Paper short abstract:

A sensory anthropology could allow us to rethink approaches to the female ethnographic subject, aligning point-of-view and optics with a deliberate porosity and diversity in feminist reflexive filmmaking. We can take a lead from new studies of female experimental artist filmmakers which evidence an aesthetics of affect and visual hapticity.

Paper long abstract:

Seeking a vivid 'synthesis of Vertov's cine-eye and Flaherty's participating camera', Rouch compares camerawork with 'the improvisation of the bullfighter in front of the bull' (The Camera and Man, 1973). Capturing and framing the image whilst habituating the subject assume the ubiquitous apparatus of the camera, yet we can rethink point-of-view and the optics of focus and light, aligning them with a deliberate porosity and diversity in feminist reflexive filmmaking. Luce Irigaray, arguing with Nietzsche on the nature of water (1991), suggests it is feminine because it encompasses equal multiple points-of-view; 'she undoes all perspective'. The sensory turn in anthropology (eg: Pink, 2009) allows a reclaimed historiography of womens' approaches to the ethnographic subject. In particular, we can review uses of an aesthetics of affect and visual hapticity (Marks, 2000), in womens' film work and indigenous media collaboration (Deger, 2006); perhaps taking a lead from claims in new studies of female experimental artist filmmakers (Best, 2011; Levitin et al, 2003; Minh-Ha, 1989, 2011; Petrolle and Wexman, 2005). Does a sensory approach recast notions of documentary reflexivity, visual and aural engagement and female subjectivity (Lebow, 2011; Ellis, 2012)? This paper is influenced by ethnographic work with cinematographers and my interviews with female professionals, and by my own practice as a filmmaker using cinematography as ethnography in approaches to material culture, time, place, memory and female point-of-view. I will show clips, where women are the subject, which seem to amplify a "female eye" (Minh-Ha, Longinotto, Greenhalgh).