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Paper short abstract

Based on the deconstruction of the term “Pigmy” and the intersectional strategies employed, the related ethnofiction practice highlights the power relations that unite the participants of the multi-sited fieldwork in the Republic of the Congo and interprets the resulting co-construction of meanings.

Paper long abstract

This paper is the result of a multi-sited ethnographic visual research carried out in the Republic of the Congo on the daily life of the BaBongo “Pygmy” communities in Point-Noire and in the departments of Lékoumou and Bouenza.

The production of the resulting docu-film, "Bongo Miscellany", highlighted the different levels of participation and proxemic distance between the visual ethnographer and the subjects involved in the fieldwork, highlighting the complexity of constructing a shared narrative within a neo-colonial framework.

In this regard, the adoption of an intersectional approach allowed for the denaturalisation of one's own and the participants' positioning within the corresponding network of power relations. Furthermore, it allowed for the interpretation of the claims of the partecipants involved (NGOs, local communities, collaborators, the ethnographer) within the ethnographic knowledge construction process, establishing correspondences between individual and collective trajectories and the broader transnational framework. Finally, it has shown how adherence to identity categories (Pygmy, Bantu, European, Congolese, Social Worker, Muntu, Mundele, Kento) determined beliefs and behaviours and thus influenced the shared construction of knowledge.

The intersectional strategy thus made it possible to represent the singularities of the partecipants involved, catalysing their expectations in a process of co-construction of the filmic narrative that gradually dissolved participant observation into ethnofiction praxis.

Despite the difficulties, this experiment has confirmed the possibility of creating theoretical tools functional for the construction of shared meanings. These tools are compatible with an academic practice capable of creating unexpected alliances and mutual trust.