Deliberate Perspectival Obstructions: Looking at Nothing in Papua New Guinea

Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen; Anders Emil Rasmussen

doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1107606

Deliberate Perspectival Obstructions: Looking at Nothing in Papua New Guinea

Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen, Anders Emil Rasmussen

Abstract

This article discusses the collaborative use of what the authors call ‘perspectival obstructions’. Taking its outset in the events revolving around a series of challenges given to each other, as well as to their interlocutors, in Papua New Guinea, the article unfolds how obstructions may be tied to a radical shift in perspective that allows partly for the invisible and absent to emerge as visible and present, and for different potentialities of persons and social relations to be brought to light. Hence the article demonstrates how obstruction and intervention as parts of the ethnographic methodology may help elicit perspectives that are otherwise kept hidden (deliberately or not), such as power-relations or the occluded side of a friendship or a kinship relation. This, in turn, also poses a danger to the otherwise collaborative ideal of modern ethnographic fieldwork in literally challenging and affecting ‘the natives' point of view’.

Original language	English
Journal	Ethnos
Volume	82
Issue number	5
Pages (from-to)	867-885
Number of pages	19
ISSN	0014-1844
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1107606
Publication status	Published - 20 Oct 2017

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10.1080/00141844.2015.1107606

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title = "Deliberate Perspectival Obstructions: Looking at Nothing in Papua New Guinea",

abstract = "This article discusses the collaborative use of what the authors call {\textquoteleft}perspectival obstructions{\textquoteright}. Taking its outset in the events revolving around a series of challenges given to each other, as well as to their interlocutors, in Papua New Guinea, the article unfolds how obstructions may be tied to a radical shift in perspective that allows partly for the invisible and absent to emerge as visible and present, and for different potentialities of persons and social relations to be brought to light. Hence the article demonstrates how obstruction and intervention as parts of the ethnographic methodology may help elicit perspectives that are otherwise kept hidden (deliberately or not), such as power-relations or the occluded side of a friendship or a kinship relation. This, in turn, also poses a danger to the otherwise collaborative ideal of modern ethnographic fieldwork in literally challenging and affecting {\textquoteleft}the natives' point of view{\textquoteright}.",

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Deliberate Perspectival Obstructions: Looking at Nothing in Papua New Guinea

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