Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores three marginal(ized) researchers—Alexandra David-Neel, Curt Nimendajú Unckel, and Frank Hamilton Cushing—who existentially surrendered to their fields of study. Their taboo-breaking “surrender” are inextricably linked with forms of collaboration with those under study and political intervention against colonial injustices. This practice, though romanticized, reveals how early ethnography - as a colonial project - generated from the beginning (decolonial) counter-movements, producing re- and unwriting practices.

Paper Abstract:

In this paper I want to draw close to three rather marginal(ized) researchers in the field of religiosities/religions during the late 19th and early/mid 20th century: Alexandra David Neel (French Buddhist, explorer and anarchist), Curt Nimendajú Unckel (German-Brazilian ethnologist) Frank Hamilton Cushing (US-American anthropologist). They all share the experience of having been, in a sense, overwhelmed by the field they were studying—surrendering to it in an existential manner. This taboo-breaking act of “surrender” (German: Hingabe, Wolff 1987) – a specific form of going native – became an integral part of their ethnographic practice of knowledge production. This undoubtedly reflects a romantic yearning for the Other, which demands critical scrutiny. Their endeavor, however, was underpinned by the notion of intense collaboration with those studied, and engaging in collective political intervention against injustices and colonial power structures—dimensions that today are recognized as essential to academic ethical practice and are reinforced by the proclaimed idea of unwriting. How exactly did the research of these three protagonists take shape? To what extent was the act of surrendering to the field socially situated, while deeply shaped by individual biographies? What untold stories were narrated and thus brought to light through this process? By exploring these questions, I aim to show how early ethnography’s colonial project simultaneously generated a counter-movement, producing practices of re- and unwriting. These practices are reflected in surrendering to the field, a constitutive (yet often denied) part of the discipline and the study of religions.