Crumpled Paper Boat

"In a post-truth world, where facts have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief, this publication is of timely importance. . . . It is a text that encourages the reader to embrace writing as a practice immanent to the world, rather than a detached reflection upon society and our place within it." -- Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani * LSE Review of Books * There is still much to learn about cultivating uncertainty, failure and collaboration in geographic writing and research, and this volume invites just this kind of casting off. -- Ursula Lang * Antipode * "This is an outstanding volume to use as provocation, to reflect on ones own practice and history, as well as for teaching. I can see students becoming excited at the possibility of an anthropology that takes as its departure point the very hesitations and unknowns that we are schooled to suppress." -- Paloma Gay y Blasco * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute * "The volume challenges anthropological conventions on multiple fronts and provides both an energizing example and a refreshing reminder that powerful writing energizes our knowing and can bring anthropology out of its mostly self-imposed limits of speaking." -- David Syring * Anthropology and Humanism * "The Paper Boat Collective . . . demonstrates that not only can ethnography survive, but by incorporating an aesthetic mode of uncertainty, vulnerability, and adventure, it is better equipped to connect with the violent storms and hopeful struggles of a complex and untidy world. The sense of journey is palpable in the persistent exhortation to go beyond: beyond the tangible, beyond the human, beyond oneself, beyond the real." -- Jason Danely * Anthropology Book Forum *

Anand Pandian teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation, also published by Duke University Press. Stuart McLean teaches anthropology at the University of Minnesota. His books include Fictionalizing Anthropology: Encounters and Fabulations at the Edge of the Human.

Acknowledgments vii Prologue / Anand Pandian and Stuart McLean 1 Introduction: Archipelagos, a Voyage in Writing / Paper Boat Collective 11 1. The Ambivalent Archive / Angela Garcia 29 2. Writing with Care / Michael Jackson 45 3. After the Fact: The Question of Fidelity in Ethnographic Writing / Michael Jackson 48 4. Walking and Writing / Anand Pandian 68 5. Anthropoetry / Adrie Kusserow 71 6. Poetry, Uncertainty, and Opacity / Michael Jackson 91 7. Ta'bir: Ethnography of the Imaginal / Stefania Pandolfo 94 8. Writing through Intercessors / Stuart McLean 116 9. Desire in Cinema / Anand Pandian 119 10. Flows and Interruptions, or, So Much for Full Stops / Stuart McLean 126 11. Denial: A Visit in Four Ethnographic Fictions / Tobias Hecht 130 12. Ethnography and Fiction / Anand Pandian 145 13. SEA / Stuart McLean 148 14. Writing Otherwise / Lisa Stevenson 168 15. Origami Conjecture for a Bemb / Todd Ramn Ochoa 172 16. Ethnographic Excess / Daniella Gandolfo and Todd Ramn Ochoa 185 17. Conversations with a Hunter / Daniella Gandolfo 189 18. On Writing and Surviving / Lisa Stevenson 207 19. A Proper Message / Lisa Stevenson 209 20. Fidelity and Invention / Angela Garcia 222 Epilogue / Kathleen Stewart 225 Bibliography 231 Contributors 241 Index 243