Paper short abstract:

How is disclosure dependent on the withholding of information? In what ways are absences bound up with the production of authority and expertise? How can overt incompleteness in accounts ensure definitiveness? This presentation addresses these questions through an examination of the movements between the seen and the hidden in attempts scientifically ground expertise. In doing so, this presentation seeks to identify novel types of intervention for ethnographic research and innovative writing formats for devising present absences.

Paper long abstract:

How is disclosure dependent on the withholding of information? In what ways are absences bound up with the production of authority and expertise? How can overt incompleteness in accounts ensure definitiveness? This presentation addresses these questions through an examination of the movements between the seen and the hidden in attempts scientifically ground expertise. This will involve addressing how professionals, commentators, and social researchers labour to render absences present as well as how this is bound up the production of relations of ignorance. Empirical cases for examination will include recounting transcendental experience, validating the worth of art, as well as anonymizing and de-placing in social inquiry. In doing so, this presentation seeks to identify novel types of intervention for ethnographic research and innovative writing formats for devising present absences.