Paper short abstract:

In this paper, three anthropologists grapple ethnographically with the notion of ontological ambiguity through a methodological shift towards ‘idiocy', characterized by naivety and reflexive deceleration, inspired by Isabelle Stengers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a conversation between three anthropologists grappling with the notion of ontological ambiguity through a methodological shift towards 'idiocy'. Following Isabelle Stengers's conceptual character of 'the idiot', summoned in her Cosmopolitical Proposal, this paper suggests that the anthropologist's challenge in the face of asserted unity and certainty is to slow things down and resist the "consensual ways in which the situation is presented" (Stengers 2005: 994), in order to account for ethnographic ambiguity and transgression. Whereas the trickster is the shape-shifting ontological negotiator, always one step ahead, the idiot makes a virtue of naivety, and is always one step behind. To follow this 'idiotic method' one must allow the ethnography to slow the anthropologist's analytical thinking and one also needs to 'stumble' into others' work, so that the ontological uncertainty of one field may 'slow down' the theorisation in others. We exemplify this ethnographically by showing how the figure of the emigrant in rural Morocco, the encantado in Amazonia and the Global Climate Model in the Brazilian Space Institute, may be brought "in the presence of" (ibid: 997) each other and result in a radical reflexive deceleration, permitting us to catch our breath analytically. The paper suggests that allowing ethnographies to 'spill over', or 'trip each other up', in this way, does not only constitute 'comparison' but also a methodological tool for testing the limits of our analyses.