Jean-Guy A. Goulet and Bruce Granville Millersome of these examples evoke a road-trip, travelogue sensibility, they
are not one-way trips in space and time. They do share something
with the literary genre created by Kerouac and Kesey in which travel
through space into unexpected cognitive domains supplements other
modes of knowing.
In this book, as in Fabian’s work, “the current meaning of ecstasy
as nonrational, erratic, escapist, enthusiastic behavior (such as that
described in, say studies of cult and movements)” is rejected (Fabian
2000 , 8 ). Ecstasis is not one among many other possible research
methods, “something to pursue in the practice of ethnography—get-
ting drunk or high, losing one’s mind from fatigue, pain and fever-
induced delirium, or working oneself into a frenzy” (Fabian 2000 ,
181 ). In other words, ecstasy is not “a kind of behavior” one engages
in, but a “quality of human action and interaction—one that creates
a common ground for the encounter” with the Other, in his home-
land (Fabian 2000 , 8 ). The ecstatic side of fieldwork is understood
here at this potential to step outside one’s taken-for-granted body of
knowledge (academic and worldly) and truly enter the realm of the
Other’s lifeworld. Stated differently, and most importantly, “Ecsta-
sis, in a nontrivial understanding of the term, is (much like subjectiv-
ity) a prerequisite for, rather than an impediment to, the production
of ethnographic knowledge” (Fabian 2000 , 8 ). Ecstasis is the condi-
tion that enables us to embark on an ethnographic journey that takes
us into uncharted territories.
In essence, this is what all contributors to this book endeavored
to do. If we argue against a positivist view of anthropology, we hold
strongly to a disciplined effort to produce valid and valuable ethno-
graphic knowledge. If we recognize the necessity of being out of our
minds part of the time while in the field or in our usual home and ac-
ademic environments, we also insist on being in control of our aims
and of standard ethnographic skills such as learning local conven-
tions and abiding by them when communicating and learning with
our hosts. Ecstasis as a pre-condition of ethnographic knowledge is
evident throughout this book, not only when we report how we ex-
perienced lack of control and were unable to follow well-articulated
research agendas.