aloof. Throughout his books he remains the observer from
a distance, although betraying academia would have been no problem for him,
who despised much of professional anthropology and who, in -his native Germany, was not considered one of them by most anthropologists anyway. In
marked contrast to most ethnographies dealing with other people's religious ceremonies, there are hardly any instances where I could not be sure whether, in
revealing certain information, Fichte in fact unveils a secret. Fichte carefully
avoided using the sociological methods which Sartre said resemble those of undercover agents trying to worm themselves into the criminals' confidence in order
to trap them.
But whereas he consciously put himself in the position of the outsider, he was
desperate to narrow the distance separating him from the people he wrote about.
He went to great lengths to acquire competence and gain familiarity. He was
fluent in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, and French. He was patient, made friends, and came back many times. In an article on initiation procedures in Haiti, a few lines further down from what I just quoted, he says:
LeonoreMau and I could take part in RaymondC.'s initiationceremonies, because
for over six years we had been well acquaintedwith the temple, the houmphort,and
becausewe had introducedourselves with a knowledge of Africanpsychiatryand had
broughtrecipes for leaves from Africa to South America. [Fichte 1985:231]
He worked hard to become an outsider who could be trusted and who was respected because of his competence and genuine interest.
He tried to narrow the distance by empathy. Nevertheless he remained the
white outsider who can afford to travel to and write about people who often can
hardly afford not to starve.
HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 265
Exceptions put aside, there are two groups of people: those who travel with James
Cook, and those who loot an army canteen because they are starving. [from a 1974
interview, quoted in Teichert 1987:241]
Withoutever being able (or prepared?)to annihilatethe distance, he empathized

to a degree that often makes his fieldwork appear to have been a painful exercise
and that sometimes makes readinghim, a painful exercise, too. His empathyfell
short of identification. It may be this falling short that makes me feel tense when
readingFichte, longing for a happy ending even though I should be aware of its
terribleimplications.
Fichtenarrowedthe distancebetween the writerand what and who is written
about also by introducinghis own person as subject to write about. Not in the
sense of a navel-gazing ponderinghis own role. But in introducinghimself as a
guinea pig.
-You are egoistic, Alex says.
-I am the experimentalsubjectbest known to me, I reply. [Fichte 1979b:199f1
Assuming the role of the guinea pig does not mean to play the believer, the initiate, the Black Brazilian, the Cuban living in exile in Miami. Rather it requires
assumingthe role of the materialthathe is workingon when writing. In his book

Herzschlag aussen Torsten Teichert says about Fichte: "Den Stoff seiner Texte
bereitetderAutor im Leben vor [In his life, the authorpreparesthe subjectmatter

of his texts]" (1987:9). That is very nearlyto the point. From and with his life,
Fichte preparedthe subject matterof his texts. All his writings are in some way
autobiographical.
Assumingthe role of the guinea pig by playing a memberof the Otherculturethat
is to be analyzed is not as dangerous as what Fichte does. Even where anthropologists' participatory fieldwork is more than a playful pretense at taking seriously
the ritualsthey observeandthe cults they are initiatedinto, therearenearlyalways

spouses and friends and piles of books and culturalvalues and superannuation
schemes and comfortableoffices waiting to be returnedto once the fieldworker
has left the field (and has left, too, anotherculture's roles).
By making an earnest attempt to be a competent and empathic observer and
by bringing his own life's full weight to bear, Fichte narrowed the distance between the author and his subject. Yet if he writes about himself, doesn't he eliminate the distance altogether?
MonsieurOuine-Herr Jein-Mister Yes-'N'-No. [Fichte 1979a:98]
Fifty-fifty.
No coherent wholes.
Being beside oneself-sensing the Self beyond one's body, that is .
. . . some giddy trance-likestate. [Fichte 1979b:38]
Herzschlag aussen, heartbeaton the outside, Teichert calls his book on Fichte,
alluding to a quote in Petersilie:
Heartbeaton the outside. The world as the heartaroundme. [Fichte 1980:73]
Instead of appropriation by means of identification, Fichte exiles part of his Self
to be able to enter a dialogue with the Other. (I have been trying out various substitutes for the verb "to exile": to cut off, to split off, to sacrifice, et cetera, but
I am uncertainwhetherthe dialogue requiresan active effort best described by

one of these metaphorsor whetherit has more to do with a crack, or a doubling,
or a frayingextension. The effort involved then would be the effort to tolerateand
perhapsto acknowledgethe crack.) Venturingoutside the familiarmay be an attempt to use the experience of close contact with the unfamiliarOther to learn
moreaboutthe seemingly familiarandaboutoneself. Using the Otheras a catalyst
to provide the A-effect to have an-otherlook at one's Self. In the way Michel
Leiris exploits the Other as documented in L'Afriquefantome (1934). (And as
ridiculedby himself nearly half a century later.) This is not what Fichte does.
"Sensing the Self beyond one's body," "heartbeaton the outside," means permittinga doublebind to watch and describethe interplayof Self andOtheron one
and the same level. Where is the ethnographic"I"'?Where is the ethnographer's
eye? "I am the experimentalsubjectbest known to me," Fichte says, observing
and recordinghis cracks.
... I would never, I say, write a book in firstperson singular.
In the "I" you sit in a swivel-chairwatchingtime that has been overcome.
With the "I" everythingcomes up to me and shuts itself off from me and turnsinto
the past. [Fichte 1979b:36]
Fichte says in the novel Versuch uber die Pubertdt, the first novel he wrote con-
sistently in the first person singular, the last novel he wrote before publishing
Xango (1976), his first ethnographyproper. The "I" that he rejected here is an
"I" going into its own shell and snatchingthe she'ss and "he"s passingby. Yet
being awareof the trapsof the first person singular(aware, too, of the trapsthe
"I" tends to set for others) he does not hide behind Hubertor Jacki or Detlev
when recountinghis encounterswith Braziliansand Haitians. Mind you: he does
not recountthese encountersin orderto let the readerparticipatein his personal
experiencesin Brazilor Haiti, butto providean understandingof BrazilandHaiti.
Whose personalexperiences anyway?
I.
Who I?
I?
You?
When I write "'I," do you thinkof you or of me?
Jacki?
Detlev?
-Have you yourself actuallybeen in an orphanage?
-But Jacki and Detlev are two characters,flesh and blood, aren'tthey?
Creaturesof flesh and blood. Corpses of flesh and blood.
-Don't you thinkthatJacki and Detley share many traits?
I?
You and I and Detlev and Jacki and Jacki's I and Detlev's I and my I and your I.
[Fichte 1979a:69]
In order to be successful with your application for funds to carry out anthropological research it is not enough to say: "I want to know. I intend to gain experiences. I am going to listen, smell, watch, taste, feel. " There ought to be problems that shall be solved. Explanations sought and given. Phenomena described
and interpreted and analyzed and tamed/conquered/exorcized. Safeguard your
journey with definitions and references! Create order and coherence-categorizing, systematizing, structuring, classifying! In order to be successful with your
application for funds to carry out anthropological research, in order to be a successful writer of ethnography, in order to be successful when submitting a dissertation, in order to be successful when bidding for the chair-it is not enough to
say: "I want to know. I intend to gain experiences."
Hubert Fichte had no degree in anthropology. Nor any other academic degree, for that matter. Maybe defining himself in halves (and sometimes as two
persons in one) helped him to bear recording the fragmentation of reality and to
resist the temptation to construct coherent wholes. Maybe his position outside
academia helped him to make do without applying structures and systems to what
he observed. (Certainly his position as a renowned writer of novels helped mainstream academia to neglect his work as an ethnographer.)
Fichte tried to come to grips with what he calls "the different layers of reality" (1978:44). He learned to write down discrepancies he perceived in what he
observed in order to describe it. Again, the most prominent subject to be observed
and described is he himself:
Recording my defeats, cracks, contradictions, not patching up the disjointed, but
leaving partsunconnectedside by side, taking a bearingon the facts by means of two
false, exaggeratedstatements. [Fichte 1979b:294]
Not patching up the disjointed, but leaving the layers visible in one's writing.
"Kinostil [Cinema Style]," the novelist Alfred Doblin called for in his Berlin
Program in 1913 (Doblin 1963:17). Fichte dissolves narrativity by juxtaposing
passages resembling short strips of film. The temporal relation of these strips
seems to be of less importance than their ability to talk to each other, and to represent the multilayered reality he experienced.
Layersinsteadof stories, pebbles, time lapse, slow motion, losing the time of the day,
and losing again, too, the refoundtime. [Fichte 1979b:294]
Writing against the linearity of time.
Writingby piling layersof memorieson top of each other, and fittingthe pile into
one momentof linear time-that's what he does in his first novel, Das Waisenhaus.
Writingby constructingsimultaneousness.
Writingby obstructingthe self-evident flow from past to presentto future.
Writingby reifying time and playing aroundwith bits of frozen, fattened, gelled,
melting, burnedtime.
Time-a reef from the shells of deceased moments?
Cut and worn aroundthe neck? [Fichte 1978:35]
When aiming at representationof the inconsistencies and incoherenciesof

his subjectmatter,he also reveals his own incoherenciesand shortcomingsin observingandrecordingit. Addressingthe academicdescendantsof the famousGerman ethnographer,Leo Frobenius,at Frobenius'formerplace of work in Frankfurt, he urges them:
Contradictions,lies, the fake, the exaggeration,the incoherence-leave them, do not
look for easy solutions-doubts, defeats. [Fichte 1980:364]
In orderfully to relay the meaningand the weight of this quote, it would need to
be said in one breath. Fichte demandsthat ethnographiesno longer be cleansed
of what theirauthorsconsiderto be irrelevantor false information,and that they
no longer be cleansed of the ethnographers'doubts either. "Doubts, defeats".
Doubts leading to defeats. Doubts guaranteeingdefeats? The following quote
from Xango is probablythe passage most often cited to highlight Fichte's approachto anthropology:
We are the victors.
We act victoriously.
Knowledge is power.
The perceptionof physics is the perceptionof victoriousphysicists.
The anthropologistemerges victoriously from the structuralanalysis of the Indian
tribe.
Journalisticreportsare trophiesof hunger, of hermaphrodites,of executed people.
The paintertriumphsover materialand over faces. (C6zannealone finallydid without
victories and left white patches on the canvas as defeats.)
The novelist triumphsin the novel; the reviewerconquersthe reviewed.
The avant-gardisttriumphsby means of his doubts.
In a conversationwe triumphon two fronts:over the subjectand over the partner;our
words are like the Frenchwho butcherthe Spaniardsand the Indians.
I do not emerge victoriouslyfrom Haiti.
My notes are the notes of errors,false conclusions, rash actions.
If, somewherebetween the silence of Wittgensteinandthe languageof our victorious
analyses and victorious syntheses, there were anotherlanguage in which the movementof changingandcontradictingopinions, the dilemmaof sensitivityandconformity, despairand practice, could be made clear, I should use it.
It would be a fundamentallydifferentlanguage.
Perhapsthe Indiansandthe Africanshada meansof expressionthatis less colonising.

[Fichte 1976:1191
"I do not emerge victoriously from Haiti." In the context of the quote, this sen-
tence is certainlynot a self-pitying acknowledgment,nor is it said with resignation. In claiming the defeat, Fichte refuses to be among the masters,he refuses to
be among those masteringtheir subject matter, putting themselves in command
of Otherrealities, being in controlof Otherand Self. The sentenceremindsme of
a boy defiantlystomping his feet: I do not emerge victoriously. Note, however,
the opening sentence of this passage: "We are the victors." Fichte was horrified
at the prospectof becoming corruptedby joining the victors. In his writings, he
documentshis defeats perhapsalso to supporthis claim to innocence. Whereas
most of his academic colleagues publish their victories and boast of their successes in penetratingOtherness-in orderto be successful with their applications
for research monies and for a job, and in order to lock out uncertaintiesand
fears-Fichte lists his defeats. He pondersaboutways to avoid being victorious.
He seems to requiredefeats in order to legitimize his anthropologicalresearch.
"Doubts." Defeats." Yet the pairing is less consequentialthanFichte pretends.
Did he not also say: "The avant-gardisttriumphsby means of his defeats."? The
nonhierarchicaldiscourse Fichte longs for requiresmore than self-critical, selfconscious scruples. It requires working toward a new way of experiencing the
Other. "If there were anotherlanguage somewherebetween the silence of Wittgenstein and the language of our victorious analyses." If there were.
. .
. There
is not. Yet Fichteexploresnew formsthatgo farbeyondthejargonof manytrendy

academics, beyond the postmodernNewspeak that is so fashionable (ironically,
also among those claiming to be open to a convergence of poetry and ethnography).
In many respects being an outcast himself, Fichte empathizes, yet he does
not identify with the people he writes about. He knows very well that theirplight
is not his. When he says: "We are the victors," putting himself on a par with
those of his colleagues who producevictoriousanalyses and victorioussyntheses,
he aptly describeshis position from the point of view of the Afro-Americanslum
dwellers he writes about. He has to acknowledge the consequences of being a
citizen of one of the richestcountriesof the world, yet whereverpossible he tries
to avoid compromisinghimself. Falling between two stools. Not denying to be
one of them, one of "us"?, yet being afraidof contagion. Suspicious even of the
privilegesof the ecrivain engage travelingto Nicaraguaand residing in the most
expensive hotel in Managua at the Sandinista government's expense.
Is there a way of evading the antagonismestablishedby colonialism? How

is it possible to dissociate oneself from the victors?
When readingMarcelMauss' Manuel d'AnthropologieI realise thatthe industrialnations' artshave colonial streaks. The countriesof the ThirdWorldsupply raw materialsfor the marxist,structuralist,existentialistconceptionsof the world, for the world
views of naturalsciences and of the arts, that are constructedfrom them.
As with cars:
The VW is exportedfrom Brazil to Nigeria.
Would not anotherway of experiencingthe world be conceivable?
Not James Cook, not Spartakus-Guide,nor Marcel Mauss-not the storingof experiences, the pickling of trophiesof experience-but waiting, in the centreof a world
and its happenings,until the Otherapproachesanddiscloses itself? [Fichte 1976:217]
Never did he come up with a solution. In the novel Forschungsbericht, written in 1981 and published posthumously in 1989, he recorded the failure of his
attempts to find another way of experiencing and another way of writing. In the
novel Platz der Gehenkten, written less than a year before Fichte died, white
patches outweigh the text. If there is not another language, somewhere between
the victors' obscene prattling and Wittgenstein's silence, then one must opt for a
white canvas and an empty page.
Yet when putting into words his longing for an uncorrupted language that
could legitimately be used to represent his perceptions of the world as the heart
around him, he touches upon another way of experiencing and another way of
writing. And isn't that the most we could hope for anyway?
All languagesarousedhis suspicion;the opulent, slurpingone, with greasy caps and
a firmhandshake,insertionsof dialect;the high-pitched,roaringone which people in
Francehad been fond of using, behind his back, and which, so it seemed to Jacki,
could still be used in France, thereit had not handedout bathsoap and dry towels for
showers which never let out water;it had not been partyto the suffocating of entire
populations.
-It had not been partyto the suffocatingof entire populations,Jacki thought.
-In Francethey get away with thatkind of bullshit.
-Do they get away?
Which kind of Germanmay Jacki use withoutfeeling guilty?
-Guilt?
-Feeling?
-What does remain?
-Remain?
-What?
Jackithoughttheremust be a languagepolished as sand, texts which did not raise the
everyday, the behaviourof peasants, psychiatricorderlies, road menders, drop-outs,
above itself to turninto a strangenesslong known and into shocks ever the same, but
sachte, softly
Jacki again thoughtthe Hamburgword sachte which he had not rememberedin all
those years in the Provencesachte, softly touch and turnso that forms emerge such as those createdby the tides
in the mudflats,for a few hoursonly.
And the incoming tide reclaimsthem. [Fichte 1988:9fl
Through Fichte's texts shines his ardent desire to save his ability to talk and
to write from a reality that threatened to refute all attempts at representing it.
Around 1980 he began devoting much of his time to learning yet another language, classical Greek. At first sight, it was in order to be able to appreciate Herodotus. Questioning himself more closely about his intentions, he notes:
Jdcki's need to talk, which had, but for miserableresidue, in the face of reality succumbed to silence, startedto arise anew with the Ionic, with the Karianof the Turk
Herodotus.
Jacki reckonedthat the eagerness with which he pursuedthis language, was the eagerness to survive as somebody talking. [Fichte 1989a:35]
He is never carried away by his own sensual experiences. In Fichte's collage
different layers of reality highlight each other, contradict each other, get in each
other's way.
Rain:
I do not see anything.
The power fails.
I barely smell anythingin the darkness.
I do not thinkof taste, or touch.
Throughmy enormouslyextendedhearingthe worldconsists of dropsand frogs only.
Frogs like donkeys.
Frogs like birds.
Frogs like Michael.
Frogs like hammerand chisel.
Frogs like "Help!".
Frogs like pneumatichammers.
Frogs like circularsaws.
Frogs like Viennese choirboys.
Frogs like cars.
Frogs like frogs. [Fichte 1976:79]
There follows a pun on the sounds created by frogs and toads which I cannot
translate. Fichte continues:
Whathappenswhen it rains in a favela for 24 hours:
Mud houses go soft and cave in.
Everythingis wet:
Blankets, clothes, hair, flour, beans, wicks, matches, charcoal. The tins with powderedmilk go rusty.
Amoebae and pulmonataare washed into the well water. [Fichte 1976:80]
There is nothing arty about Fichte's poetics, nor about the way he juxtaposes and
intertwines material that most anthropologists would have filed away in different
categories: "interviews," "fieldwork diary," "statistical data," "newspaper
clippings," "personal diary," later to draw on this raw material only to reach a
synoptical synthesis, a synthetical synopsis in their ethnographies. At first, I had
the impression that Fichte only quotes what others might term "raw material."
Certainly his texts still resemble notes, data, primary source material, despite his
work on them. Casual poetry.
The conventionaltreatiseaboutan anthropologicalfield translatesthe informants'discourse into an academicdiscourse.
Withoutany semanticor poetic stringency.
The second discourseis postulatedsuperioranddesirable.It suggests thatboth theory

and empirical data are comprehensive and precise, which hardly ever is the case.
[Fichte 1989b:18]
The following extensive quote is from a chapter on Bahia in his first ethnography
proper, Xango. It should give you an idea of Fichte's ethnographic prose:
Rice cost in 1967 0.67 cruzeiros-in 1970 1.12-1971 at the FeiraSao Joaquim1.80.
Beans in 1967 0.48-in 1971 1.80.
Cassavain 1967 0.18-in 1971 1.20.
Porkin 1967 2.00-in 1971 4.00.
One egg in 1967 0.10-in 1971 0.19.
One litreof milk in 1967 0.15-in 1971 0.70.
Jornaldo Brasil:
Duringthe firstthree monthsof this year basic food went up in price by 10 percent.
We accompany ProfessoraTheresa to the marketof Sao Joaquimto buy sacrificial
animals. It is the people's market, and food is displayed in the dirt to be sold to the
poor.
A goat costs 50 cruzeiros, an Angolan fowl 10 cruzeiros, a dove eight.
The following is required:
3 goats,
3 Angolan fowl,
3 chicken,
3 ducks,
3 white doves-for each novice one four-legged sacrificial animal, and poultry to
"cover" every one of the goats' legs. I am allowed to transportthe sacrificialanimals
by VW cab to the cult house.
I feel in the centreof these Africanproletarians'friendship.
Sure, I think, they will let me take part in the most fascinating, the most shocking,
the wholly atavistic-Muhl, Nitsch, Lil Picard-blood bath, and Leonore will make
her most beautifulphotos-not in orderto make a fabulousamountof money, for the
fabuloussum which would cover the debt incurredthroughthis journey could not be
broughtin with photos.
I imaginemarvellousphotos. Leonore's sensitivityand all this indigestibleflowing of
blood.
In the afternoonthe fourthand last puxada. Today, the skulls are decoratedwith an
expensive blue paint.
Actually it should have been real indigo.
But Africanindigo has become scarce in Bahia.
With theirmake-upremovedthe girls go skippingroundthe sacredroom.
A nineteen-year-oldcarpentercomes from the interiorto make his fortunein the big
city of Bahia.
For weeks he does not find a job.
-I have come to know everything. Even hunger.
Now he is employed in a cabinet maker'sworkshopfor less than70 dollarsa month.
He works 52 hoursper week, unpaidovertime not included. With two mates he lives
in a shack with walls of cardboard.In the morninghe is given coffee and two eggs at
this place. He eats breadfor lunch. In the evening beans and rice. For this he pays 25
cruzeirosper week. He has 24 cruzeiros, 10 dollars, left for love, education, relaxation, clothes, cigarettes.
HUBERTFICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER
273
As often as he can he takes pity on elderly men who take pity on him. [Fichte
1976:30f1
As if empathy were to be disguised by a matter-of-fact account of living conditions. Or is it a painful awareness of the hardships the protagonists of his ethnographies experience? A listing of cool statistical data, or a listing of figures so
naked that they hurt? And then there is the contrast between him talking, from
some distance, about a 19-year-old carpenter, and him talking, from some distance, about the anthropologist pursuing his research in Bahia. In the second instance he creates the distance by squeezing in an irony that must hurt the anthropologist he is writing about. (It turns out that, at the time Professora Theresa had
invited Mau and Fichte to visit her, the offerings had already been made. Even
then Leonore Mau wasn't allowed to take photos.)
Some of his writings resemble inventories. Lists of words, lists of fragments
of sentences. Listed one underneath the other. A full page with justified lines conveys order, solidity, and completeness. Too many white patches disturb. They
suggest fragmentariness and gaps that point at missing links and missing endings.
Fichte's prose is condensed. Often his sentences seem terse and to have been jotted down in haste to allow him to record every detail, every single step in a ritual,
the remotest information obtained. But it is not simply a matter of using language
economically. His prose is condensed as if he were afraid of unnecessary words
squatting on white space. And sometimes, as if he were on the verge of becoming
mute, afraid to use words corrupted and hollow-most
striking in his last novel,
Der Platz der Gehenkten (1 989c).
Condensation:
Haikusoften say more abouta particularsociety thanthreetons of cardindexes turned
upside down.
Rhythm.
Timbre.
Sharpfocus.
Thatmeans:no redundancy-but enough comprehensibility.
Any humanfact can be expressed in a way thatmakes anybodywilling and interested
understandit. [Fichte 1980:363]
Few people would be as willing and interested to understandas Hubert

Fichte. If he wantedto suggest thatothersshould live up to his own high standards
of willingness and interest, his last sentence would become meaningless. He
could withjustificationask for comprehensibilityfrom those anthropologistswho
defendtheirniche by erectingwalls from academicjargon aroundthem. But does
it make sense to apply the criterionof comprehensibilityto poetic representations
of reality?To me, the criterionof immediacy seems more fitting here. A haiku
does not have an arcanemeaningthat needs to be deciphered.It does not call for
a probing into mysterious depths. Fichte approachesreality on the most direct
route. His renderingsof reality do not make an interpretivedetour, nor are they
impressionisticinfusions of the author'sbrooding upon reality. Which makes it
futile to brood over Fichte's words in order to distill a deeper meaning from them.
But beware of Fichte's prose! His "haikus" may leap at you. And not making an
interpretive detour does not mean that his writing is not analytical.
Poetryis analytical. [Fichte 1987:196]
Is there a link between Fichte's condensation and the ornate style of his subject
matter, the Vaudou and the Baroque playwright, Lohenstein, much admired and
often discussed by him? Fichte shows that there is a delicate structure behind the
bombast of Lohenstein and the Afroamerican rituals. He reconstructs the slender
delicacy of his subject matter in the forms he chooses to represent it.
Particularly in those details yet tight accounts where key words seem to have
been isolated lest their clarity be lulled with soft fillers and paddings, in being
strung together the words assume a new meaning. Strings of words might turn
into litanies. And instead of lulling the readers, those strings of words enchant,
bewitch, make the readers hypersensitive.
A litany bringsabout a poisoning by words. The meaning sinks back, and the words
themselves soar and beckon to fellow words, become saturatedand fall down again,
not far from the place where they rose up.
They have changed like food gone off.
If the litany is chosen close to bodily representations,it turnsinto tenderness,desire,
into bodies with more than one sex, and hermaphroditescome out of the mouth and
re-enterthroughthe eyes.
Worse still: mouthand ears fall off, and I go blind. [Fichte 1979b:57]
Kinostil.
Cinema style.
Desperate attempts to represent the different layers of reality.
Collage:
The modem litany! [Fichte 1980:364]
Fichte's poetic representation of reality is in its critique much more radical than
an interpretive, explanatory, penetrating scientific representation could ever be.
Ethnopoetics.
Poetic ethnography. Ethnographic poetry.
The temptation to fit Fichte's writing into categories.
Victor Segalen. Michel Leiris. Claude Levi-Strauss.
The temptation to package the author by wrapping him up with others.
With Segalen he shares the concern for an approach to the Other that's not colonizing.
There is little his empathic listening to the world as heart around him has in common with Leiris' narcissistic listening to his own heartbeat.
Levi-Straussepitomizes what Fichte detested. Thereis no otherauthorFichte has

so viciously criticized as Levi-Strauss. Probinginto the languageof Tristes Tropiques, Fichte exposes L6vi-Straussas somebody who is interestedin the Nambikwaraand Bororoas humanraw materialto constructscientific theories. Fichte
despised the Frenchethnographerfor writing about a people whose language he
did not speak (he shows that even Levi-Strauss's command of Portuguese, the
language used by the interpreters,was poor). The sentimentalityof the Tristes
Tropiques,a book much admiredfor its literaryqualities and its "sensitive" approachis tornto pieces by Fichte for its fascist and colonialist nature.(The harshness of his critique makes me wonder, though, whetherhe recognized in LeviStrauss's confessions basic premises of anthropologythat Fichte himself could
not completely evade in his own writings.)
When trying to write about Fichte, I kept thinking of the first volume of Klaus
Theweleit's Buch der Konige (1988), where he looks at male writerswhose biographiestravelover lines of women's dead bodies, bodies sucked dry of creative
energies. Murderersand carrion-eaters:Benn, Brecht, Hamsun, Dante, Ezra
Pound, and others. (Jean-LucGodardand FranzKafka are introducedas the exceptions proving the rule.) Theweleit convincingly argues that there is a deadly
male logic accordingto which men create artby means of survivingwomen close
to them. There is none of this obscene survival in Fichte's writing. The authoris
his own victim. But Levi-Strauss:drawingenergies from vanishingIndiantribes.
Levi-Strauss,ethnographerand survivor. Yet he would be only the most prominent representativeof ethnographerswhose writingsare driven by dying cultures
left behind. Maybe that is also what Fichte is talking about when he says: "We
are the victors." I am optimisticthat, at least in this sense, being among the victors can be avoided, even for men.
Fichte himself drew up several lists of authorshe chose to hold up as examples. He continuouslymodifiedthese lists. When citing some of the names he
provides, I try to select those I consider to have had a determininginfluence on
Fichte:
Herodotus.("My friendHerodotus.")
Frazer.
Proust.CertainlyProust.
Genet.
Euclidesda Cunha.
Chamisso.
Daniel Caspervon Lohenstein, playwrightof the GermanBaroque.
Selma Lagerlof(or would it be more correctto say: Nils Holgersson?).
There were others he wrote about at length:
Sappho.
Pasolini.
HenryJames.
Hans Henny Jahnn.
Villon.
Homer.
Luther.
I wonderwhy he did not mentionan authorwho seems such a close affine:Alexandervon Humboldt,gay, he too, gifted with a painful sensitivity and he, too,
the experimentalsubjectbest known to himself. Anotheraffine whom he actually
did mention when talking about Lohenstein'sAgrippina and the langage of the
Vaudou:Schwitters,the Dadaistpoet, who wanted, throughhis techniqueof collage, to "create links, preferablybetween everythingthat exists in this world"
(Hage, quotedfrom Teichert 1987:163).
Why Herodotus?Fichte is fascinatedby Herodotus'surge to know, his immense
curiosity, his restlessness: knowing by way of traveling. Herodotus could not
have known that there should be a difference between a poetic and a scientificfactualrepresentationof reality.
The difference between science and literatureis one between index cards and A-4sized paper. For Herodotusthere was no such difference. [Fichte 1989a:139]
Fichte, readingHerodotus,notes:
gentleness in approachingreality. [quotedfrom Teichert 1987:38]
And Fichte, like Herodotus,declines the penetrationof reality by explaining it.

He opts for the poetic reportand rejectsthe dissecting analysis. "Herodotusdoes
not explain anything. His reportis the driest," says anotherof Herodotus'sadmirers,WalterBenjamin(1977:392).
1963:DerAufbruchnach Turku.A collection of stories. Autobiographical.
1965:Das Waisenhaus.A novel. Autobiographical.On one yearof Detlev's
childhood, spent in a Bavarianorphanage.The only one of Fichte's books that
has been publishedin English (Fichte 1990).
1968: Die Palette. A novel. Autobiographical.On the bar Palette, Jicki's
probinginto and involvement with the world of dropoutsin the 1960s in Hamburg.
1971: Detlevs Imitationen "Griinspan. " A novel. Autobiographical. On
Jicki, and on Detlev's childhood and youth in Hamburg.

1972/1978: Interviews aus dem Palais d'Amour / Wolli Indienfahrer. A
novel. Interviewswith prostitutesand pimps and the managerof a brothel.

1974: Versuch uber die Pubertat. A novel. Autobiographical.On Hubert
Fichte's adolescence in the 1950s in Hamburgand in France.
1976:Xango. On Afro-Americansyncretismin Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad.
1977: Hans Eppendorfer: Der Ledermann spricht mit Hubert Fichte. An in-
terview.
1980: Petersilie. On Afro-Americansyncretism in Santo Domingo, Venezuela, Miami, Grenada.
1980:Psyche. On psychiatrictreatmentin the Senegal.
1982: Zwei Autosfiir den Heiligen Pedro Claver. Radio plays.
SaintPedroClaver,anuncompromising
andcracked-up
figureof history-bothsweet
and terrible. [Fichte 1985:390]
PedroClaver, a Jesuit priest who baptizedthousandsof African slaves landed in

Cartagenain the firsthalf of the 17thcentury.
PedroClaver's life, his death, and his funeralresemble those Afroamericanrites he
was most successful in stampingout in Cartagena.[Fichte 1985:395]
San Pedro Claver, a man gushing with empathy, self-negating, compassionate

and merciless at the same time. Fichte was obviously electrified by these contradictions, trying to sense, I guess, the messianic elements and a bizarre love for
the Other, which were also partof Europeancolonialism.

1985: Lazarus und die Waschmaschine. An ethnography. On Afro-American
syncretismin the Americas. The only one of Fichte's ethnographiesthathas been

publishedin a languageotherthanGerman(in Brazil, underthe title Etnopoesia,
Brazil supposedlybeing the countrywith the largest numberof licensed editions
of Fichte's writings).
Plus some volumes by Leonore Mau, for which Fichte supplied texts. Leo-
noreMauand HubertFichte, IrmaandJacki. She was Fichte's lover, andpartner,

with her photographycoauthoringtheir sensitive representationof reality.
Plus essays, interviews, radio plays, and radio features, which enabled
Fichte to survive as a writerand to pay for his trips overseas. He could not have
lived on the royalties of his books, none of which were particularlysuccessful in
termsof numbersof copies sold.
Plus, at the time of Fichte's death in 1986, 17 volumes of unpublished
works, most of which have already been published posthumously:novels, ethnographies,radioplays, essays.
Fichte's oeuvre is taken care of by Fischer, one of the biggest and most reputablepublishinghouses in West Germany.
The Germancity of Hildesheim, where I have been writing this paper, has
about 100,000 inhabitants.Many institutionsof tertiarylearning, one university.
Large catchmentarea. Many bookshops. Between them, the five largest bookshops had four books by Fichte, among them only one book that has been published recently. All booksellers I asked said: "Fichte does not sell."
Did Fichte write fiction?
Ethnographicfiction?
Autobiographicfiction?
HubertFichte writing novels featuringJacki: fiction that gets dangerouslyclose
to reality, that in offering the readers this stinging uncertainty: fiction or non-fiction? disturbs them and drags them into an unseemly intimate relationship with
what is meantto be only the author'ssubject matter.

Fiction or nonfiction?
The authorhimself-a stringof words taintedwith prejudice. [Fichte 1978:343]

Fichte wants to lay open motives that make the anthropologist choose her or
his subject.
Is it disgracefulto admit that somebody does researchon the Woloff because he is
gay? [Fichte 1980:362]
He demands to lay open the contexts in which anthropologists collect their data.
It should not be concealed thatin the heat of the day, aftera four hoursconversation,
aftertwelve hoursof rites, anthropologistsgo crazy. [Fichte 1989b:17]
He demands to lay open the circumstances that enable anthropologists to do
fieldwork, enable them to obtain information.
He [the houngan]wants money.
Unconcealed.
Aboutten dollars.
I put two dollarsdown and say that I will not give more.
If I had to pay an entrancefee, he should have said so earlier.
And I realise thatall those admiredtreatiseson the Vaudou, on the Ewe, the Fon, the
Yorubadeveloped from this kind of bargaining.
Why does not anybodymentionit?
No amicableexchange of knowledge, no gracefulexchange of niceties.
Bought secrets. Bought analyses. Bought systems. The studentsof the greatuniversities are being trained for purchasing gestures, smiles, sweat, sacrifices. [Fichte
1976:144f]
Barely concealed behind the scorn directed at his academic colleagues who do not
mention the bargaining for information, he voices indignation at the fact that in
many cases an amicable exchange of knowledge is simply impossible. An indignation that might have made his colleagues not mention the bargaining.
Fichte's ethnographic texts, his accounts of religious ceremonies, are accounts of Hubert Fichte gaining knowledge of religious ceremonies. In 1976,
when Xango was published, Fichte would have been breaking new ground if he
had been taken seriously by the relevant academic discipline. Until then, anthropologists who obtained their knowledge "in the field" tended to hide the expevery few exceptions.
riences they made in the process of getting-to-know-with
Michel Leiris had published a diary of his fieldwork in Africa, yet he had carefully
separated his personal account from his "scientific" ethnographic texts. Malinowski never intended to let his colleagues read his fieldwork diary (which was
published 20 years after his death, causing a lot of irritation). Levi-Strauss waited
20 years before publishing a personal account of his fieldwork in Brazil. Laura
Bohannan waited 10 years, and, using a nom de plume, pretended Return to
Laughter was fiction. Just think of the fears that must be involved here. A fear,
too, to report the fear of losing one's piercing and uninvolved eyes in the field?
On Santo Domingo:
History.
Layersof decay.
Will I be draggedinto this? [Fichte 1980:171
Participant observation. There are many ways one could be dragged into it.
Hubert Fichte in his novel Palette:
Every day I sit in the Palette. I do not intervene. I observe the movements on the
occasion of robberiesand parties. [Fichte 1978:106]
On Hammed, a waiter, and Hugo, a regular:
-What do they actuallythink of me? Hammed:he is crazy. Or: he understandsme.
Somebody who gives generous tips. Also you never know what the women think
when doing it.-What does Hugo thinkof me, the fifty percentJew, the fifty percent
drop-out? Hugo said: Hitler should have put the wogs, too, into the gas-chambers. . -Would they laugh at me? Join forces against me? Shout: Faggots out!?
[Fichte 1978:212]
After leaving a religious ceremony in Bahia:
Psychosomaticdisordersafter listening to the drums:
We get up at night and vomit.
Diarrhoea.
Allergic reactions.
Ourmentalabilities change.
Dullness.
We become inactive, uncritical,unable to remember.[Fichte 1976:75]
Fichte's ethnographic texts do not allow the reader to forget that the information they read is bound to the concrete situation where it was obtained. Fiction
or nonfiction? Ethnography or novel? Read the account of a visit at Freddy's temple in Venezuela in 1977:
Freddycaresses me.
Freddy,addressingthe congregation:
-You haven't a clue how to deal with men.
I am supposedto visit FranziscaDuarte'sgrave early next morningand steal a golden
pendant.
Freddynames the owner of the car who is to give me a lift.
He tells me to stick needles into his arm.
I do not want to.
Freddyhimself sticks them in just a bit, takes my arm, pushing the needles in until I
can feel his bone resisting.
Everythinggoes hot and black.
I go into the courtyard.

I thinkthatI would be sweating less if I fell into a trance.
Is the trancea remedyagainstthis terriblefeeling of nausea?
I am called in again.
I am told to pierce Freddy'snose with a needle.
I do not want to.
Freddydoes it himself.
I am told to watch him doing it.
Freddytakes my head and aligns it with his face.
I say:
-I am going to vomit in a minute.
Freddysays:
-What have you got in your heart.
He sticks a needle into my chest.
-It will come out on its own.
Half an hour laterit comes out on its own.
Freddyturnsinto the negro Felipe.
Freddytalks in Haitianlanguage.
Freddyturnsinto the Queen of Alaska.
Freddyturnsinto the negro Felipe.
Freddyhits his believers with the back of a knife hardagainsttheirforeheads.
Jose Ochoa's foreheadswells up.
Everybodyleaves the temple.
In the anteroom:a complicatedcross from Johnsonsbabypowderon the floor.
About 50 candles are stuck in the powder marks.
Crucifixes,glasses of water, images of Christ, picturesof saints.
Yanio shouts:
-The Lonely WanderingSoul has come.
Everybodyhurriespast me back into the temple.
It is half past eleven at night. [Fichte 1980:103f1
New paragraph. One sentence only. What a relief!
So tranceis a reaction-like fever. [Fichte 1980:104]
Explanation at last.
There would have been no point in him being initiated, since that would have
meant that he could no longer write about practices he observed. Why this urge
to write, to write in order to publish? Why this urge to share his sensations with
others? He certainly has no missionary zeal to influence his audience. Nor did he
seem to hope that his writings would make much difference to what he wrote
about. To some extent, he had to write in order to survive and finance his travels.
But the pieces he wrote to make money were basically short feature articles or
scripts for radio programs. He did not make money by writing 403 pages of Petersilie or 352 pages of Xango. Something I find hard to understand. I guess that
three issues could be involved here. He might have wanted to rid himself of what
he experienced by sharing the experiences with an imaginary audience.
Exhibitionist streaks: he longed for a reversal of his role as an outcast and
outsider, as a gay man who was forced into a semi-illegal and clandestine niche.
When in 1966 he was asked to read from a manuscripthe was working on (Die
Palette, which was publishedtwo years later), he agreedunderthe conditionthat
the venue be the Star-Club.In the 1960s, the Star-Clubin Hamburgwas a temple
of the Beat Generation.It was here that the Beatles took the first steps to fame.
At the age of 31, labeled a talentedyoung author,Fichte insisted on having more
than the handfulof listeners who would attenda reading in a bookshop. Megalomania?Rathera defiant insistence on making himself heard. Twelve hundred
came. A few hundredhad to be turnedaway (Zimmer 1985). (But there is contradiction:he never agreedto prostitutehimself on TV.)
The third issue involved here concerns Fichte's ambivalentattitudetoward
the productionof knowledge.
I recognise it in Herodotus-the contradictionbetween knowledge and action, love
and recognition, enlightenmentand magic. [Fichte 1987:3831
In many ways Fichte was committedto ideas of the Enlightenment.He felt compelled to reportwhat had not yet been reported,to write about somethingothers
considerednot worthwritingabout. An enlightenedchronicler,who did not want
to expose or analyze, but to make known.
Therehas been no carefulresearchdone into the frayingandreconsolidationof Cuban
ritualsin Miami.
Probablythathas to do with an old-fashionedunderstandingof the science of humankind.
What is genuine, old and original is valued more than what is blended, ephemeral,
distorted.[Fichte 1985:285]
EnterHubertFichte, saving the ephemeralfrom anonymity. Repeatedlyhe complains that too little is known because anthropologistshad not been interestedin
the subject. He points out topics for all those studentsnot knowing what to write
about in their dissertations.In a way he seems to have considered it his duty to
reportboth Afro-Americansyncretismand the world of dropoutsand gay men.
But Fichte is not only the experimentalsubject but also the anthropologisthe
knows best. In denouncinganthropology,he might well have had HubertFichte,
the ethnographer,in mind. He might have had in mind a Westernlegacy thatprovided compelling reasons for him to write aboutAfro-Americanculture.
The discontentin culturecreates the confession, the show trial, psychoanalysis, the
interviewand anthropologicalresearch. [Fichte 1989b:17]
Why was Fichte interestedin Afro-Americansyncretism?He was fascinated

by the healing powers of Afro-Americanreligions, but not because he wanted to
heal himself, or to recommendtheir cultureas a remedy for the West. What captivatedhim was the autonomyof Afro-Americanculturalforms, the fact that victims of history develop efficient means to cope with their situation. Means that
denounce colonial order, imperialism and all the other isms that produce victors
and victims. He was captivated by a gracious dignity.
Like Alejo Carpentier (in his foreword to El reino de este mundo) before him,
Fichte finds that European surrealism was but a poor copy of the handling of reality practiced in the Vaudou.
The Vaudouis the early new, in fact the earliestnew of the modern.All everyday life
is alienated, and any alienation is restoredto bloody everyday life-in the days of
Strindberg,Haiti was alreadyabsurd,cruel, and poor theatre.
The surrealistrevolutiontook place in 1804 on Haiti.
Freud, Strindberg,and Artauddreamtof changing reality by means of association,
puns, dummysacrifices, and A-effects.
This has been achieved on Haiti:
The physician, Roulx Leon, reportsan operationof the testicles in Port-au-Prince.
The anaestheticsare insufficient.
The man screamswith pain.
He begins singing Vaudouhymns.
He sings himself into a trance, and in being possessed he is overcome by the trance's
insensitivityto pain-the operationcan be completed.
A lyrical sensitivity, which has been lacking in the West since the Merseburgspells.
[Fichte 1985:265]
The Merseburg spells: pagan, from 11th-century Germany. In the Afro-American
religions, Fichte says, people practice what Artaud was preaching, namely that
the horrible representation of physical violence would liberate us from distress
and fear. In juxtaposing everyday aspects of Afro-American culture with extraordinary rites, Fichte suggests connections between the blood bath of initiation ceremonies, and sensitivity and gentleness.
Afro-Americanculture, as understoodin these studies, is not a matterof belief, of
ideas, of aestheticsetc. -Afro-American cultureis practice. It is an attitudein everyday life. It is most of all this graceful, sensitive avoidanceof aggression, which finds
its way into the rites, and into the psychiatryof the Afro-Americanpeople. [Fichte
1985:372]
As in German, in English "knowledge" has two meanings. Or is it the same
anyway?
Knowledge. Sex.
The desire to know.
More graceful than Freud, Herodotus'stext suggests that, since one travels for sex,
travellingis a sexual need-writing and uncovering. [Fichte 1989b:384]
Penetration.
Scientific penetration.
Anthropology-the science of man.
All of Fichte's books are about knowledge and the many ways leading to
knowledge. In any conceivable meaning.
"Acquaintancewith facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation;

generalerudition," explains my Macquariedictionaryof AustralianEnglish under point 1, and nine points furtherdown, it says: 10. [cautioningthe user: "Law
or Archaic"]: "sexual intercourse."
How points 1 and 10 can be each other's metaphors,how the meaningsintermingle, thatis somethingI see when readingHubertFichte. As far as I know, Fichte
did not consider himself a feminists' brotherin faith (he refers to Herodotusand
not to Luce Irigaray),although feminist theory, especially where it criticizes a
men's science of man, may not find it difficult to claim him.
Knowing. Caressing.
Gentleness.
Fosteringone's sensitivity.
But who is going to bearthe pain?
-Don't you thinkthata gentle and irreversiblesubversionof the unconsciousbrings
abouta moreprofoundchange?To be honest, I can imaginefreedomonly as a gigantic
worldwidecoming-out, Jacki says. [Fichte 1979a:221]
When Fichte died, he had not finished his Geschichte der Empfindlichkeit,
historyof sensitivity, a most ambitiousprojectthe core of which was to be a series
of novels aboutJhcki's (and Jicki's and Irma's) attemptsto find anotherway of
experiencingthe world, anotherway of seeing it (for Irma, the photographer),
anotherlanguagewith which to write about it (for Jdcki, the writer). Sensitivity,
that is a key word to get to know Fichte. Empfindlichkeitor Empfindsamkeit,but
one darenot say Sensibilitit (sensibility), a word thathas been corrupted,in Germanyat least, by becoming a trendyaccessory of narcissistspretendingto be concernedaboutothers. Sensitivity, that describes the painfulopen-mindednessand
vulnerabilityof the author,Fichte. It also describes an approachto reality Fichte
foundin Afro-Americanreligious ceremonies. Sensitivity is a state of being open
to magic, and open, too, to the liberatingpropensitiesof language.
If therewere a language-I would try to use it.
Notes
Acknowledgments.WithoutMichael Taussig enticing me to New York, I would not have

written this. Peter Brower, Gillian Macdonald, Hank Nelson, and Kathleen Weekley
helped out with ideas when it came to translatingFichte. I would like to thank the two
volunteersand Michael Reilly who helped me to performearlierversions of this paper at
Deutsches Haus (New York University) and at the AustralianNational University in Octoberand November 1990. 1 am indebtedto SarahWilliams for once eliciting and sharing
some of the convictions expressed in this article.
References Cited
Benjamin,Walter
1977 Illuminationen.Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp.
D6blin, Alfred
1963 Aufsatze zur Literatur.Olten:Walter.
Fichte, Hubert
1976 Xango. Die afroamerikanischenReligionen. Bahia, Haiti, Trinidad. Frankfurt
am Main:Fischer.
1978 Die Palette. Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1979a Detlevs Imitationen"Grtinspan."Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1979b Versuchuberdie Pubertat.Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1980 Petersilie. Die afroamerikanischenRelgionen. Santo Domingo, Venezuela,
Miami, Grenada,Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1985 Lazarusund die Waschmaschine.Kleine Einfuhrungin die Afroamerikanische
Kultur.Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1987 Homosexualitatund Literatur,I. Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1988 Der kleine Hauptbahnhofoder Lob des Strichs. Frankfurtam Main: Fischer.
1989a Forschungsbericht.Frankfurtam Main: Fischer.
1989b Das Haus der Mina in Sdo Luiz de Maranhdo.Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1989c Der Platz der Gehenkten.Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.
1990 The Orphanage.Translatedby MartinChalmers.London:Serpent'sTail.
Leiris, Michel
1934 L'Afriquefant6me. Paris:Gallimard.
Teichert,Torsten
1987 "Herzschlagaussen." Die poetischeKonstruktiondes Fremdenunddes Eigenen
im Werkvon HubertFichte. Frankfurtam Main: Fischer.
Theweleit, Klaus
1988 Buch der Konige. Band 1: Orpheus (und).Eurydike. Basel and Frankfurtam
Main:Stroemfeld/RoterStern.
Zimmer,Dieter E.
1985 Fichte und Beat. In Materialienzu Leben und Werk. Thomas Beckermann,ed.
Pp. 29-31. Frankfurtam Main:Fischer.

Klaus Neumann Hubert Fichte As Ethnographer

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Klaus Neumann Hubert Fichte As Ethnographer

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Hubert Fichte as Ethnographer

Fichte wrote aboutpsychiatryin West Africa.

Avlekete. Aido Ouedo. Oshala. Oshun. Oya. Oloko.

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 265

Withoutever being able (or prepared?)to annihilatethe distance, he empathized

assumingthe role of the materialthathe is workingon when writing. In his book

bereitetderAutor im Leben vor [In his life, the authorpreparesthe subjectmatter

the ritualsthey observeandthe cults they are initiatedinto, therearenearlyalways

I am uncertainwhetherthe dialogue requiresan active effort best described by

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 267

When aiming at representationof the inconsistencies and incoherenciesof

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 269

Perhapsthe Indiansandthe Africanshada meansof expressionthatis less colonising.

is not. Yet Fichteexploresnew formsthatgo farbeyondthejargonof manytrendy

Is there a way of evading the antagonismestablishedby colonialism? How

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 271

The second discourseis postulatedsuperioranddesirable.It suggests thatboth theory

Few people would be as willing and interested to understandas Hubert

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 275

Levi-Straussepitomizes what Fichte detested. Thereis no otherauthorFichte has

And Fichte, like Herodotus,declines the penetrationof reality by explaining it.

Jicki, and on Detlev's childhood and youth in Hamburg.

novel. Interviewswith prostitutesand pimps and the managerof a brothel.

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 277

1982: Zwei Autosfiir den Heiligen Pedro Claver. Radio plays.

PedroClaver, a Jesuit priest who baptizedthousandsof African slaves landed in

San Pedro Claver, a man gushing with empathy, self-negating, compassionate

the Other, which were also partof Europeancolonialism.

syncretismin the Americas. The only one of Fichte's ethnographiesthathas been

noreMauand HubertFichte, IrmaandJacki. She was Fichte's lover, andpartner,

what is meantto be only the author'ssubject matter.

The authorhimself-a stringof words taintedwith prejudice. [Fichte 1978:343]

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 279

I go into the courtyard.

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 281

Why was Fichte interestedin Afro-Americansyncretism?He was fascinated

HUBERT FICHTEAS ETHNOGRAPHER 283

"Acquaintancewith facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation;

Acknowledgments.WithoutMichael Taussig enticing me to New York, I would not have

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