Can Film Show The Invisible Suhr

Can Film Show the Invisible?
The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking

Author(s): Christian Suhr and Rane Willerslev
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (June 2012), pp. 282-301
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
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282 Current Anthropology Volume 53, Number 3, June 2012
Can Film Show the Invisible?

The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking
by Christian Suhr and Rane Willerslev
This article suggests that film can evoke hidden dimensions of ethnographic reality, not by striving for ever more
realistic depictions—a position often associated with observational cinema—but rather by exploiting the artificial
means through which human vision can be transcended. Achieved particularly through the use of montage, such
disruptions can multiply the perspectives from which filmic subject matter is perceived, thus conveying its invisible
and irreducible otherness. This, however, is an argument not to dismiss the realism of much ethnographic filmmaking,
but rather to demonstrate how montage can and must be used to break with the mimetic dogma of the “humanized”
camera. The effective image, we argue, depends crucially on maintaining a tension between a strong sense of reality
and its occasional, and therefore only then effective, disruption through montage.
The tradition of ethnographic filmmaking has throughout its tually works counter to indigenous ritualistic strategies of
history been the target of numerous scornful attacks by an- making things visible by their very concealment. For Weiner
thropologists dissatisfied with its incapacity for generalization (1997:199, 201), the gaps between shots created through mon-
and abstract theory making. Increasingly, dissatisfaction has tage along with other nonrealist cinematic manipulations
also erupted within the community of ethnographic film- would be a precondition for visualizing indigenous notions
makers. Depressed by the number of what he finds to be “dull of invisibility.
observational films” screened at current ethnographic film In an older and much debated article, Kirsten Hastrup
festivals, Jay Ruby laments the future of the discipline: (1992) argues that anthropology communicated through pho-
The overwhelming majority of the student films I saw . . . tography and film inevitably is stuck within visible forms and
employed what I regard as the overtired, outdated and highly patterns, which can only be appreciated from the “naı̈ve em-
suspect conventions of observational cinema. . . . Are stu- piricist notion that the world is what it appears to be” (Jay
dents actively discouraged from deviating from the ortho- Ruby, quoted in Hastrup 1992:17). In her view, invisible as-
doxy. . . . How is our field going to advance if students have pects of human reality can only be evoked through words
to tow [sic] the line of one cinematic form? Why are the and textual abstraction. Hastrup’s case is built around her
young so timid? Are their mentors discouraging experi- own failure to photograph an Icelandic ram exhibition: “The
mentation? Where are the revolutionaries bent on changing texture of maleness and sex had been an intense sensory ex-
things? (Ruby 2008) perience, but it was invisible. The reality of the total social
event had been transformed into a two-dimensional image,
From a different quarter, James Weiner (1997) points out that a souvenir” (Hastrup 1992:9).
what is most notably lacking in ethnographic filmmaking is Hastrup admits that her photographs, “ill-focused, badly
recognition of the invisible dimensions of human life that lit, lopsided featuring the backs of men and ram,” could have
cannot be recorded by a camera. According to Weiner, the been more illuminating had she been more experienced with
genre of realist indigenous ethnographic filmmaking that sup-
a camera. Nevertheless, she maintains that the “thick,” “in-
posedly makes “no attempt to teach Western notions or styles
visible,” and “secret” meaning of the event could not have
of framing, montage, [and] fast cutting” (Turner 1992:7) ac-
been captured on celluloid, but had to be communicated in
words (Hastrup 1992:9–10). This, she argues, is because the
Christian Suhr is a filmmaker and PhD candidate in the Section for two media operate on quite distinct logical levels: the image
Anthropology and Ethnography of Aarhus University (Moesgaard by means of its mimetic disposition is a mere simulacrum of
Allé 20, DK-8270 Hoejbjerg, Denmark [suhr@hum.au.dk]). Rane
reality, only capturing features of social life that are visible.
Willerslev is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Museum
of Cultural History of the University of Oslo (St. Olavs gt. 29, P.O.
By contrast, words are essentially formless in themselves, and
Box 6762, St. Olavs plass, NO-0130 Oslo, Norway). Both authors meaning, therefore, needs to be created through textual con-
contributed equally to this paper. This paper was submitted 29 IX struction by selection and ordering. This allows words to
09 and accepted 11 XI 10. communicate “existential spaces of cultural experience” (Has-
䉷 2012 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2012/5303-0002$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/664920

Suhr and Willerslev Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking 283
trup 1992:11) that are themselves invisible and therefore can- it is only when we embrace its mechanical, nonhuman nature
not be captured by a camera. that the medium of film can become fully capable of con-
It comes as no surprise that both Weiner’s and Hastrup’s veying the invisible that Hastrup rightfully argues is so im-
arguments were received with much disapproval by visual portant to anthropology, but which she mistakenly holds can
anthropologists (Crawford and Turton 1992:5; Faye Ginsburg, be communicated only in words.
quoted in Weiner 1997:213; MacDougall 1998:71). Lucien We shall begin our inquiry by looking into ideas about the
Taylor fiercely argued against what he took to be an “icon- invisible in realist ethnographic filmmaking, then discussing
ophobia” in anthropology. In his view (Taylor 1996:88), an- these ideas in relation to alternatives offered by cinematic
thropology’s discomfort with images has to do with film’s montage. Our aim is not to replace realist doctrines with the
capacity to exceed theory and “showing anthropologists’ pur- radical constructivism of the Soviet and postmodernist mon-
chase on the lived experience of their subjects to be rather tage schools (Eisenstein 1988:145; Kiener 2008:394; Michelson
more precarious than they would like to believe.” In a similar 1984; Minh-ha 1982). Rather, we want to offer a conceptual
vein, David MacDougall (1998:71) suggested that Hastrup framework through which to expand our understanding of
quite simply was “giving up on photography too easily.” Ac- how montage and other disruptive devices can and must be
cording to MacDougall, words are superior in their capacity used to break the mimetic dogma of the humanized camera,
“of showing us the rules of the social and cultural institutions thus enabling an enhanced perception of the social realities
by which [people] live” (1998:259), but images are far su- depicted in ethnographic films. However—and this is a key
perior in addressing subtle issues of social agency, body prac- point—using film to reveal the invisible aspects of social life
tice, and the role of the senses and emotions in social life. depends crucially on maintaining a tension between a strong
In this article, we wish to draw renewed attention to the sense of reality and its occasional, and therefore only then
key question that underlies much of this debate for and effective, disruption through montage.
against visual anthropology: Can film show the invisible, or Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (2002) work on the
is it trapped within the visible surfaces of the social world? primordial totality of vision and Emmanuel Levinas’s (1969)
Despite the criticisms raised, we find that Hastrup’s main ethics of irreducible otherness, we finally arrive at suggestions
assertion that the camera is incapable of capturing the invis- for how such imposed tension between realism and construc-
ible meanings of social life needs renewed consideration. Of tivism can open ethnographic filmmaking’s capacity for imag-
key importance is the attention she draws to the fact that ining other planes of seeing.
although film and images taken by cameras may look similar
to our ordinary seeing, they do differ in significant ways. The Observational Tradition
Ethnographic filmmakers are quite certainly aware of these
differences, but their take on filmmaking has, as we shall see,
Closely associated with Taylor’s and MacDougall’s critique of
largely consisted in minimizing them, so as to let the camera
Hastrup is the distinctive tradition of observational cinema,
imitate the human eye.
which arguably has shaped ethnographic filmmaking to the
Our period of accelerated technological innovations has
extent of being identical to it (Banks 1992:124; Kiener 2008:
supported this development: first, with the advent of mobile
405).1 As a movement, observational cinema aims to inquire
lightweight sound recording and, more recently, with digital
into the role played by ordinary lived time and space in the
recording formats and affordable handheld camcorders,
constitution of social life. As such, it operates within an es-
which allow ethnographic filmmakers to make longer takes
sentially realist cinematic paradigm, using film mainly as a
than ever before. The shifts from black-and-white to color
medium of “mimesis” (Stam 2000:72; Taylor 1996:75). Ob-
film and more recently from 4 : 3 to 16 : 9 (widescreen) have
servational filmmakers do not, however, see their goal in terms
likewise enabled more realistic simulations of our normal field
of a simple one-to-one correspondence with everyday reality.
of vision. Yet, as realized by Dziga Vertov (1929; Croft and
Clearly, it is misguided to confuse observational cinema with
Rose 1977) almost a century ago, a camera is not a human
naive empiricism or scientism. In fact, observational cinema
eye but a mechanical eye, which, rather than a continuous
was partly developed as a reaction against the detached “fly
stream of vision, provides a series of frames with a limited
on the wall” film approach as seen, for example, in Gregory
range of contrast, color reproduction, depth of field, and an-
Bateson and Margaret Mead’s Childhood Rivalry in Bali and
gle. The real wonder of cinema, we venture to suggest, lies
New Guinea (1952). Mimesis in observational filmmaking, as
not in its inferior imitation of the human eye, but rather in
Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz (2009:552) assert, is not
its mechanical capturing of footage, which subsequently can
be put together with other pieces by way of montage.
Our task here is to explore how ethnographic filmmaking 1. Even though observational cinema at present appears to be the most
influential school of ethnographic filmmaking, it is by no means the only
may expand our horizon of experience if we take seriously
one. The history of ethnographic filmmaking shows a wide range of
the key differences between the camera eye and the human experiments with poetic forms of film editing, postmodern deconstruc-
eye and consider the use of manipulative filmic devices for tion, and even fiction film (see, e.g., Gardner 1986; Minh-ha 1982; Rouch
transcending the limitations of human vision. We argue that 1967).

simply a mirroring. Rather, it is a process of merging the particular humanist ethics “premised upon humility or re-
object of perception with the body of the perceiver. The mi- spect, expressive of the filmmakers’ sensitivity towards their
metic camera is here used as “a physical extension” of the subjects” (Grimshaw 2001:129–30, 138). Consequently, the
cameraperson’s body (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009:548; observational filmmaker has to be cautious with any form of
MacDougall 1998:200), thus allowing viewers intimate access cinematic effect—abnormal framing, grading, extradiegetic
to the filmmaker’s sensuous engagement with the social life music, commentary, disruptive juxtaposition of shots, and so
portrayed. Paul Henley encapsulates this virtue eloquently in on—which runs the risk of disturbing the transmission of the
his summation of observational cinema as cameraperson’s lived experience of the life-world filmed
a cinematography based on an “unprivileged” single camera (Henley 2004:115–16; Kiener 2008:407).
that offers the viewpoint, in a very literal sense, of a normal By favoring in this way “seeing over assertion, wholeness
human participant in the events portrayed. This camera over parts, matter over symbolic meaning, specificity over
should be mobile, following subjects and events. . . . When- abstraction” (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009:539), observational
ever possible or appropriate, long takes should be employed cinema proposes that the strangeness of even the most exotic
in order to preserve the integrity of the events in the whole- people can be counterbalanced by “a sense of familiarity”
ness in which they spontaneously occur . . . stylistically the (MacDougall 1998:245)—that is, a sense of how, despite cul-
camerawork should be low-key: the observational camera- tural differences, we are ultimately all subject to the same
person should take particular care that neither the distinctive plane of embodied spatial and temporal existence. This is
temporal and spatial configurations of the events portrayed exactly what MacDougall (1998:252) points to when he writes
nor, more generally, the characteristic social and cultural that the image “transcends ‘culture’ . . . by underscoring the
aesthetics of their subjects’ world are smothered by dem- commonalities that cut across cultural boundaries.” In his
onstrations of technical or aesthetic virtuosity. (Henley 2004: view, one of the key contributions of visual anthropology to
114) our discipline at large is the challenge that images and film
pose to abstract cultural representations, by returning our gaze
As Henley points out, observational cinema builds on the to transcultural commonalities of being human (MacDougall
epistemological premise that deep insight into social life en- 1998:245).
tails transmission of sufficient material detail of the observable
world from the viewpoint of a “normal human participant”
(Henley 2004:114). This brings us back again to the central The Invisible as Invisible
question of what constitutes the invisible. For observational What if we do not buy into a notion of the invisible as that
cinema, the invisible can be said to be that which is seen but which is seen but not usually noticed—that is, if the invisible
not usually noticed. By focusing on the most apparently “triv- cannot be captured visually, but lies beyond visibility? Then
ial” details of everyday activities, the cameraperson, along with it seems to follow that the long camera takes of observational
the audience, comes to observe the finest grains of day-to- cinema, indulging in abundance of visual detail, cannot be
day human existence. According to MacDougall (1998:255), sufficient for evoking the invisible. While observational film-
these concrete and detailed visible features of persons and makers tend to avoid the use of manipulative filmic devices
their environments have “largely disappeared as signifiers of and disruptive montage in order to preserve the “congruency
culture” in written anthropology’s preoccupation with ana- between the subject as experienced by the film-makers and
lytical abstractions: kinship systems, symbolic structures of the film as experienced by the audience” (Colin Young, quoted
meaning, and intangible power relations. in Henley 2004:115), we find that montage, along with other
MacDougall’s recent film Gandhi’s Children (2008), about forms of cinematic manipulation, is a precondition for evok-
the everyday lives of boys in a children’s shelter on the out- ing the invisible in its own right.
skirts of Delhi, is a case in point. For more than three hours, Let us clarify what we mean by the key word “montage.”
viewers are invited to explore shifting moments of joy and In French, montage refers to the technical process of film
despair as revealed in the boys’ facial expressions and bodily editing in the strict sense of the word. The cut from one shot
gestures. The observable world thus becomes a pathway to to another may, among other things, convey action-reaction,
deep insights into the emotional lives of the film subjects. make an effect of continuity or of time passed, visualize a
Instead of contextualizing their lives in terms of abstract an- shift of perspective, make a jump from the whole to a part
alytical categories, the scenes of the film drag us into what or vice versa, perform a flashback, show parallel simultaneous
Lucien Taylor (1996:76) has described as the “ambiguity of action, or simply contrast what was seen in the first shot with
meaning that is at the heart of human experience itself.” the next. For the early American film director D. W. Griffith
Here, as in other observational films (see, e.g., MacDougall (1915), montage was first and foremost used to depict organic
1979; for more recent productions, see Grossman 2010; Spray “unity in diversity,” in which parts act and react on each
2007), a sense of reality is derived from the direct connection other, threaten each other, and enter into conflict before unity
of the camera to the lived body of the filmmaker. The camera, is eventually restored (Deleuze 2005:31). Hence, narrative co-
in Grimshaw’s words, is “humanized” and submitted to a herence and consistency are the primary aim of this type of

montage. Thompson and Bordwell (2003) also locate in Grif- globalization. Thus, George Marcus (1994) points to our pres-
fith the beginnings of the continuity system, which aims at ent-day entanglement in global cultural processes as a kind
preserving narrative clarity by avoiding shifts of camera angle of invisibility that is difficult to present with the long un-
of more than 180 degrees, by using shot/reverse-shot to couple obtrusive takes of observational cinema. Parallel editing, he
the viewpoints of people within a scene and by cutting from suggests, may be a method of “setting the scene objectively,”
wide-angle shots to close-ups of the same actions taking place. so as to reflect the reality of the contemporary global world
Through such techniques, the idea is “to maintain unbroken (Marcus 1994:48). More recently, Wilma Kiener (2008:394)
connection with each preceding [shot]” (Alfred Capus, quoted has echoed this argument by pointing out how “editing solves
in Thompson and Bordwell 2003:46). the problem of showing what—while being absent—is a nec-
While editing in the continuity style of much American essary part of the whole.” Montage, she argues (Kiener 2006:
cinema is provided to create an illusion of a smooth flow of 3), “make[s] visible [the] social and psychological effects of
time, early Soviet filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein (1928) the globalising and the postcolonial world.” Thus, for both
and Dziga Vertov (1929) experimented in speeding up film Kiener and Marcus, the simultaneity of global cultural pro-
footage, slowing it down, making shots overlap so that actions cesses is a form of invisibility that can be rendered visible
are repeated, or violently shortening the real-time duration through the use of montage.
of events through jump-cutting (Thompson and Bordwell In a similar vein, Dai Vaughan (1992:110) has addressed
2003:131). Rather than an illusion of real-time actions in the potential of montage for highlighting the constructed na-
contiguous spaces, what they aimed for was a new cinematic ture of all filmmaking, which often remains invisible in the
presentation of time and space (Sitney 1990:44). Thus, Ei- low-key montage style of many ethnographic films:
senstein emphasized how shots were to be placed not next to What are needed . . . are methods whereby the various
each other but rather on top of each other, so that each cut strands of the [ethnographic film] discourse—the referential
consists in a qualitative leap (Deleuze 2005:38). nature of the images, their demonstrative disposition, the
What we take from Griffith and the early Soviet filmmakers construction of narrative continuities in time and space, the
is their concern with the filmic possibilities of juxtaposing filmic and extra-filmic codings—may be denied elision and
shots, thus enabling visual experiences that differ from normal offered as separable to the viewer’s security.
perception—either in the form of organic narrative wholeness
or in the form of radical shock therapy. In contrast to this, Such methods could, Vaughan continues, consist in selective
most ethnographic filmmakers in the observational tradition jump-cutting, disagreeing voice-over commentaries, and ex-
have been preoccupied with the “cinema of duration” as ad- cessively manipulative forms of grading that push “the re-
vocated by André Bazin (2005:39; Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009: ceived conventions to the point of parody so that, while still
539)—that is, the ability of the camera to capture events and functioning to articulate the material, they would be perceived
actions in human life in the order and pace that they actually in their arbitrariness.” Trinh T. Minh-ha’s film Reassemblage
occur. (1982) applies several of these methods. Shot in a Senegalese
In Griffith and Eisenstein, but even more so in the cinema village, the film uses audio-video desynchronization along
of Vertov, the camera was valued not for its capacity to imitate with continuous abrupt jump-cuts of women breastfeeding
the human eye, but precisely for its mechanical nonhuman their babies, crying or laughing children, traditional dancing,
nature. For Vertov, montage referred not only to the piecing and corn grinding. In this way, the film effectively directs the
together of shots in the editing room, but also to the assembly attention of viewers toward their own acts of seeing and the
of shots as framed and recorded in the camera (Aumont et ways in which ethnographic films conventionally establish
al. 1997:65). We adopt montage in this broadest sense as a their subjects. The invisible that is made visible in Minh-ha’s
production technique, which is evident both in film shooting deconstruction is effectively ourselves as ethnographic film
and in the subsequent juxtaposition of shots during editing. viewers and the politics of looking at others.
Whether in the camera or in the editing room, montage can Despite their differences, filmmakers and theoreticians such
be defined as cinematic rearrangement of lived time and space. as Vertov, Marcus, Kiener, Vaughan, and Minh-ha share a
Its set goal is what Vertov referred to as “Film-Truth” (Petric common understanding of the invisible. Whether in the form
1987:4, 8)—that is, to transcend ordinary human perception of global cultural processes or of concealed power relations,
and offer views on reality of a super-real quality, emerging the invisible is understood to be something that can and
from the juxtaposition of otherwise incompatible perspec- should be made visible in filmmaking by means of montage.
tives. While the humanized camera provides footage from a Here we seek to take the montage argument to a more fun-
perspective, which stands in an indexical relationship to the damental level of analysis by suggesting that juxtaposition of
familiar regime of human perception, montage, as here un- perspectives through montage is a key cinematic tool for evok-
derstood, is the production of superhuman vision that pushes ing the invisible, without reducing it to forms of visibility.
the frontiers of the observable world into uncharted regions. The problem with the globalization of the film gaze, advocated
A somewhat similar take on film’s capacity to decode reality by Marcus and Kiener, is that it merely enlarges the field of
has been pursued by scholars concerned with cinema and visibility to a global scale rather than deals with the question

of invisibility in its own right (see, e.g., Furtado 1989; Gandini pointed out, the basic problem with this theory of perception
2003). is that, insofar as the back side is part of the object, and
The use of montage in the service of deconstruction, as in insofar as we can never see the back side of the object from
the film work of Minh-ha, carries yet another problem. The our present position, “no experience of an object could pos-
supposedly concealed power relations, inherent in the objec- sibly present it as it really is.” Thus, the real object slips away
tifying gaze of ethnographic filmmaking, may perhaps be ren- as an imperceptible sum of all possible perspectives on it.
dered visible by Minh-ha’s complete disruption of her footage, But what if vision is not subjective, but rather an effect of
but only at the expense of dissolving the social world por- our relations with one another (Willerslev 2009)—that is,
trayed into obscure haze (Crawford 1992:79). To paraphrase what if vision exists, so to speak, “between us” rather than
the film critic Rudolf Arnheim: in order for film to be more “within us”? Merleau-Ponty (2002:79) points to exactly this
than a naive simulacrum of reality, it must interrupt and when he writes: “When I look at the lamp on my table, I
challenge our conventional visual logic—but only partially, attribute to it not only the qualities visible from where I am,
for “no statement can [ultimately] be understood unless the but also those which the chimney, the walls, the table can
relations between its elements form an organized whole” ‘see.’” What Merleau-Ponty suggests is that when we gaze at
(Arnheim 1957:170). Successful evocation rests not with “the the façade of an object, its back side is also perceived posi-
pleasures of chaos” (Arnheim 1971:30–33) but with the film- tively. But whereas the façade is perceived as “determinate,”
maker’s success in counterbalancing disruption with a general the hidden side of the object is perceived as ‘indeterminate’
compositional order, hence enhancing the viewer’s perception (Kelly 2005:78). That is, rather than not being perceived, the
of reality. hidden side is positively perceived as absence of visibility. This
If the invisible is part of social reality, then how can we is so, Merleau-Ponty argues, because at the same time as we
approach it without merely substituting it with new forms of perceive the focal object, we also perceive the infinite web of
visibility? In the following, we shall explore the notion of the possible viewpoints in which this object is situated. Thus, the
invisible shared by Merleau-Ponty and Levinas as a perceptual chimney, the walls, and the table are all perceived as alternative
impossibility, which—although it may be imagined intellec- viewpoints, from where we could have seen what, from our
tually—is not achievable from any one perspective. The in- present perspective, is hidden as the back side of the lamp
visible here is understood to be an excess of visibility or an (fig. 1).
infinite totality of vision that cannot itself be accessed from Hence, according to Merleau-Ponty, perceptual experience
any actual human perspective, but whose presence is the pre- is not, as Husserl argues, simply a presentation of sense data.
condition for our possibility of perceiving anything—what Neither is it simply something that goes on within us. Instead,
Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “norm” and Levinas as the visual perception emerges as an intertwinement of our own
“infinite Other.” We shall suggest that by maintaining the subjective viewpoint along with the focal object and the vast
invisible as an “excess” or “infinite totality” of vision, montage sprawling web of viewpoints that surround it and provide its
in film may enable us to imagine views fundamentally dif- supporting context (Merleau-Ponty 1997:248). It is, so to
ferent from those given to us in ordinary perception. speak, because vision is everywhere that we as perspectival
beings are able to see things from somewhere (Willerslev 2011;
The Invisible in Vision Willerslev and Ulturgasheva 2007:92). So, contrary to Husserl,
the real three-dimensionality of objects is present in each and
One of the most fundamental differences between the camera every perception of them, but it is present in the sense of an
eye and the human eye lies in the way the two perceive the invisible and unattainable “norm”—that is, the “view from
depth and distinct identity of objects. Let us, therefore, begin everywhere” (Deleuze 1994:37; Kelly 2005:91; Willerslev 2011:
by considering the rather tricky question of how human be- 519). As Merleau-Ponty (2000:187) expresses it: “The proper
ings are able to experience objects as three-dimensional. It essence . . . of the visible is to have a layer of invisibility . . .
may appear to us that we perceive objects from the location which it makes present by a certain absence.” In other words,
of our eyes: the world is centered upon the perceiver. Indeed, while the “view from everywhere” implies the world seen in
the long observational takes and the humanized camera style totally clear and unambiguous visibility—that is, the world
of much ethnographic filmmaking appear to reproduce this as laid bare in absolute transparency—it is a view that must
egocentric experience of vision. This is also the basis of Ed- “hide itself” in order for the visible world to appear before
mund Husserl’s (1997) theory of perception, in which the our eyes. As such, the “view from everywhere” is a view that
three-dimensionality of objects emerges out of a cognitive cannot be an object of our own perspectival seeing except
hypothesis. The only thing we perceive, Husserl asserts, is the “negatively,” that is, by its absence (Holbraad and Willerslev
object’s façade. The back side of the object—its invisible 2007:334).
side—is not perceived and can, therefore, only be assessed We may seem to have wandered a bit far in discussing the
cognitively by building on our previous experiences of moving perception of lamps, but it relates in an important way to the
around the object. key issue that interests us here, namely, the difference between
However, as the philosopher Sean Kelly (2005:96) has human perception and film. Criticizing Hastrup for neglecting

Figure 1. A lamp (Christian Suhr). A color version of this figure is available in the online edition of Current Anthropology.
how closely film resembles human perceptual experience, Tay- dimensional reality we usually perceive is depicted two-
lor (1996:75–76) emphasizes how, in particular, the long take dimensionally in film. MacDougall (2006:270, 274) also points
of observational cinema honors the duration of real-life in- to this fact, when describing how films construct for us a
teraction and “the homogeneity of space by preserving the three-dimensional space based on two-dimensional pieces.
relationships between objects rather than substituting [them But whereas MacDougall, in line with the observational doc-
with] the abstract time and synthetic space of montage” (cf. trine, emphasizes how closely this construction resembles hu-
Henley 2004:114). But is it really the case that the long take man perception, it is a construction nevertheless, which, in
of a camera so closely resembles our ordinary vision? One order to achieve its reality effect, has to manipulate consid-
major difference that comes to mind is the fact that the three- erably with frame, color, contrast, focus, and depth.

Let us clarify this by considering one of the most funda- it to copy the work of our eye. The better the copy, the
mental differences between the technological mediation of better the shooting was thought to be. Starting today we
vision by the camera and ordinary human vision—namely, are liberating the camera and making it work in the opposite
the difference between viewing through one rather than two direction—away from copying. (Vertov, quoted in Roberts
eyes. As Merleau-Ponty showed us, the three-dimensionality 2000:19)
of things is given to us in human vision because we simul-
Many ethnographic filmmakers have been inspired by the
taneously appropriate a multiplicity of other possible view-
films and writings of Vertov. The cinema verité movement,
points. Merleau-Ponty’s claim finds further support in the
developed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, is a direct trans-
fact that we normally never see an object from one position.
lation of Vertov’s concept of “Kino Pravda,” meaning “film-
Most often, we see it as an intertwinement of two positions—
truth.” But rather than the intersubjective truth provided
that is, through our two eyes. As Arnheim (1957:11) has
by Rouch’s living participatory camera (Rothman 1997:80;
pointed out, “depth perception relies mainly on the distance
Rouch 2003), which functions as an extension of the film-
between the two eyes, which makes for two slightly different
images. The fusion of these two pictures into one image gives maker’s body, Vertov aimed at transcending the intersubjec-
the three-dimensional impression.” Contrary to Taylor and tive and, through montage, obtaining a new and truer vision,
the realist codex of much ethnographic filmmaking, Arnheim extending beyond the subjective viewpoint of our human eyes.
pointed to this fact as an example of how filmic vision rad- In his classic film from 1929, The Man with the Movie Camera,
ically differs from human double vision. we see the metropolis at dawn with its citizens still asleep.
Hence, at the most elementary level, Hastrup is in fact Yet it turns out that the city is a roomful of eyes, in that every
perfectly right when she states that the flat representation of object, from the cars’ headlamps to the dummies in the shop
her camera did not reveal the same three-dimensional reality windows, grows a face of its own and stares back. By being
that she had seen with her two eyes. Because of her two eyes, pushed into this odd realm in which every object has a pres-
whose vision bends around things, she was literally able to ence—a being and a face of its own—we are forced upon us
see a bit more of the ram exhibition than what was later a vision that does not begin and end in the human subject:
depicted in her photographs. Human vision with its double a vision that is already in place, waiting to inscribe us within
perspective is, therefore, always already one step ahead, toward it. As James Elkins (1996:20) writes: “Instead of saying I am
the “view from everywhere,” than is the single (Husserlian) the one doing the looking, it seems better to say that objects
perspective of a camera lens. Despite current experiments in are all trying to catch my eye.” Indeed, this echoes Merleau-
3-D, film is still not able to reproduce the full human per- Ponty’s claim that without the vast tangled network of view-
ception of space that observational filmmakers have tried to points that surrounds us and weaves itself through us, there
imitate. While we in ordinary “double” vision are able to see would be no subjective viewpoint in the first place.
around things, this is not possible with the single perspective Within the world of ethnographic filmmaking, Timothy
of the camera lens. Whereas the three-dimensionality of things Asch and Napoleon Chagnon’s much-debated film The Ax
is normally given to us as an inherent feature of our vision, Fight (1975) reveals a similar capacity for constructing visual
film has to shift angle, combine perspectives, and in other experiences composed of several points of view (fig. 2). The
ways manipulate the image in order to give a sense of the film is about a conflict that broke out among two groups of
three-dimensional features of what they depict. Yanomamö Indians. It discloses and discusses the same violent
event no less than five times—each time from a new cinematic
perspective (Acciaioli 2004:141; Nichols 2004).
Some Film Examples
First we are presented with 11 minutes of unedited obser-
If the camera eye is fundamentally inferior to human vision, vational film footage, which covers the fight from its outbreak
then how can film ever provide us with an anthropological to the end. Shouts and screams increase in volume as the
vision that challenges and enhances ordinary seeing? What crowd of fighting men and women grows larger. At its peak,
film can do (and what human vision cannot do) is—through the fight has moved into the shadow of a pent roof. Machetes
techniques of montage—to juxtapose its two-dimensional and axes glimpse in the darkness. Suddenly, the camera pans
pieces and combine them into multispatial and multitemporal quickly to the left, following a movement within the crowd.
viewing experiences. In this way, montage offers the possibility We hear the sound of a severe punch, but the camera moves
of breaking the boundaries of the ethnographically “thin” too fast, and it is impossible to see what happens. A moment
2-D by delivering views of a multidimensional “thick” and, later, we are back with the agitated crowd. The camera has
if you like, super-real quality. This is what Vertov took to the moved closer. The fight has paused. A young man kneels on
extreme with his dictum of the “kino-eye,” simultaneously the ground, showing great signs of pain. We are left in be-
documenting and constructing reality: a cinema that, as its wilderment.
first move, needed to break away from the mimetic disposition In the next section of the film, we hear the filmmakers’
of the camera. immediate reactions on the sound reel. Chagnon attempts to
Until now we have violated the movie camera and forced make sense of the apparent chaos. He reckons that the fight

Figure 2. The Ax Fight (Asch and Chagnon 1975). A color version of this figure is available in the online edition of Current
Anthropology.
erupted because of the discovery of an incestuous relationship in the footage that have not been addressed in the anthro-
between a woman and her son. However, as the next title pological explanation. Seeing the steel axes yet a third time,
states, “First impressions can be mistaken.” Now the filmic one is pushed to question where these axes might have come
material is replayed in slow motion and with stills. In voice- from and what impact the surrounding world has on the
over, Chagnon explains who is who and what strategies the violent event. Furthermore, what leaps to the eye is how dis-
combatants employ. We learn that the fight evolved because ruption of the chronological development of the event
a woman had been beaten in her garden after having denied through montage brings together two women in an argument.
giving food to a visiting relative. While the critical role of women as initiators and participants
The fourth section of the film attempts to make sense of in the fight is entirely absent in Chagnon’s explanation, the
the fight in terms of kinship and alliance theory under the manipulation of the footage in the last part of the film strongly
heading “Simplified structure of the conflict in terms of mar- emphasizes it. Linda Connor and Patsy Asch (2004:176) ap-
riage and descent.” The violent event can, according to Chag- preciate this manipulation, as it makes clear the inadequacy
non, be viewed as an expression of old hostilities between of the anthropological explanation. As the filmic compression
three lineages. The fight comes to a standstill exactly at the of time unfolds hitherto unseen layers of the social interaction,
point where one of the lineages would otherwise have been the in-depth “thick” ethnographic description of kinship and
forced to split and choose sides between the other two, re- alliance structures is rendered “thin.” Contrary to Hastrup’s
sulting in a cleavage of the village. As Bill Nichols (2004:231) argument about the hierarchy between writing and film, the
has pointed out, this abstract explanation probably represents filmic in this instance grows “thick” and comes to encompass
the furthest point one can get from the indexical profilmic and transcend the anthropological explanation.
event as “it actually happened.” It is an account of underlying Seen in relation to one another, the five sequences add up
social structures, which are invisible to the eye of the camera to a mosaic image, a phantom-like whole, which enables us
and possibly also to the eyes of the actors themselves. to experience and compare each perspective in relation to the
In the last section, the film presents yet another perspective others. The inconsistencies, dissonances, and gaps between
through which to understand the fight. The film material is the various contradicting viewpoints force us to consider what
replayed for the third time, but now edited unchronologically yet other perspectives could reveal, thus making us create new
to emphasize a narrative structure quite different from that imaginary viewpoints that expand into infinity. Indeed, the
of the kinship chart and the first unedited observational take extensive and persistent debate (Martinez 2004; Nichols 2004;
(Nichols 2004:231). Here one starts to wonder about features Ruby 2000:129) about the film is itself a testimony to how

Figure 3. Gandhi’s Children (MacDougall 2008). A color version of this figure is available in the online edition of Current Anthropology.
difficult it is to settle in any single interpretational perspective. plications of montage. MacDougall’s film Gandhi’s Children
In the end, there is no longer a camera to stand in for our (2008) provides an illuminating example. As already pointed
seeing, and so the viewpoints provoked are not the familiar out, the film clearly inscribes itself within the tradition of
subjective regime of ordinary perception, but beyond human observational cinema. Nonetheless, in a few highly powerful
vision. Indeed, through the absence of visibility, a sense of sequences, the use of the humanized camera hailed by ob-
the event as seen from everywhere is evoked as an impossible servational filmmakers is thoroughly subverted. From the out-
“phantom ideal” (Derrida 1995:244). In this sense, The Ax set, the film twists our perspective through a series of shots
Fight emerges as an excess of vision that can only be ap- from the outside of the children’s shelter to its interior: from
proached through the lack of visibility, emerging through the the hallway of the house to the rooftop, through a window
juxtaposition of conflicting perspectives. As Merleau-Ponty to the balconies of the houses on the other side of the street
himself expresses it: “Since the total invisible is always behind, and out again at the street, before finally settling at the eye-
or after, or between the aspects we see of it, there is access level perspective of the children, wrapped in blankets in their
to it only through an experience which like it, is wholly outside bunk beds, slowly awakening (fig. 3). MacDougall’s montage
of it itself” (Merleau-Ponty 2000:136). creates suggestive ambiguities between interior and exterior,
Both The Ax Fight and The Man with the Movie Camera presence and absence, finite and infinite space. These same
use a wide range of cinematic devices to force the viewer out ambiguities continue throughout the film. First, however, it
of the familiar regime of subject-centered vision. Most eth- moves on to explore the children’s lives through series of
nographic filmmakers of the observational school are certainly observational camera takes in which the eye-level perspective
more cautious about using such extensive cinematic manip- of the boys takes on an almost natural feel. The relationship
ulation. Yet also within this tradition, we find powerful ap- between image and world becomes virtually transparent: we

look through the eyes of a child, as it were, to the actuality but rather seem to erupt unexpectedly in contradictions that
they point to. Yet at certain subtle moments the illusion of arise in the tension between the profilmic, the shooting and
experiencing life from the perspective of a child becomes the putting together of shots during editing.
acutely clear. Clearly, there is a strong sense of ethics involved in the
This happens most forcefully in a scene featuring a boy montage of both The Ax Fight and Gandhi’s Children. Or-
crying and asking to come home to his family. As the boy dinary human perception, which tells us that vision is located
continues to weep, the act of watching him through the pas- where our eyes are, is so deeply shattered by the multiplication
sive viewpoint of a camera becomes increasingly unbearable— of perspectives in these films that we find ourselves decentered
not only for the viewer, but also for MacDougall, whose cam- in an infinite totality of views that no longer affords us the
era faintly starts to shake before his assistant finally steps into illusion of ourselves as the unique center of the world. In
the scene and comforts the child. Over several jump-cuts of what follows, we move on to explore how this approach to
the same camera shot, our viewpoint is inescapably split apart ethnographic filmmaking resonates with Levinas’s ethics of
in collision with the filmmaker’s perspective, the eye-level otherness.
perspective of the camera and the perspective of the boy,
whose demeanor demands that the filmmaker take action. The Invisible Face of the Other
After this scene, each proceeding observational eye-level take
is forced upon us as a montage of our double and impossible An often reported crisis in the careers of many anthropologists
perspective as children engaged in perceiving other children is the point where they feel that the analyses they write are
and as adults engaged in a strange form of self-deception. No widening rather than reducing the gap between themselves
longer can we rely solely on one single situated perspective. and the people they seek to understand. As Marilyn Strathern
We are thrown back and forth between the various actual and (1988:6–7) points out:
virtual viewpoints provoked by the film. This wandering of Analytical language appears to create itself as increasingly
perspectives, each of which modifies and objectifies the others, more complex and increasingly removed from the “realities”
results in a conglomerate or excess of vision—what Merleau- of the worlds it attempts to delineate, and not least from
Ponty denotes as the view from everywhere—which belongs the languages in which people themselves describe them.
to no one in particular, but pushes us to see through the . . . There is thus an inbuilt sense of artificiality to the whole
actuality of all particular viewpoints offered. The long take— anthropological exercise—which prompts the apparent so-
the hallmark of observational cinema—is transformed into lution that what one should be doing is aiming to simplify,
the most disruptive and disconcerting of montage effects. to restore the clarity of direct comprehension.
Before going further, it is worth making some preliminary Because of its presumed capacity for evoking the immediacy
conclusions on the basis of the montage at work in The Ax of social interaction and its incapacity for abstract theoretical
Fight and Gandhi’s Children. On the one hand, it is clear that language, ethnographic filmmaking has often been identified
effective film montage does not necessarily have to involve as the answer to this crisis. As previously described, the ethical
fast-pace editing or use of extradiegetic material. Neither does potential of film in anthropology is often understood to rest
film montage necessarily need to include a large range of film in the way it returns our gaze to the commonalities of being
angles. On the other hand, it is also clear that the long ob- human (Grimshaw 2001:133; MacDougall 1998:259). Film, it
servational take of the humanized camera by no means au- is argued, can show us an unsurpassed richness of detail of
tomatically allies us with the social reality of film subjects. subtle bodily gestures, small nonlinguistic signs, and shifting
Quite to the contrary, in fact: it is only when observational facial expressions that transcend the cultural explanations
cinema betrays its own realist commitment that the invisible evoked in written anthropology. With such qualities in mind,
dimensions of reality are evoked. These rupturing leaps MacDougall (2006:4) describes what he calls the autonomy
emerge in peculiar instances where the humanized camera of being:
fails to sustain the world it depicts, thus revealing that the
In fiction films as well as non-fiction films, we use “found”
reality presented is much larger than what is seen. As already
materials from this world. We fashion them into webs of
argued, the work of montage appears less effective in films
signification, but within these webs are caught glimpses of
relying solely on postmodern deconstruction (see Minh-ha
being more unexpected and powerful than anything we
1982). Disruption cannot, so to speak, work as disruption of
could create. . . . A good film reflects the interplay of mean-
itself. It must be a disruption of something rather than noth-
ing and being, and its meanings take into account the au-
ing. It is exactly in the paradoxical tension between the in-
tonomy of being. Meaning can easily overpower being.
sistence on a reality “out there” and the inevitable failures of
recording this reality through a subject-centered perspective Reading the literature on observational cinema, one could be
that the most powerful ruptures of montage emerge. This also let to think that such glimpses of being most likely occur
implies that the effects of montage may not easily be con- when the integrity of the events portrayed in film rushes is
structed beforehand through acts of conscious thinking, as not subjected to meanings imposed by filmmakers. In general,
in, for example, the feature films of Griffith and Eisenstein, Henley (2004:115) argues, filmmakers “should resist the

temptation . . . to play either the teacher or the artist, i.e. their irreducibility and singularity.” Nevertheless, this ethical
subjecting the rushes to such an imposing intellectual or aes- codex is based on the “unprivileged” subjective filming ex-
thetic agenda that members of the audience can no longer perience of a “normal human participant” (Henley 2004:114).
draw their own conclusions about the significance of what It is this subject-centered epistemology that we find problem-
they are seeing.” But is it really true that film has such a atic. For Levinas (1987:55), it is exactly the claim of a shared
privileged access to autonomous being? MacDougall (2006: humanity and a generic human perception, which succumbs
4) also points to this problem when stating that filmmakers to the “imperialism of the same.” If indeed the other is in-
and film viewers are always already enmeshed in preconceived finitely other, then we cannot access the other as such. This
meanings. Consequently, there is no such thing as a direct would, in Levinasian terms, be essentially unethical since we
and innocent access to being. Rather than trying to protect cannot assume that there is a primordial sameness behind
glimpses of being from “webs of signification,” the primary difference. Like Merleau-Ponty’s “normative ideal,” Levinas’s
commitment of ethnographic filmmaking must, therefore, be invisible other is a surplus, a plenitude of perspectives that
to unsettle and dislodge those preconceived meanings. As we we can never actually take up. Hence, unlike the observational
have just argued, the marvelous thing about The Ax Fight is claim to transcultural sameness, the argument advanced here
exactly the way it combines modernist empiricism with post- is that alterity itself is primary. Alterity is behind all human
modern forms of deconstruction (Ruby 2000:130) and, in the relationships, and behind alterity there is nothing.
clash between otherwise incompatible perspectives, creates a Whereas the ethics of observational cinema demands of the
space for further imagination about the reality of the Yano- filmmaker to be cautious with manipulative effects that dis-
mamö and the production of the film itself. Disruption of turb the ontological primacy of a shared human identity
our commonsense vision is, in other words, a precondition (Grimshaw 2001:131), Levinas’s notion of the invisible other
for getting a feel for the being of others. requires the necessity of such disturbances, since the camera
Here we take support from Emmanuel Levinas for whom from the outset has already reduced the other’s infinite oth-
ethics and “otherness” go in tandem. According to him, the erness. In the words of T. M. S. Evens (2008:xiv), “We must
self can neither appear nor sustain itself outside of its differ- . . . be prepared to offer ourselves up . . . to otherness—not
entiation from other, which is why it is always and indispen- to resist but instead to enhance the way in which we are
sably obliged to preserve the alterity of the other (Levinas always already open to the other in spite of ourselves.” What
1969, 1987). To the anthropologist, there is, of course, nothing does this imply? It must imply the sacrifice of the most pre-
new about this insight of the self’s relational dependency on cious sacred cow of observational cinema: the subject. To be
the “ethical other,” but it is nevertheless important to unethical in this sense is not at all to maintain a distinctive
derscore, since the dictum of “letting viewers see for them- identity or perspective. On the contrary, it involves finding
selves,” advocated by much observational cinema, carries a the unstable zone of continuous becoming, where perspectives
danger of disregarding all that which cannot be seen in the are allowed to travel and cross the threshold of perspectival
particular instance of filming (Loizos 1992:54; Weiner 1997). seeing. This only happens when the illusion of the camera as
For Levinas, however, the encounter with the other is not an extension of human vision is broken.
reducible to that which is visible alone. Beneath the expres- Previously, we discussed MacDougall’s most recent film,
sions on the visible face is the invisible face, which cannot be Gandhi’s Children. Despite the fact that MacDougall as a
directly perceived, visually depicted, or represented in writing. writer is clearly adhering to observational cinema, his film
This invisible face conveys, according to Levinas, an “excess work seems to take us in a different direction. Thus, the
of otherness”—that which cannot be reduced to the “same” ensemble of film shots in Gandhi’s Children thoroughly de-
(Wyschogrod 2002:191). stabilizes perceptions of what is home, not-home, security,
All films by way of their contextualization of images add insecurity, joy, despair, childhood, and adulthood. By contin-
meaning, define, and determine the otherness of others, thus uously twisting the partial totalities offered in each camera
making visible what by definition cannot be visible, reducing shot, any form of subject-centered view on the life of the boys
what is irreducible and bending it to fit its own needs and at the children’s shelter is left indeterminate. If we experience
ends. This, we may add, appears to be especially true for the a sense of commonalities of being human, the dissonance
observational approach, which by way of its ontological pri- created through MacDougall’s montage underscores that this
ority to a shared humanity (Grimshaw 2001:133; MacDougall experience is little more than a surface phenomenon. What
1998:258) easily precludes the possibility of something being we share with the children is what we “think” are common-
infinitely other. This is not to suggest that observational cin- alities. Thus, the film’s montage counters the ever-latent dan-
ema never considers the otherness of others, but that it does ger in realist representation of attributing sameness to the
so in terms of a subject-centered perspective, which only al- irreducible otherness of others. In our view, MacDougall as
lows for an otherness that the filmmaker and the audience a filmmaker here counters the transcultural ethics, proposed
are already prepared for. Grimshaw and Ravetz (2009:539) in his written work, with an ethics of infinite alterity.
describe how observational cinema was explicitly developed The ethnographic film tradition offers a number of other
as an “aesthetics that respected things for what they were, for examples where the mimetic disposition of the camera is

splintered in this way by montage. One prime example is Jean deliberate fictions to that end. . . . The question is how to
Rouch’s widely debated film Les Maı̂tres Fous (1955), which displace [our metaphors] most effectively” (Strathern 1988:
shows a hauka spirit-possession cult in Accra during British 10, 12).
colonial rule. Like The Ax Fight, the film emerges as a jux- Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell (2007:
taposition of several perspectives and commentaries that do 7–10) have recently summarized how Strathern’s analytical
not at all correspond in a one-to-one concordance. A wide- framework amounts to a “quiet revolution” against the an-
spread—but in Paul Henley’s (2006:737) view—misguided thropological axiom that people may have different world-
reading of the film is that the hauka cult is a parodic resistance views but ultimately inhabit the same world. What anthro-
and subversion of imperial power. This interpretation is pology should be about, they suggest, is to upturn our own
mainly evoked by Rouch’s juxtaposition of a shot featuring assumptions so as to make room for imagining the possibility
hauka performers cracking an egg on the head of a statue, of people inhabiting a multiplicity of worlds. This echoes the
presumably representing the British governor, with a shot of Levinasian claim that respect for the other’s alterity should
the real governor wearing a white plumed helmet (Russell not be equated with the mistaken view that all alterity is
1999:224; Taussig 1993: 242). Henley (2006:754), however, derived from a shared existential ground. If informants tell
finds sufficient evidence in the film footage and in ethno- us that there is such a thing as a “powerpowder,” the an-
graphic descriptions on spirit possession in West Africa to thropological exercise must be not about translating the idea
argue that, rather than an example of counterhegemonic re- of a powerpowder into concepts we already know, but rather,
sistance, the cultic event is in fact a fertility ritual, modeled as Holbraad (2007:204) asserts, about upturning our as-
on the North African zar cult, where ritual participants at- sumptions so as to make it possible for us to imagine how
tempt to assimilate the power of influential figures for reli- powder in this world actually is power.
gious purposes. Thus, Henley (2006:743) closely evaluates the Our argument is in line with this understanding of the role
film footage on the basis of its assumed correspondence with of anthropology. While these writers conceive of anthropology
historical reality along with the ethnographic literature. mainly as a linguistic enterprise, the montage of ethnographic
But can and should a film be judged according to how films provides us with a complementary and resourceful
faithfully it corresponds to things and events in the actual means of making us imagine other people’s worlds. Although
world? Here we have pursued an alternative view on ethno- the stance of the above-mentioned authors is grounded in
graphic filmmaking—a view in which its task is not to mimic the “humble . . . admission that our concepts . . . must, by
social reality but rather to transcend our perception of it. A definition, be inadequate to translate different ones” (Henare,
faithful correspondence or fidelity between representation and Holbraad, and Wastell 2007:12), the work of montage that
our human perception of actuality is not only impossible but we have advocated is based on the admission that our ordinary
also unwanted. Film can express social reality only by making vision must by definition be inadequate as a tool for under-
it alive again through tampering with its source material. standing others. Although Holbraad (2007) effectively ex-
Rouch understood this, which is why he orchestrated his shots plains the importance of conceptualization for experience and
and commentaries so as to provoke multiple, contradictory, that experience cannot be conceived of as separate or prior
and dissonant readings, neither of which was allowed fully to to conceptualization, we may note that, despite his high-
dominate. Thus, Les Maı̂tres Fous allows us access to the ex- pitched theoretical reasoning, the reality of powerpowder is
cessive mysteries of the hauka cult, exactly by rejecting any still hard for us to imagine. This, we argue, may in part be
single perspective as its interpretative framework. Indeed, this caused by the fact that his analysis remains a linguistic en-
is also the reason why Henley (2006:757) must acknowledge terprise and as such addresses only a narrow spectrum of our
that the marvelous thing about Les Maı̂tres Fous is the im- imaginative faculties.
possibility of fixating and consuming the event in any uniform Indeed, as the celebrated fMRI scans of the human brain
perspective. indicate, the greater part of abstract thinking is not confined
to linguistic conceptualization, but appears to be concerned
The Place for Film and the Invisible in with multiple forms of sensory abstraction—particularly, vi-
Anthropology sual abstraction (Nijland 2006:38–39; Roepstorff 2008:2052).
Film is a medium in which we can play with and develop
According to Hastrup (1992:21), the general purpose of an- such forms of abstraction. A world where powder is power
thropology is to expand the sociocultural worlds we live in. is for many an invisible world. Rather than visualizing such
The means to this end is the creation of analytical categories. a world through theoretical reasoning or by reducing it to its
Only through such abstractions is it possible to transcend the visible manifestations, the work of montage that we have
limitations of established forms. Marilyn Strathern suggests argued for here is a technique for evoking that world by
that this can be done in the conjunction between deconstruc- maintaining its lining of invisibility. It is only in the gaps
tive feminism and an anthropology aimed at creating “ade- between its visual manifestations that its magico-religious re-
quate description.” She writes: “If my aims are the synthetic ality can appear. We contend that this entails rejecting the
aims of an adequate description, my analysis must deploy notion of imitating the human eye as film’s duty. As we have

seen, it is exactly when the mimetic dogma of the camera is suggest, can be used to our advantage. Here, the intervention
violated, when the mechanical eye detaches from our subject- of montage enables an enhanced perception of social realities.
centered vision, that we intuit the invisible in its own right. Note the word intervention. Pure montage leads to nothing
Ethnographic filmmaking provides knowledge of social reality but an “obscure haze,” something which Suhr and Willerslev
not by reflecting its details photographically, but by disrupting warn against. Instead, we need to strike the right balance
the taking at face value of its visible façade through montage. between realism and constructivism (similarity/difference,
But although ethnographic filmmaking discovers reality single/multiple, linearity/disruption). An excellent review of
only by transcending it through cinematic manipulations, it Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon’s film The Axe Fight
should not fight against its affinity to realism so hard as to (1975) illustrates the productive use of different interpreta-
become totally abstract. This, as we have argued, leads to tions of a single event, challenging the viewer’s received in-
nothing but obscure haze. Construction should be a means terpretation of a film and presenting “several points of view.”
of enhancing our understanding of social life. What is im- Two questions immediately come to mind. First, it is not
portant is to strike the right balance between realism and at all clear what the invisible is that the authors argue can be
constructivism, simplicity and complexity, resonance and dis- revealed through this technique. Is it simply another per-
sonance. The effective image must hold these factors poised spective of an event, or is it something that is part of what
in tension with each other, rather than subscribing single- we are seeing, something we may perceive, but is not visible?
mindedly to any one of them. Only then can ethnographic Second, how exactly can montage, as a method, reveal this
films push us beyond the frontiers of the visible world into in a way that observational film cannot? If it simply amounts
the uncharted regions of the invisible. to showing different perspectives of a single lamp in quick
succession as an interlude to a story about a lamp, this is not
the same as perceiving the reason for a certain lamp existing
Acknowledgments in a certain room at a particular moment in time. Much of
this confusion comes from a slippage between the terms “per-
We would like to thank David MacDougall, Peter Crawford, ception” and “vision.” Perception is not only based on vision.
Keir Martin, Ton Otto, Jakob Høgel, and the five anonymous For example, I may perceive that there is some seriousness
reviewers of Current Anthropology for providing much-needed to the situation, but this is not something visible to the human
criticisms. Previous drafts of the article were presented at the eye. This comes from a host of other ways of “knowing.” And
European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial maybe “knowing” is what the authors mean when they talk
Meeting in Ljubljana, August 2008, and at the Transcultural of perceiving, apprehending, or anticipating the “back side of
Montage conference at Moesgård Museum, August 2009. an object”? Perception in this sense is about “views funda-
mentally different from those given to us in ordinary per-
ception.”
What exactly can be revealed through this medium is not
Comments always clear. Indeed it sometimes seems as if it is confusion
that the authors wish to highlight, so that it is through con-
Rebecca Empson fusion that a different perception in itself is achieved. Note
Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Tavi- that they do not stress a different perception of something
ton Street, London WC1H 0BW, United Kingdom
(that something is never clearly defined), but a different per-
(r.empson@ucl.ac.uk). 31 X 11
ception, or way of seeing in itself. It is clear that this different
This fascinating article puts forward a new method for eth- way of seeing amounts to more than the “depth perception
nographic filmmaking. By incorporating “disruptive” mo- [created by] the distance between the two eyes” over the
ments of montage (both the juxtaposition of frames, and the camera’s one. Maybe what they mean here is that film, as a
arrangements of things in a single shot), filmmakers will be medium, can dislodge and unhinge our commonsense vision,
able to present multiple perspectives on a single event and allowing for different kinds of perceptions. Yet it is not certain
guide the audience to different ways of seeing the world. These how they differentiate this from postmodern forms of dis-
possibilities are not afforded in written anthropology, which ruption in writing.
address only a narrow spectrum of our imaginative faculties, Any kind of film is a political statement, a version and a
nor are they possible in observational filmmaking with its statement. But rather than emphasize the shared humanity
emphasis on long shots that risk dulling the subtleties of the and commonality of ways of seeing (as emphasized in ob-
lived world. servational cinema), they stress the need for difference and
Clearly, what is shown in film and writing is not all there otherness in order to challenge our sense of vision. This is to
is to an event, and Suhr and Willerslev are keen to find a emphasize alterity and difference over similarity and same-
method by which to reveal what they call “the invisible” that ness. Montage, they argue, can question received assumptions,
is known but is not always visible to us. A camera is certainly along the lines argued by Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell
not a person, but the mechanical nature of the medium, they (2007). The problem as I see it is that the means by which

they propose this can be achieved is not in itself based on spectives Chagnon did (or, through montage, did not) take
any ethnographic underpinning. Montage is not a local mode upon a Yanomamö axe fight in order anthropologically to
of displacing, disrupting, and revealing a different way of understand it? If so, in what sense? Indeed, are questions
viewing the world. In this sense, if we are to follow their regarding the “alterity” involved in cases such as the latter,
argument concerning the potential of montage for multiplic- as the authors suggest, also relevant to the conundrums of
ity, they are proposing a single method for multiple forms of perception such as the former? Again, how so?
vision, something observational cinema already achieves. Without a clearer account on this score, one is tempted to
suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception may
not provide the best point of departure for a defense of filmic
montage as an aid to anthropological understanding. Indeed,
mainly by way of facilitating thinking on this front, I would
Martin Holbraad ask whether Merleau-Ponty’s friend and admirer Lévi-Strauss
Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Tavi- might not, anthropologically speaking, provide a more ob-
ton Street, London WC1H 0BW, United Kingdom
(m.holbraad@ucl.ac.uk). 31 X 11
vious point of reference here. For it strikes me that the ways
in which the authors sing the virtues of montage as a modality
As something of an unreconstructed iconophobe myself, I of comprehension (as opposed to mere apprehension, or, bet-
find great merit in the way Suhr and Willerslev’s ambitious ter, as a peculiar mode of fusing the two) is remarkably similar
article relates sometimes rather parochial debates about the to Lévi-Strauss’s famous argument about the “science of the
pros and cons of ethnographic film as an anthropological concrete” (Lévi-Strauss 1966). Signs, argued Lévi-Strauss, as
medium to concerns that go to the heart of anthropology as peculiar intermediaries between perceptions and conceptions,
an intellectual project. Their core argument is elegant and are the currency of a savage thought that proceeds by endlessly
clever: wedded to the ideals of observational cinema, they rearranging its raw materials by way of the novel juxtaposi-
show that traditional defenses of ethnographic film highlight tions of “bricolage,” exploiting the differences between them,
its ability to reveal the detail of social life as ethnographers so as to arrive at novel possibilities of meaning. In a rather
and ethnographic subjects alike experience it, which is so often literal sense, within the economy of filmic footage, montage
missed in the processes of abstraction that text-based an- would appear to be also a form of bricolage in just this way—
thropological analysis involves. The assumption here is that simply substituting “image” or “shot” for “sign” would appear
the camera’s role is to enhance the work of the human eye to take us straight back to this familiar anthropological ter-
so as to reveal aspects of ethnographic experience that go ritory. Such a transposition, arguably, would speak directly to
unnoticed. But what if the real anthropological challenge were Willreslev and Suhr’s abiding concern with comparing the
that of revealing, not unnoticed aspects of lived experience, analytical—indeed conceptual—possibilities of ethnographic
but rather aspects of that experience that remain constitutively film with those of anthropological texts. Certainly, in Lévi-
invisible? Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, the authors identify the Strauss’s concern with rehabilitating savage thought from ha-
ideal “view from everywhere,” comprising all possible per- bitual charges of irrationality, and the authors’ desire to see
ceptual perspectives, as the condition of possibility for any film as a medium for sophisticated anthropological thinking,
actual perception. Montage, which explores the tension be- there may be parallels worth exploring. Film, myth, and ritual,
tween possible and impossible vantage points of perception, then, would emerge as the most pertinent triptych for an-
is then proposed as a prime means for approximating this thropological comparison in this context (cf. Lévi-Strauss
virtual ideal. So, it is precisely because it is unlike the human 1978, 1981).
eye that the camera can reveal the constitutively invisible
realms of human experience, by creatively disrupting ordinary
perceptions through montage.
Attractive as one may find such a paradoxical defense of
the cinematic eye as a gauge of the invisible, there are also Andrew Irving
difficulties in the logic of this complex argument. In partic- Department of Anthropology and Granada Centre for Visual An-
ular, it is unclear how Merleau-Ponty’s thesis about the con- thropology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester
M13 9PL, United Kingdom (andrew.irving@manchester.ac.uk). 8
ditions of possibility of vision (perception) can be transposed XI 11
onto an argument that, as it seems to me, is really about the
conditions of possibility of anthropological understanding “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances,”
(conception). In fact, one may wonder whether part of the declared Oscar Wilde. “The true mystery of the world is the
difficulty here lies with the notion of “perspective,” which visible, not the invisible”: confirming how the study of surface
seems to provide the bridge from perception to conception appearances is not to be concerned with the shallow, super-
in the authors’ syllogism. For example, are the various per- ficial, and trivial. However, Wilde then cautioned, “Those who
spectives that one may (or may not) take upon a Danish lamp go beneath the surface do so at their peril” (1992:3). In asking
in order visually to perceive it equivalent to the various per- if film can show the invisible or remains tied to the visible,

Willerslev and Suhr challenge anthropology to put itself in and negotiated. As such, strangeness, diversity, and otherness
“peril” by venturing beneath the surface to elicit the invisible are not the opposite of mutuality but the conditions that bring
dimensions of social life. it into being.
So what might such an anthropology look like? What epis- Consequently, as a fieldwork science::documentary art (Davis
temological and ontological adjustments are required to en- 2000) that combines practical methods and ethnographic rep-
gage with the invisible, and what counts as evidence? The resentation, Willerslev and Suhr propose anthropology can
persistent relationship between vision and evidence is sug- use film as a strategy for offering glimpses into unseen and
gested by the etymology of evidence in videre (to see). But unknown worlds. For while observational filmmaking often
whenever we get under the surface, like a farmer digging in overlooks the unseen dimensions of human life, they argue
the field, all that is revealed are further surfaces: the unseen film possesses a potentiality for revealing the invisible, not in
and the hidden rather than invisible. To what extent, therefore, a literal sense, but through the destabilizing effects of montage
is the invisible being used in this article as a metaphor for whereby the correspondence between vision and reality is
the unseen and unknown? Or for tacit, inchoate, or nonprop- made strange. Thus, rather than a systematic understanding
ositional realms of experience? of the invisible (which would simply translate the unknown
Drawing on Levinas, Willerslev and Suhr suggest any at- into the Same), they suggest montage offers a practical ap-
tempt to understand or represent otherness, whether in text proach in which social life is denaturalized in the way the
or film, relies upon translating the Other’s world into familiar Russian Formalists used poetry to take words and objects from
categories to make them known and representable through ordinary, everyday usage and then recast them through un-
ethnographic writing and film’s digital code. This misrecog- familiar eyes.
nition, even violence, imposed on the Other willfully ignores Crucially, Willerslev and Suhr argue, an anthropological
the limits of human perception and can never represent them approach to visual ostranenie relies upon maintaining the ten-
in their entirety. Indeed, if we can only observe ourselves as sion between film’s effective representation of reality and its
an object and cannot know or completely understand our- occasional, and therefore only then effective, disruption
selves (Kant 2006), then how can we claim to know the Other? through montage. Like the fool in a Shakespearean tragedy
Epistemological and moral recognition of the irreducible al- who interrupts the action and speaks directly to the audience
terity of the Other means many of their thoughts, actions, about truths that would otherwise remain hidden, montage
and behaviors are destined to remain unknown or invisible is also a well-worn technique that suspends the dominant
and may appear to us as highly irrational or perhaps even narrative. In doing so, the theoretical and documentary im-
insane. Nevertheless, Willerslev and Suhr argue, we must resist perative found in observational film can be productively
the erroneous, but epistemologically convenient, practice of transformed into ethnographically grounded modes of dis-
understanding their actions by simply translating them into ruption to communicate invisible and unarticulated truths
the categories of Same. not as static propositions but as emergent in action, raising
As we cannot fully comprehend otherness, Levinas suggests the possibility that “something like a drama” might emerge
our primary duty is our ethical responsibility toward them. “from the otherwise smooth surfaces of social life” (Turner
Thus, rather than reducing the Other to a murderous (filmed) 1982:9).
object of our own making and imagination or imposing
meaning on their hidden dimensions, we need to recognize
the limits of understanding and representation, at the level
of both the human and mechanical eye. For to do so is to
understand how finitude and failure are necessary to under- Jens Kreinath
standing other people and confirms our limits as unfinished, Department of Anthropology, Wichita State University, 216 Neff
Hall, 1845 Fairmount Street, Wichita, Kansas 67260-0052, U.S.A.
mortal beings who are not gods or even small gods. (jens.kreinath@wichita.edu). 8 XII 11
It then becomes both a moral and a practical question of
using film, as finite beings with incomplete knowledge of The article “Can Film Show the Invisible?” presents a theoret-
ourselves, other persons, and the world, to examine the nec- ically challenging attempt to reconfigure anthropological film-
essary conditions that make mutual perception and under- making on the basis of montage—the composition of visual
standing possible. An imagined mutuality of the world— images or juxtaposition of successive film shots as a cinemato-
which for Willerslev and Suhr concerns those dimensions of graphic technique. Taking “montage” as the key technique for
social life agreed to exist beyond vision—offers a framework cinematographic production, Suhr and Willerslev stress the dif-
for understanding the process whereby shared, intersubjective ference between the human eye and the camera “eye.” They
modes of perception, belief, and action emerge among groups. criticize the humanized camera “eye” in observational cinema
Shared reality is not therefore pregiven by virtue of being for being unable to disturb commonsense viewpoints of human
human but is formed through an active process of interaction perception. Suhr and Willerslev not only call into question what
between self and others—including the anthropologist, in- they label the “mimetic dogma,” but they also object to
formant, and audience—whereby difference is made visible traditions in social anthropology that criticize visual anthro-

pology or question its potential to present an insider’s per- human vision” or the “super-real quality” of the cinemato-
spective. In proposing a theoretical framework that can show graphic techniques of montage.
multidimensional visual descriptions of indigenous view- One tradition of filmmaking that best fits this theoretical
points to substitute written ethnographies through visual ac- framework can be found in Leni Riefenstahl’s work. In a
counts, Suhr and Willerslev attempt to solve the problem of similar vein as Suhr and Willerslev, she aims to render visible
mimesis in ethnographic filmmaking by proposing a positive concealed power relations through montage. The manipula-
answer to the question of the title. While arguing that the tion of the filmic material through montage, which Suhr and
difference between the human eye and the camera “eye” is Willerslev strongly advocate, is one of the most common
key for this breakthrough in representing the invisible, the features of Riefenstahl’s cinematographic account to make her
rather tempered answer they give finally negates the proposed visual imageries more tempting and persuasive. In Triumph
question: montage only constitutes the moment of rupture of the Will (1935)—her powerful cinematographic account of
in the perspectival vision, and therefore film cannot show, the 1934 Rally of the National Socialist Party in Nurnberg—
but can only reveal or elude to, “the invisible in its own right,” Riefenstahl visually depicts power relations in a way that is
notably through the work of montage. further enhanced through her montage techniques, such as
The opposition Suhr and Willerslev construct between the juxtaposing different perspectives from opposite angles.
“cinema of duration” (with its focus on vision, as represented Moreover, going beyond the naive dogma of mimetic rep-
by the observational cinema) and the “cinema of disruption” resentation and observational camera, the “excess of vision”
(with its use of montage, as exemplified by the cinema verité) in Riefenstahl’s montage technique also is used to simulate
is more than questionable. Although even the discontinuity an insider’s perspective—putting it through different angles
and disruption between the single picture frames go beyond of the camera to achieve a merely passive and receptive po-
the perception and thus remain invisible to the human eye, sition. When one considers this example, Suhr and Willerslev
the streaming of any film images in a sequential order creates do not seem to determine the various implications and pos-
the image of continuity and duration. The speeding up or sible consequences of their suggested attempt to use tech-
slowing down of film streaming can reveal further dimensions nological devices, such as manipulation of film material
of social reality and interaction otherwise inaccessible to the through montage, to elude the invisible and capture the in-
human eye. Stressing montage as the only device that inter- digenous perspective. In their attempt to argue how film can
rupts the duration in the visual gaze, Suhr and Willerslev show the invisible, they still adhere to the mimetic dogma:
primarily focus on the spatial dimension in the perspectivity the invisible is imitated through the invisible devices of mon-
of human vision, leading them to neglect the inherently tem- tage, which—other than the observational cinema—require
poral condition of human vision. In this respect, they fail to imagination rather than vision.
address various notions of sequence, tempo, and movement
in the visual field or to consider the processes of perception,
cognition, and imagination in the production and reception
of cinematographic devices.
Besides their bold epistemological claims and audacious Bill Nichols
rhetorical devices Suhr and Willerslev employ, some funda- Department of Cinema, San Francisco State University, 1600 Hol-
loway Avenue, San Francisco, California 94132, U.S.A.
mental theoretical problems underlying their argument re- (billnichols99@gmail.com). 20 XI 11
main unresolved. One of the main issues is the concept of
the invisible. Even though it is described as a quality related Suhr and Willerslev broach a crucial issue: How can ethno-
to everything that is inaccessible to the three-dimensionality graphic film contribute to understanding concepts and cat-
of human perception, the invisible becomes an object of study egories that escape the field of vision and the gaze of a camera?
in itself, despite that it is outlined as a condition of human Their discussion oscillates between two key qualities of the
perspective. The invisible is defined in terms of different phe- cinematic image: indexicality and realism. Indexicality refers
nomenological traditions with the radical otherness in the to the precision of the correspondence: a photographic image,
perspectivity of human perception à la Levinas or with the like a fingerprint and unlike a sketch or painting, bears an
inherent sociability of human vision à la Merleau-Ponty. Leav- exact resemblance to what it refers to (Nichols 2010). Realism,
ing aside the lack of attention to the obvious differences in unlike the various modernisms (expressionism, surrealism,
their theoretical assumptions, the arguments of Suhr and etc.) and postmodernism (with its stress on surface, citation,
Willerslev regarding the juxtaposition of perspectives as con- and repetition) minimizes its felt presence as a style to max-
structed by cinematographic techniques of montage are in no imize the felt presence of what it refers to. Traditional his-
way related to jargon-laden terms, such as the “view from torians often criticize historical films for factual errors: the
everywhere,” “excess of visibility,” or “multispatial and multi- film anchors itself in a historical moment with indexical but
temporal viewing experiences.” These terms remain concep- fictionalized links that are incorrect. History didn’t happen
tually vague, if not empty, when one considers the totalizing as the film purports it did. Traditional anthropologists often
implications of the language used to describe the “super- criticize ethnographic films for conceptual failures and sty-

listic excess: inadequate or incorrect concepts are grafted onto clearly identify, and rightly stress, is the way in which film, as
a filmed situation (usually with voice-over), or the film- a distinct language, opens onto a field of discursive encounter
maker’s style obscures the indexicality of the image beneath between filmmaker, subject, and viewer as rich, variable, and
an expressive shroud of the filmmaker’s design. The essay unstable as the act of being (human) allows.
urges us to behold what we have failed to see: the trace of
an encounter and the mystery of being (human).
This oscillation may be a bit of a handicap. It brings the
essay into the anthropological mainstream, with vital quali-
fications, but displaces it from what montage achieves in a Reply
broader sense. Rather than argue for showing the invisible, it
may be more productive to ask, as D. W. Griffith himself We are grateful to the commentators for critically addressing
asked, how films cause us to “see anew,” to “see” in the sense our text. It is a thrill to receive so much high-quality feedback
of comprehend or verstehen what may have been in our visual and to see the vigorous discussions that our argument has
field and yet gone unattached to a system of signification. caused, stretching from warnings of the danger that our ap-
Film, as semiologists have argued since the 1960s, is a language proach may substitute multiple local perspectives with a single
without a grammar. And as Christian Metz argued, it is prin- universal method (Empson) over accusations of an “anti-
cipally through editing, or montage, that it achieves its status humanism” reminiscent of the propaganda films of Leni Rie-
as a language, the centrality of long takes to ethnographic fenstahl (Kreinath) to arguments for even more radically free-
realism notwithstanding (Metz 1974). A language, of course, floating montage as a new distinctive voice of ethnographic
is not a transparent copy of reality, indexically or otherwise. filmmaking (Nichols). We take all of these commentaries as
A language allows us to speak about reality and in doing so being suggestive of the acute need to rethink the broader issues
to afford others the chance to see it anew. Montage, as the of visual anthropology and what montage may have to offer
golden gateway to discourse, is the means of doing so. anthropology in general. Since there is more food for thought
Of particular significance are two potential forms of seeing than we can possibly digest within the word limit, we focus
anew: the sensory experience of immersive involvement in on some of the recurrent questions. We apologize for not
what occurs in front of a camera, which indexicality and addressing them all.
realism can both amplify, and the representation of embodied Let us begin with a few clarifying remarks about what we
conduct that enacts values and beliefs, concepts, and cate- mean by the “invisible” and the potential of montage for
gories tacitly. We may name such concepts, in voice-over, as addressing it—something that remains unclear to Empson
in an essay, but more crucially we witness their unnamed and perhaps to others as well. In the article, we discuss the
manifestation, their embodiment in gesture, expression, so-called “view from everywhere” and the “otherness of the
movement, rhythm, and speech. Sweetgrass (2009), for ex- other” as examples of the invisible, which we broadly un-
ample, immerses us in the day-to-day world of sheepherders derstand as that which constitutes the background or premise
in the high mountain pastures of Montana. With no voice- of visibility, but which must hide itself in making things and
over, everyday conversation (and diatribes), and a soundtrack people visible. However, the invisible is, at least in principle,
of remarkable, intensified presence, the film is far more im- as Kreinath suggests, “everything that is inaccessible to the
mersive and experiential than informational or conceptual. It three-dimensionality of human perception” or, more pre-
contributes something else, something film language makes cisely, that which allows us to perceive the world three-
possible to a degree written language does not. dimensionally. Montage’s capacity to evoke the invisible is
Among the things that find embodiment is how the film- summarized by Irving in a perhaps clearer prose than our
maker conducts herself in the presence of an other. A film not own, when he writes: “Rather than a systematic understanding
only possesses an indexical trace of what occurred in front of of the invisible (which would simply translate the unknown
the camera, and sound recorder, but also an indexical trace of into the Same) . . . montage offers a practical approach in
how the filmmaker undertook to encounter others. It is the which social life is denaturalized [by recasting it] through
trace of an encounter. Film language makes manifest aspects unfamiliar eyes.” Still, we insist on a notion of the invisible
of its speaker as well as its referent, and in particular it allows as not simply the unseen (Irving), but as that which cannot
us to “see,” in both a conceptual and experiential sense, what be seen. The “defamiliarization” of montage, therefore, cannot
qualities this manifestation displays. This places us at some show, but only evoke the invisible through the orchestration
remove from the “should” vocabulary they attribute to Henley of different perspectives, encroaching upon one another.
(2004), which serves to establish limits and enforce compliance Montage can break the visual “skin” of the world, so to speak,
with a (anthropological) doxa. We enter a place of encounter but it can never show the invisible in itself.
that they refer to as an “unstable zone of continuous becoming.” This stance does not imply a confused use of the terms
This is a far cry from adherence to indexical facts or to modest “vision” and “understanding” or “perception” and “concep-
interruptions of a realist style by montage. It is to claim a tion” as suggested by Empson and Holbraad, but rather the
distinctive voice for ethnographic film. The quality they so collapse of such dichotomies. As Nichols puts it, “film language

makes manifest aspects of its speaker as well as its referent, and graphic truth speaks itself, thus placing the viewer in the kind
in particular it allows us to ‘see’ in both a conceptual and of servility that the Nazi ideology advocated for the German
experiential sense, what qualities this manifestation displays.” people before the Führer. To Kreinath, our proposed alter-
Empson suggests the Deleuzian term the “virtual” as another native to the imperious subject-centered ontology of obser-
way of talking about the invisible. Just as the distinction between vational cinema implies nothing but such a slavish self-
the “actual” and the “virtual” in Deleuze’s work does not cor- abnegation with respect to the viewer. However, the work of
respond to a simple dichotomy between what is perceived as montage in films such as The Ax Fight, Gandhi’s Children,
opposed to what is conceptualized, the invisible in our outline and Les Maı̂tres Fous on which we have built our argument
contains both perception and conception within. The “view serves to obstruct any such attempt of confining to a single
from everywhere” is neither perceivable nor entirely conceivable totalizing visual order. Through montage, they avoid the fe-
from any human position, yet it is nonetheless “present by a tishization or rendering into an idol any particular perspective
certain absence” (Merleau-Ponty 2000:187) in any actual per- as a substitute for the invisible. Instead, the viewer is left
spective. While it may be outlined as a theory, its true fullness essentially estranged with little hope for fulfillment or relief.
remains unthinkable: beyond conceptualization. As such, the By all means, this use of montage shares little with the to-
invisible remains nothing but a “virtual phantasy” (Caputo talizing visual order pursued by Riefenstahl and Nazi ideology
1997:162), a synonym for the “impossible” (Derrida 1991:7). more generally.
By means of montage, we may address this very figure of the In Nichols’s comment, an argument is made to more rad-
impossible, but only by shattering any attempt at reducing it ically liberate the language of ethnographic film from index-
to set forms of visibility. icality and realism, so as to give it a distinctive voice of its
It can be feared that on the other side of such a shattering own. The indexical links between film and reality is of key
through montage, a new constellation of order may be as- importance as we see it. Indeed, indexicality is the primary
sembled and “naturalized”—and against this both Kreinath material and source of tension in montage. Montage, in the
and Empson warn. Their alert is further fueled by our es- film examples we have discussed, consists in the bringing into
sentially “antihumanist” take on vision and cinema. Kreinath play perspectives from profilmic reality with those of film-
even identifies an aspiration toward Nazism, when he writes makers and viewers. It is by means of the incongruencies and
that the “tradition of filmmaking that best fits [our] theo- dissonances between multiple perspectives that the invisible
retical framework can be found in Leni Riefenstahl’s work.” ground of the seen is allowed presence. In this sense, our
To obviate any misunderstandings, let us clarify that our anti- approach to montage can be located halfway between Emp-
humanism simply implies that we reject the myth held by son’s argument for keeping to local modes of displacing the
observational cinema that vision begins and ends in the ex- visible and Nichols’s argument for a distinctive ethnographic
perience of the human subject along with its supposition that, film language, less encumbered by indexicality.
thanks to our shared humanity, we may get to others’ modes Finally, we wish to address Holbraad’s comparison of our
of seeing simply by making film technology mimic embodied montage model with Levi-Strauss’s “bricoleur.” It holds true
modes of being-in-the-world. This humanist ideology has re- that bricolage, like montage, refers to the construction or cre-
sulted in an aesthetics that favors handheld, sync-sound cam- ation of a work from a diverse range of things at hand. Holbraad
era and which seeks to minimize artificially imposed montage calls attention to the parallels between “Lévi-Strauss’s concern
so that—in the words of Nichols—“the indexicality of the with rehabilitating savage thought from habitual charges of
image [is not obscured] beneath an expressive shroud of the irrationality, and [our] desire to see film as a medium for
filmmaker’s design.” sophisticated anthropological thinking.” A comparison of cin-
Contrary to this, we hold that the ways in which others ematic montage with the mechanisms of myth and ritual is
perceive the world are ultimately inaccessible to us, and this certainly a pertinent project. We are skeptical, however, about
very fissure is itself a condition for our engagement with the degree to which the model of ritual and myth suggested
otherness. As Irving eloquently summarizes it: “Shared reality by Levi-Strauss adequately describes the work of montage we
is not . . . pregiven by virtue of being human but is formed have outlined here. In Levi-Strauss’s effort to rescue savage
through an active process of interaction between self and thought from charges of irrationality, he may have emphasized
others—including the anthropologist, informant, and audi- rationality too much. It seems to us that both the bricoleur
ence—whereby difference is made visible and negotiated. As and the engineer in Levi-Strauss’s model seek to integrate and
such, strangeness, diversity, and otherness are not the opposite consume the object within a totalizing order (the myth or the
of mutuality but the conditions that bring it into being.” project). The work of montage that we suggest here aims at
To acknowledge the antihumanist premise of vision is, we the opposite: that is, to reinstall the invisible where it has been
believe, a valuable advance, but it is true as suggested by eradicated so as to make the object impossible to consume for
Kreinath that it makes for difficulties with regard to the role our gaze. Unlike the bricoleur’s “logic of the concrete,” the
of human subjects and their intentions. In Riefenstahl’s films, montage filmmaker may strive toward a plane of abstract for-
the subject is reduced to “a merely passive and receptive po- malization with the targeted aim of transcending the domain
sition” (Kreinath), a place or medium where the cinemato- of the visible and our commonsense perceptions of what is

known and possible. This function of film may find interesting Thinking through things: theorising artefacts ethnographically. Pp. 1–31. Lon-
don: Routledge.
parallels in the disruptive mechanisms of various rituals, which Henley, Paul. 2004. Putting film to work: observational cinema as practical
hardly can be addressed through the concept of bricolage. In ethnography. In Working images: visual research and representation in eth-
a forthcoming volume on montage in anthropology, Bruce nography. Sarah Pink, László Kürti, and Ana Isabel Afonso, eds. Pp. 109–
130. London: Routledge.
Kapferer (forthcoming) shows how a Sinhala Buddhist anti- ———. 2006. Spirit possession, power, and the absent presence of Islam: re-
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Holbraad, Martin. 2007. The power of powder: multiplicity and motion in
lowing renewed access into the realm of the virtual. Kapferer the divinatory cosmology of Cuban Ifá (or mana, again). In Thinking
concludes that ritual, in important ways, anticipates modern through things: theorising artefacts ethnographically. Amiria Henare, Martin
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Holbraad, Martin, and Rane Willerslev. 2007. Transcendental perspectivism:
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The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking

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