Anthropology, Art and

Perception 2How does a phenomenological approach to

visual representations challenge

anthropological knowledge of ethnographic

filmmaking?

University of St. Andrews

School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Department of Social Anthropology

Student : Eduard Claudiu Vasile

Word Count: 3829

The classic anthropological use of text has been challenged in the

past three decades by anthropologists who felt a need for

innovation and because the visual and digital is being embedded in

our lives in the Western context. This new direction in

anthropology brings a few concerns and raises a few questions. One

of the problems here is how can one adopt a sustainable and

appropriate way of doing visual anthropology? By the same token,

one feels the need to debate if anthropology as a science can

undertake an artistic approach and represent one’s understanding

of a cultural phenomenon or experience of it by the use of film or

photography. If the visual mediums could be used in anthropology,

what is the appropriate way and method to construct them?

The following paper challenges visual anthropology to adopt a

phenomenological approach to visual representations and looks for

an alternative to observational cinema. The essay begins by

looking at a short history of visual anthropology, followed by a

discussion of the problem of representation, and a proposition for

intersubjective cinema as a possible way of doing ethnographic

films. The composition is then succeeded by the means of

intersubjective cinema, proposing a theoretical background which

adopts phenomenology as ontology and intersubjectivity as

epistemology. The essay ends with a discussion of Husserl’s theory

of artistic representation and a possible application of it to the

process of doing ethnographic films in the Janis religion and

their experience of the body and soul.

Along the history of anthropology, researchers have used visual

elements for their investigations for different purposes. In the

beginning they were used as a medium of authenticity of the

research, showing the researcher present in the field. This can be

seen in the Torres Strait exhibition and Malinowski’s (1922) work.

Starting from the 20th century, anthropologists such as Flaherty,

followed up by Bateson and Mead used film as part of their

research as an objective recording of reality In the past ten

years, ethnographic filmmaking took an experimental direction. The

focus of this new path is put on aesthetics, senses, and

phenomenological anthropology. As examples, one can look at the

films of Barbash Castaing-Taylor (2009, 2012) and McDougall

(2007). However, this brings up a long debate in visual

anthropology regarding the intrinsic value and purpose of this

kind of new films, moreover, their direction towards arts

(Grimshaw 2011, Schneider 2008, Schneider and Wright 2006, 2010)

in comparison with the anthropological promise of scientific

research (Weinberg 1994). As a contra argument Castaing-Taylor and

Barbash in Schneider and Wright (2006, 2010) suggest that is not

the case of anthropology becoming art, but a possibility for both

to work together in close terms with aesthetics, while maintaining

the scientific value of the research.

The debates in visual anthropology do not stop here; the idea of

representations per se is put under sage by modern thinkers.

Clifford (1988) elaborates the problem of representation in his

book, The Predicament of Culture. Clifford questions in his

research ethnography’s right to pretend a true representation of a

specific culture. In the meantime, he asks to what extent is this

reconstruction of the “other” legitimate? The predicament in his

view is contextualized on historical cultural artifacts and their

possibility of shaping meaning, seeking the authenticity of

culture, people and products (Clifford 1988, p5). Adding to this,

questions of the sustainability of the term culture outside the

Western context are being asked. Said (1979) in Orientalism, takes

a metaphysical approach, arguing that representations are not

possible to elude, even if truths are delivered. If the problem

of representing culture at the textual level can be problematic,

the visual representation of the phenomena as an anthropologist

can raise more concerns. A possible way of avoiding this problem

can be a turn to experience, a representation not of culture but

of the experience of a phenomena. However, a distinction between

presentation and re-presentation has to be done in order to

position theoretically the researcher towards understanding how a

phenomenon is translated at the conscious level for him/her to

reconstruct it.

Brentano (1995, p 59) positions the information received by our

consciousness in two categories: mental/psychic phenomena and

physical phenomena. The first being a presentation (the act of

presentation) of what we acquire by the sensory and imaginary

perceptions, plus emotions. The non-presentations (a precursor of

representations) are being resumed to the objects of our senses;

as an example one can look at sound waves, colours saw by the eye,

scents which one senses, and also the “images that appear in our

imagination” (ibidem). Husserl on the other lane applies the term

representation for memory, expectation, phantasy and image

consciousness. Affirming that for presentations, the “content

functions as representative for the object". Hence, a filmmaker

has to look at presentations in order to understand how these are

represented in ones’ memory and how one can imagine and

discuss/represent them to others. The act of presentation is only

for the person, representation being what is made sense of the

presented act for the self or for the others. As an example,

looking at Vogel’s nets (Gell 1996) one’s consciousness is

presented with a sensory image of the net. The way one remembers

the net, the discursive reconstruction, and the manual/visual

reenactment of it can be seen as re-presentation in Husserl’s

terms.

So far I passed through a short history of ethnographic filmmaking

and the issues related to it regarding aesthetics, art and the

problem of presentation discussed by Clifford. It is now the time

to look (into) how phenomenology can be a foundation for visual

representations. In order to answer the question how can one

develop a sustainable theoretical approach to anthropological

filmmaking by the use of phenomenology?

In a recent article, Paul Hockings (2014) addressed the issue of

theory in the realm of visual anthropology, questioning if there

is a “theoretical underpinning for visual anthropology” (Hockings

2014. p 436). In his paper, he is interested in the role of theory

in the formation of anthropological knowledge, concerning theories

of meaning. In his conclusion, he suggests that “theory cannot be

applied directly to an explanation of visual cultural phenomena”

(ibis, p 440), directing the reader to look into theory as a tool of

describing an event. His inquiry into the academic/theoretical

structures of visual anthropology made me ask the following

question: how can one develop a sustainable theoretical background

for the process of ethnographic filmmaking to be used part

methodology, part theory of meaning? This question looks into

theory as a possibility to inform the actual process of filming

and the practice of doing fieldwork, binding a foundation for the

two elements. Morphy and Banks (1997, p3) advise the

anthropologists to look at methodology not as theoretically

neutral but as inscribed in the aims of the research. Malinowski

(1992, p9) addresses the same understanding, directing the

researchers to adapt his theory to his investigation. If this is

the case, then visual anthropology, more precisely the process of

ethnographic filmmaking, has to be inspired from the field. I

speak here for the methodology used as well as the actual

technique of filming, asking myself why visual anthropologists

(i.e. Mead, Bateson, Flaherty and Marshall) decided to use

observational filmmaking as a predominant technique in their

films? One of the answers can come from the view on observational

cinema as pure direct cinema, objective and distant, with no use

of artificial light, tripods, scenario and voice-overs. Even if

this sounds scientific, the process of filmmaking is never

objective (Carta 2014). If the anthropologist forms his/her

knowledge in intersubjective (Torren 2009) relations with the

researched group and environment, how can then ethnographic

filmmaking use objective cinema as technique of representation?

Here I propose, as an alternative to observational filmmaking,

intersubjectivity cinema. This approach invites the anthropologist

to develop his methodology from the field, taking

intersubjectivity as epistemology, and phenomenology as ontology

for the process of ethnographic filmmaking as well as a base for

the methodology of doing fieldwork. In this way, theory and

methodology are linked together, providing a more sustainable and

cursive inquiry in the process of gaining anthropological

knowledge. This theoretical inquest comes in strong relations with

Ingold’s (1996, p 3) view: “anthropological theory consists, in

the first place, not in an inventory of ready-made structures or

representation, to be picked up and used as it suits our

analytical purposes, but in an ongoing process of argumentation.

In this sense theory is an activity, something we do”. By offering

a direction to look at the nature and knowledge of being and

existence (ontology and epistemology) always located in the field

(intersubectivity) and by encouraging the anthropologist to adopt

(phenomenology) his methodology from the field, the researcher has

a clear view of what is to be human. Therefore, intersubjective

cinema offers a practical exploration to the problem of subjective

experience and of the unified model of human being proposed by

Torren (2012).

In the next part of this paper, I am discussing the importance of

the two ontological and epistemological positions for visual

representations, with an emphasis on phenomenology. The dialogue

follows the work of Husserl on phenomenology and his theory of

artistic representation. More precisely, the argument is

constructed around ethnographic filmmaking and the aesthetics

implied in the process of visual reconstruction.

If one discusses film, he/she must position against Bazin’s

realism, understanding the world towards the perception of each

individual in intersubjectivity. In this way, the supposition of

an abstract real world independent of the knowing mind is not

useful to look at as each of us has a perception of it and

anthropology is concerned with the social relations informed by

our perceptions of reality. In this way, film “depicts a language,

ideological beliefs, aesthetic sensibilities and unconscious

processes” (Casebier 1991, p 2). The account of film theory for

the universal and particular understanding of reality, and after

Goodman’s nominalist theory (Shottenkirk 2009), a sensibility for

particulars, has its answers in the position taken in ontology. As

described by Aristotle in Metaphysics as a critique of Plato’s

forms, ontology can undertake two positions: either a sensibility

for particulars, or for both universals and particulars. Even if

Aristotle’s view was inclined for the second position, this paper

takes into account the nature of being and existence under the

particular, as supported by Goodman (1968). Coming back to

perception, it is worth mentioning that visual anthropology is an

investigation of modes of representation for the perception of the

real. Gledihill (1984) asks where can this “real” be found and how

can one have knowledge of it? In order to obtain an answer to this

question, lived experience and phenomena have to be investigated

without deferring the independent existence of the object to the

subject. Here the use of phenomenology, coined by Husserl, offers

the theoretical background for such investigation: “looking at the

same time at both subject and object in the cognitive act while

maintaining the object of the act as existing independently”

(Casebier 1991, p 4). In this way, the ontology of the mode of

representation of the real has to be rooted in phenomenology.

Moreover, Husserl points out that intentionality is the core

property of consciousness (Dreyfus 1982), always speaking of a

consciousness of something. Therefore, all conscious acts have an

intention. This piece of information is important because the

process of perception of the “real” is intended, and in order to

comprehend and represent it in a film, one has to understand how

this conscious intentional act if informed. Keeping the intention

of the perceiver in mind, the anthropologist can reconfigure the

perceived act, being aware of the cause and effect of the action.

As an example, filming a ritual without understanding what it

means, what is the intention of the moves/acts and what effects is

supposed to have on the cause is not a study of the

object/subject, giving no information whatsoever of the act. It is

just a recording of shapes and moves.

Before moving into clear examples of the use of phenomenology in

ethnographic filmmaking, I feel a need to explain what Husserl

underpins in his theory of artistic representation. He exemplifies

his theory by using Durer’s engraving – “Knight, Death and the

Devil”.

Husserl is interested in the “capacity of the perceivers to

transcend their perceptual act in recognizing what an art object

such as Durer’s engraving depicts”(Casebier 1991, p 9). In this

sense, the flesh and bones knight, who exists autonomously to the

perceiver’s mind. The knight is the object, which is re-presented,

and he is discoverable through intersubjective relations to the

perceivers. As another example, in the ethnographic movie

Leviathan (2012), the perceivers understand that the movie is a

representation of people fishing on a boat in the ocean. The boat

in the ocean and the people who are fishing are real and exist

without an audience to perceive them. What is important is the

experience the audience has when it perceives the film. In this

way, Husserl is looking at representations in terms of experience

of the art object and not to the link between objects in the world

and art. He does this by looking at the art objects in the

“technical terms of noema, noesis, hyletic, apperception and

horizon” (ibidem). Some of his terms are coming from ancient Greek

because the philosopher could not find in his language terms that

did not have any prejudices attached to when used to discuss

perception.

Noema stands for “the product or the medium of thinking; concepts,

notions or appearances” (ibis 12). Noemata can be the small gray

figures seen in Durer’s engraving. In Leviathan, noemata is the

appearances of how the fishermen, the non-actors look like (their

cloths, the light on their faces) when they are sorting out the

fish. In strong relations to noema, noesis is the “mental act in

which an object is apprehended”(ibidem). Noesis is referred to as

the position in which the mind situates towards to objects, in

order to comprehend them. For Leviathan (2012), we apprehend more

than a performance of fishing and visual aesthetics, we see the

dangers of the job in itself, perceiving the struggles of the

fishing crew founded on their looks, the noemata. Carrying on with

understanding the highly mediated way in which art objects/films

appear to us, Husserl looks at the hyletic or sense, which relates

to what one experiences by looking at a film: camera movement,

patterns, sizes, editing forms, sounds and so forth. For the

engraving, this can be the shapes and patters of how the knight is

represented. For the ethnographic film, this can be the shape of

the boat, the sound of the birds, the specific editing style or

the camera placement.

Husserl refers to apperception as a distinct mode of apprehension,

in strong relations to perception, but in the same time different.

He speaks about the way in which a perceiver “lives through the

object without making them objects of perception”. It is like

looking through sunglasses, focusing on the world exposed in front

of us and not giving importance to the lenses. In the experience

of the engraving we see above the hyletic data, we apprehend the

knight. At the same time, In Leviathan we look above camera

movement, editing styles and the sound to grasp the boat and the

fishermen’s experiences.

Horizon, refers to “our acts of perceptions having horizons that

are predelineated due to the codeterminative activity of the

perceiver”(ibis p22). More precisely, the background knowledge the

audience has in order to understand the art object. If the

perceivers never saw a knight before, they will not make any sense

of the engraving, the same for the fishermen and the boat on the

ocean.

All this technical terms of looking at an art object are

developing from Husserl’s reduction method. This is used to “turn

our inquiry away from the objects of our acts and turn our

attention towards the acts themselves in order that we may

discover the structures that mediate intentionality”(ibis 16). As

an example, in looking at a body paining in Nagarna, portraying

the “Fire Dreaming” (Dussart in Banks & Morphy 1997) one has to

make a difference between perceiving the representation of the

myth and the emotion/pleasure/fear one feels when seeing such

image. Reduction allows in the process of perceiving looking at

objects and subjects. In the ethnographic film Sweetgrass (2009)

we step aside the objects represented – the sheep, the mountain,

the shepherds who walk the sheep – we subtract these details and

turn our attention to the process of summer pasture, while the

objects are still present in the footage. The reduction method can

get three forms: phenomenological, eidetic or transcendental. For

the purpose of this essay, I will only discuss the first. Casebier

(1991, p 17) details the phenomenological reduction with “the aim

to focus attention on consciousness and its experiences while

correspondingly turning attention away from external objects”.

As the theory of artistic representation goes on into more details

of how to experience an art object, my question is how can this

theory of artistic representation be adapted to create art

objects, and not only to experience them? How can one look at the

world and do phenomenological reduction in order to represent

his/her intersubjective understanding of the undertaken research?

In addition, is a phenomenological approach to visual aesthetics

sustainable for anthropological knowledge? An attempt to extend

Husserl’s theory of artistic representation to ethnographic

filming is made in the next part, looking at Jains representation

of the Body; with an account of phenomenology as ontology and

intersubjectivity as epistemology.

In my point of view, in order for one to create intersubjective

cinema, one needs to have a great knowledge of the group of people

he/she studies and to understand the phenomenon he/she is

representing in intersubjectivity. Because I do not have a great

knowledge about the Janis, I will turn at Banks (1997) and use his

comprehension of the visual representations undertaken by the

people following this religion. The Janis’s representation of the

body has as foundation their religious views. They transposed the

religious experience presented to them in representations of the

body. If one wants to do a visual representation of their

experience of the body and soul, one has to look at how they

construct these artifacts of the body/soul (statues) and how they

relate to them. Hence, the representation done by the

anthropologists is inspired by the representations of the

religious followers on the philosophy of the body and soul. At a

general level, this can be done by looking at how people

materialize their thoughts in local aesthetics, decorations,

architecture, art and so forth. In the Janis case, one can look at

the noema, noesis and hyletic data from the statues and their

particularities. For the lack of space, I will only focus on how

the anthropologist can develop an editing style by looking at

these statues/artifacts from Husserl’s theory of artistic

representation. With no doubt, the model can be extended to the

other processes involved in making and acquiring information for

an ethnographic film.

So far I have an abstract, borrowed intersubjective view (with

Banks’ help) on the representations of the body and the soul, and

I am adopting a phenomenological position to the artifacts to

develop an editing style for a possible ethnographic film about

the experience of people of the liberated body in Jainism.

Fig 1. The liberated soul – M. Sakler

Gallery India

Fig 2. Siddha – the liberated being. Digambra Temple

India

The notion of the body is seen as a duality: the liberated soul,

which is invisible but takes the shape of the last human being

(fig2), and the body of the living human being. (Banks 1997,

p221). In all their representations the thirhankaras (fig 1) idols

seem to have the same form, they are always represented in very

similar colors, simple decorated, siting in a meditation position

and always male (female liberation being impossible in their

view). On the other side, the Siddha idol is an absence, a contour

of the soul. In this case the noema is the appearance of the

absence of the soul. The noesis is the position of the mind

towards the representation of the pure liberated soul; and the

hyletic being the patterns and size, and the posture of the idol.

A possible ways of editing a movie about the experience of the

body/soul starting from the two figures shown can be an overlap of

images – of human beings and recognizable shadows in the form of a

human moving in the image (Example fig 3). As the idols are always

represented in white/light-brown/black, the colors used in the

footage can be either black and white, or light colors in contrast

with the liberated souls, which can be distinct or invisible only

with a drawn contour. Even if the Janis prefer the human body as

being fat and big, their idols are always slim, male, and almost

identical in appearances. Therefore, the anthropologist can choose

to represent the body and the soul by using the same

character/shadow of a man and multiply it on the screen. The speed

of the movement in the film can be inspired from the attitude

towards meditation, always slow and deep, with the body in the

same position. So, the anthropologist can position the camera at

the level of the idols, depicting the footage in slow motion or

making soft, symmetrical moves as the idols are represented. This

editing developed from the appearance of the idols can be combined

with the rituals (Banks 1997) Indians have to relate and worship

them in order to create an ethnographic film.

Fig 3. Doctor Who and the Army of Ghosts

Even if the editing sounds abstract, it is a short example of how

one can take a phenomenological approach towards visual

representations with an epistemological intersubjectivity.

As discussed so far, if the debates around the artistic turn in

ethnographic filmmaking and the problems of representation are

passed, intersubjective cinema can be used as an alternative to

observational cinema. Discussions of the theory in visual

representation showed that it is important for the anthropologist

to develop his/her theories and methods from the field. The

adoption of phenomenology as ontology and intersubjectivity as

epistemology can bring the anthropologist in doing ethnographic

films closer to grasp the point of view of the researched group.

Allowing the researcher the freedom of expression and the

liberation of the style and modes of creating an ethnographic film

with roots in the field.

Intersubjective cinema, as shown in the editing example, can be a

sustainable form of ethnographic filmmaking, permitting a

phenomenological reduction of the researched phenomenon in order

for it to be represented. The limitations of such approach can be

seen in the failure of an audience with no training and expertize

in the research phenomenon to grasp the intended experience or

meaning. This problem can be overdue by always presenting an

ethnography/monograph next to an ethnographic film and not

separate the two mediums of representation.

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Films:

Fieldwork Films & Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (2007), Dir

McDougall D. Released by Australian National University;

Leviathan (2012) Dir. Castaing-Taylor L. and Paravel V. Released

by Dogwoof;

Sweetgrass (2009) Dir. Castaing-Taylor L. and Barbash I. Released

by Dogwoof.