Lines about Diaries, Experience and Secrets

Abstract

In order to discuss notions dear to anthropological activity, such as writing, literature, the experience of the ethnographer and the dilemmas of publishing the conditions of fi eld work, it is took a central theme around which these issues are developed, namely the diary. Th is choice is justifi ed not only because it is a subject dear to the discipline. Given its controversial nature, ambiguous and undefi ned – is it literature, memories, secrets, curiosities, ethnographic data? - diaries present themselves as a good entry to think of a number of refl ective concerns that turn their eff orts to understand the conditions of production of the anthropologists work. Th us, making use of diff erent frameworks editorial texts (academic, literary, intimate, essayistic) that dialogue directly with this theme, the paper undertakes an essayistic approach that addresses some (among several possible) relations between the diff erent conceptions of diaries presented and anthropology.