Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography with Catholic spiritual seekers, there is a discussion about the possibilities of building knowledge under the modality of radical participation, as well as methodological and ontological reflections that arise in the dialogue with God.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on an ethnography of spiritual seekers and methodological reflections based on the debates that have arisen since the so-called ontological turn, I ended up developing ethnography in a context of Ignatian spirituality. Through the research I intend to critically examine two of the essential proposals that accompany ontological ethnographies or ontographies: on the one hand, the premise of "taking the Other seriously", and on the other, the proposal of inversion by which ethnography controls theory, and not the opposite.

Although these are old concerns, the idea is to continue the approaches of Holbraad and Pedersen by which they suggest a radicalization of these issues. Starting from anthropological symmetrization, in addition to a radical dialogue and radical participation, and an approach in which the body is conceived as a vector of knowledge and methodological device.

In these contexts of spirituality there are exceptional forms of perceptive and sensory alterity that allow us to approach epistemologically challenging objects, which, in relation to ethnographic work, allow us to rethink the agencies and relationships that take place during the research. More specifically, I refer to the proposals that take as methodologically real intangible entities, within an ontological pluralism that elevates ethnographic material to a place from which to radicalize anthropological activity.

The difficulties are multiple, beginning with the disposition to avoid ontological assumptions, to achieve a suspension of (dis)belief, or to give space to suprasensitive beings, etc., which, although not yet resolved, allow to suggest new forms of doing ethnography.

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