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Embodied Knowledge
explore the contents, preconditions, and ethnographic relevance of
the “ecstatic side of fieldwork” —including, but not exclusively, expe-
riences of personally and socially significant visions or dreams in the
context of fieldwork. From this vantage point, “ecstasis, like empa-
thy, communication, and dialogue, as well as age, gender, social class,
and relations of power, belongs to concepts that impose themselves
when we reflect critically about what makes us succeed or fail in our
efforts to produce knowledge about Others” as we interact with them
in their worlds (Fabian 2000 , 280 ).
While fieldwork remains the hallmark of anthropology as a disci-
pline, contemporary anthropologists no longer subscribe to the eigh-
teenth-century European assumption that “traveling in space also
meant traveling in time,” the Others encountered being “earlier ver-
sions of themselves” (Fox 1995 , 16 ). Following the pioneering work
of Said ( 1978 ), Wolf ( 1982 ), and Fabian ( 1983 ), it is now generally
accepted that others should be seen not “as ontologically given but
as historically constituted” (Said 1989 , 225 ). “The representation of
others and of ourselves is always, and necessarily so, a derivative of
social positions and interpretive assumptions, those of the anthropol-
ogist and /or of the other” (Goulet 1998 , 251 ). Experiential ethnogra-
phers accept this. They reflect upon the processes whereby they enter
the field, associate with others who become their hosts and mentors
in their world, and endeavor as best as they can to become “one with
them, but not one of them” (Obeyesekere 1990 , 11 ).
As experiential ethnographers, we know that once engaged with
our hosts in their lifeworld, we could not simply exit the field at a
convenient time and declare the experience over and done with.^3 In-
stead, we found out that the field was co-extensive with our homes,
our minds, and our dreams, and involved even the bodies of our own
family members and friends who were themselves sometimes affected
and transformed by our ethnographic practice. To our surprise, we
realized that they too could end up being directly engaged in our ex-
traordinary experiences. For many researchers, fieldwork involved a
sort of non-linear, non-Newtonian, quantum physical world in which
related, connected events unfolded simultaneously in various loca-
tions. Various examples are provided in the subsequent chapters. While
