Stephanie Takaragawa and Cymene Howe, "Howe, Cymene and Takaragawa, Stephanie. "Surprise." Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website, July 27, 2017.", contributed by James Adams and Angela Okune, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 3 July 2018, accessed 29 November 2023. https://worldpece.org/content/howe-cymene-and-takaragawa-stephanie-surprise-theorizing-contemporary-cultural-anthropology
Critical Commentary
Abstract: In collaborative ethnographic work we get taken by another’s ideas, the circuits of their thoughts, the analytic of their outlook. Collaboration can operate as a multiplication or an exponentializing of Marilyn Strathern’s concept of wonder in the eye of the anthropological beholder who is learning to see newly. Surprise can unfold in exercises of juxtaposition, contrasting entities and recognizing both the affinities and distinctions at the core of their compositions. Being taken by surprise can become a form-making project, a node of coordination and cooperation where a vacant center begins to populate with ideas and materials, experiences and responses. Surplus starts to show, ablation happens, the pregiven loses its prefix.