From the uncertain to the unfinished: An approximation with ethnographic creation

Abstract

Ethnographic creations originate from the indeterminacy of our interlocutors and the plasticity of their ways of life and local worlds. This essay emphasizes the unfinished dimension of people in a puzzling Brazil, marking futures in a violent and uncertain present and transforming themselves through relationships, things, claims, care and imagination. The notion of becoming, which organizes this writing, emphasizes the plastic power of people and the intricate problematics of how to live alongside, through and despite the profoundly constraining effects of structural and material forces, which are themselves plastic. Ethnographic subjects are life experimenters and, therefore, elements of surprise - unpredictable and capable of changing the ecologies of knowledge. Remaining open to the complexity of the intertwining of biology, environment, social life and material forces of all kinds, and recognizing - even embracing - the unknown can inspire us to produce a more humble and experimental social science, keeping our theory more multifaceted and sensitive, our modes of expression less caricatured and, at the same time, open to escapes, ruptures and other paths.

Keywords:
Anthropology of becoming; plasticity; ethnographic theory and poetics; indeterminacy and unfinishedness