Ethnographic Writing and the Encounter with Murmur

A thought experiment

Maurice Blanchot’s “The Death of the Last Writer” invites us into a thought experiment: imagine the final writer has died and, with them, the possibility of literature. At first glance, we might expect a world of silence. But Blanchot suggests the opposite: when the last writer disappears, silence does not deepen; instead, it gives way to a ceaseless murmur. This murmur is not meaningful language, but it is not simple noise either. It is the loose, swirling background from which all speech emerges. Blanchot’s point is that meaningful language only exists because it is carved out of this formless backdrop. In other words, speech depends on something underneath it that is not yet organized into meaning. If this background did not exist, there would be nothing for writers or speakers to shape into expression. The murmur is therefore the condition of possibility for speech: a reminder that language becomes meaningful only when we push against what could just as easily remain unstable or unsaid.

The figure of the writer

Within this scenario, Blanchot defines the writer not as someone who simply produces words, but as someone who approaches this murmur directly. The writer is willing to confront the instability of language, and through this confrontation carve out a space where meaning can appear. Writing is therefore not a purely additive or ‘positive’ act. It is subtractive. It involves chiselling away at the overwhelming murmur to create a form of silence that allows meaning to stand.

An analogy that despite its flaws might be helpful here is the sculptor. A sculptor does not add material; they remove it. They work intimately with the resistance of the stone, chipping away until a form emerges. Similarly, the writer works within the formless murmur, creating a structured space that makes communication possible. The analogy as I mentioned is imperfect, since Blanchot emphasizes that writing never fully stabilizes the murmur, but it captures the sense that meaningful language emerges out of confrontation with formlessness rather than escape from it.

The arrival of the dictator

Blanchot then asks: if the last writer dies, who or what steps in to confront the murmur? His answer is the dictator. The dictator claims to oppose the confusion produced by the murmur, but Blanchot argues that the dictator’s speech is itself empty. It replaces ambiguity with rigid slogans and commands. This gives the impression of clarity, yet it is merely another form of the void. The dictator’s voice is forceful, but it does not contend with the difficulty of language. It silences thought rather than working through it. For Blanchot, this is why writing is political: it exists between two dangers, the drift of the murmur on one side and the hollow authority of dictatorial speech on the other.

The difference between the writer and the dictator is therefore not simply in content. It is in their stance toward uncertainty. The writer enters into intimacy with the murmur, accepts its resistance, and shapes something meaningful from it. The dictator refuses that intimacy and replaces the murmur with false certainty. The sculptor analogy can be extended: if the writer chisels, the dictator uses dynamite. The result is decisive, but it produces rubble, not form.

Why writing matters

Blanchot’s argument suggests that writing matters because it creates a third possibility. It neither collapses into the murmur nor hides behind authoritarian certainty. Instead, it shapes ambiguity without eliminating it into something that can be shared. Writing becomes a way of inhabiting the world: it transforms the overwhelming drift of language into something that holds open the possibility of understanding.

For ethnographers

If we connect this framework to ethnography, the stakes become clearer. The term ethnography emphasizes ‘graphein’, to write or inscribe. Ethnographic writing is not simply recording what happened in the field. It is an encounter with the murmur of lived field experience: the sensory overload, contradictions, excesses, and unarticulated parts of social life that resist easy representation. This murmur cannot be fully captured and cannot be ignored. Ethnographic writing involves shaping this overwhelming field without reducing it.

Two failures of ethnographic writing

Blanchot describes two tendencies in writing that avoid the difficult encounter with the murmur. These map onto common pitfalls in ethnographic writing.

The first one is the failure of totalization. Blanchot’s dictator symbolizes the attempt to impose complete clarity by force. In ethnography, this appears when the writer relies on reductive, preexisting theoretical models, forcing field experience into already familiar categories rather than grappling with its unfamiliarity. This form of writing produces the appearance of certainty while flattening social complexity. The second one is the failure of false neutrality. Blanchot also criticizes writers who adopt a neutral, transparent tone that presents itself as objective. In ethnography, this is the impulse to hide behind (instead of use critically) academic language, passive voice, or distanced description. This strategy avoids risk and avoids claiming a position, but it produces writing that lacks depth. It becomes an empty mirror that reflects neither the field nor the ethnographer’s relationship to it.

From dictation to intimacy

Blanchot’s argument is especially useful when we think about fieldnotes. Sometimes early fieldnotes resemble dictation: rapid, simplified attempts to fix events into language. This stage may be particularly prone to dictatorial because it reduces the complexity of experience into quick, confident statements. The ethnographer’s task is to return to these notes often and reintroduce complexity. This involves acknowledging uncertainty, marking contradictions, and noting what remains unspoken or unclear. Through revision and reflection, dictation moves toward the kind of intimacy Blanchot associates with genuine writing.

The ethical challenge

Blanchot describes the writer’s task as entering a relation of intimacy with the murmur and enduring its difficulty. Ethnographic writing requires the same willingness. Success is not defined by perfect representation (an impossibility). Instead, an ethnographic text succeeds when it transforms the excess of field experience into a form that allows understanding without eliminating complexity. This requires accepting the limits of what can be said, recognizing what resists language, and shaping that resistance into an expressive or evocative text.

Writing, in this sense, becomes evidence of the ethnographer’s engagement with the field at its most difficult. It demonstrates an encounter with the overwhelming, contradictory, and often ineffable conditions of social life. Following Blanchot, ethnography matters because it maintains the possibility of openness in a world that continually threatens to overwhelm it.