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BORGES, Antonádia. Tsotsi and Yesterday: an anthropological appraisal. in: Vibrant – Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, v. 5, n. 2. July to December 2008. Brasília, ABA. Available at http://www.vibrant.org.br/issues/v5n2/antonadia-borges-tsotsi-and-yesterday-an-anthropological-appraisal/

Abstract

This article compares two stories told in the cinema – Tsotsi and Yesterday – with my own analytic experience, shaped in large part by my fieldwork in South Africa. Rather than propose an examination from the out- side inwards, I propose a reading of these works of fiction guided by three different lines, taken, by the people I knew personally, to be essential to com- prehending their lives. The first are the proper names of the subjects. The sec- ond, their houses or dwelling places. And the third, their degree of proximity and importance to the people with whom they interact. Here fiction enables us to reflect not on the verisimilitude of what is filmed in relation to reality, but on the creative process that ethnography can perform in exploring the dis- tances and proximities between the history of a country and the individual biographies of their citizens.

Keywords: Ethnography, South Africa, Cinema, Language