Documenting Impossible Realities: Ethnography, Memory, and the As If

Documenting Impossible Realities explores the limitations of conventional accounts of belonging, focusing on the experiences of adoptees, deportees, migrants, and other exilic populations. It challenges the dichotomy between dominant groups and unauthorized immigrants, political exiles, and transnational adoptees, and emphasizes the spaces between groups where difference is constituted and new forms of relationship can be realized.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 162 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Documenting Impossible Realities delves into the boundaries of conventional narratives that shape the documentation of belonging, particularly focusing on the experiences of adoptees, deportees, migrants, and other exilic populations. In this insightful exploration, Susan Bibler Coutin and Barbara Yngvesson address the prevailing historical context where the stark divide between an above-ground realm inhabited by dominant groups and an underground realm reserved for unauthorized immigrants, political exiles, and transnational adoptees becomes increasingly untenable. This dichotomy was fostered by the illusion that certain individuals do not rightfully belong, that certain forms of kinship are not authentic, or that specific ways of knowing are not valid. Coutin and Yngvesson direct their attention to the spaces between groups, where differences are constructed and where the potential for novel forms of relationships emerges. By juxtaposing and navigating between intertwined realities and modes of expression, Documenting Impossible Realities vividly conveys the emotional turmoil of oscillating between being present and absent, legitimate and perceived as counterfeit. This thought-provoking work invites us to challenge the prevailing narratives and explore the complexities of belonging in a world that is constantly evolving.

Weight: 256g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 11 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501768880