Witnessing the Unseen

Extinction, Spirits, and Anthropological Responsibility

Bibliographic Data

ID4804202
AuthorsL Chua (0000-0001-7518-8181, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume39
Issue1
Pages111-129
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-7674 • E-ISSN: 2047-7716
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/cja.2021.390108
OpenAlexW3137601696
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited50

This article draws on two research projects - one on orangutan conservation, and the other on religious change among indigenous Bidayuh communities - to reflect on the relations, technologies and processes involved in producing witnesses and witness-able truths. I compare two forms of witnessing: visualizations of environmental crisis and orangutan extinction, and modes of encountering invisible entities among Bidayuhs. Both involve the challenge of making the unseen visible or apprehensible and thus addressable. But whereas the first entails a crisis-laden visual imaginary that turns witnessing into a form of human stewardship over the environment, the second involves a more relational encounter involving mutual adjustment and responsivity to obligations and commitments. I suggest that this latter mode of witnessing invites us to reimagine both the crisis logic of environmental visualizations and ideals and practices of anthropological witnessing

Aesthetics · Environmental crisis · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Indigenous · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Stewardship (theology · The Imaginary · Witness · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Ecology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access