The Boundaries of Belonging: A Feminist Autoethnography of a Jewish anthropologist’s archives

• In Event: Embodied Jewish gender histories: Feminist, reflexive, creative encounters in the archives and in the field

Abstract

This in-process film and virtual exhibit explore race, gender, and power through the legacy of Ellen Hellmann (1908-1982), a South African Jewish anthropologist. Utilizing feminist anthropological approaches to reflexivity, psychobiography, and autoethnography, I explore my affective reactions to Hellmann's archival artifacts (photographs, interviews, and newspaper publications), offering insights into her internal experiences (intersubjectivity).

Hellmann's ethnographies of Black communities in South Africa intersect with my fieldwork experiences in Brazil. Hellmann perpetuated stereotypes regarding Black women's families, sexual practices, and child-rearing prevalent within her white imperial networks. Belonging to mainstream Jewish and white liberal movements, she advocated assimilation strategies that reinscribed white and Jewish racial belonging, rather than confronting apartheid directly.

I utilize archival materials, interviews, poetry, imagined dialogues, and visual art. The first film in-progress, "Visiting," explores the significance of “visits” in Hellmann's life, from her interactions with her daughter, Ruth Runciman, to her fieldwork among Black South African communities. This is paralleled by my visits to family, significant others, teaching/research sites, including to the University of Witwatersrand to use the Ellen Hellmann Papers and to London to visit Hellmann's daughter.

In the second film, "Suppressed Recognition," I investigate the impact of suicide on Hellmann’s and my life. I examine the weight of depression, stemming from Ellen’s experiences of guilt, self-doubt, and regret as a white South African. She attempted to reform apartheid, a form of social death, while simultaneously reaping its benefits. I ruminate on my work in a college-in-prison program; how can this experience enable insight into Hellmann's complicity with the apartheid regime?

I confront and struggle to reconcile with Hellmann's legacy, acknowledging her contributions to anthropology and the ethical dilemmas inherent in her work. By intertwining personal reflections with archival research, I shed light on the broader themes of racial identity, colonialism, and social justice within the context of Jewish women's anthropology.

Author

• Abby Gondek, Florida International University