Paper Short Abstract:

Foundational in multimodal anthropology, collaboration is both methodological and ethical. Examining HIV sense-making in Chile, this work reimagines collaboration as a fluid, risk-embracing process, shedding light on nuanced methodological implications for unstable paradigms

Paper Abstract:

Understanding collaboration not only as a methodological but also as an ethical and political stance is fundamental in multimodal anthropology and broader transdisciplinary research. Collaboration's foundational role becomes especially crucial when engaging with decolonial, feminist, and queer paradigms, providing diverse and enriched perspectives that act as catalysts for unconventional interventions disrupting knowledge monopolies. However, when researchers and collaborators come into close proximity, they confront experiences that exceed and challenge utopian fieldsite descriptions.

Drawing on two projects of collaborative HIV sense-making research in Chile within the context of multimodal anthropology, this contribution navigates challenges in ethnographic encounters within sites of suffering and biographical disruption. The objective is to reimagine multimodal anthropology collaboration as a fluid, relational process grounded in sympoietic practices (Haraway, 2016), challenging fixed perspectives. The analysis emphasizes intricate relationships within zones of friction and transformation, with particular attention to what "apparently didn't work" within a relational continuum.

Moving away from idealized collaboration, this contribution envisions an 'ethnographic 'we'' detached from fixed structures, portraying collaboration as a dynamic entanglement permeated by risk and uncertainty. Vulnerable moments, termed 'failure' (Halberstam, 2011), become crucial sites for ethnographic evolution within the realm of multimodal anthropology.

This transformative perspective on collaboration unfolds as a continuous journey of becoming, embracing risk, uncertainty, and acknowledging vulnerability in the multimodal ethnographic process. The approach sheds light on nuanced and unstable methodological implications, fostering a more inclusive and adaptive research paradigm in multimodal anthropology.