The author questions the paradigm of ethnocriticism and the parentage of this new kind of reading with literary studies and ethnology. As an essay in the epistemology of ethnocriticism, the article tries to clarify the relationship that this interdisciplinary approach maintains with ethnography and cultural anthropology. It concentrates on the study of the beginning of the novel Osnabrück by Hélène Cixous: it discusses the author’s self-presentation and the differences between academic works and literary fictions, and between life and words.