Can Film Show the Invisible? The Work of Montage in Ethnographic FilmmakingAuthor(s): Christian Suhr and Rane WillerslevReviewed work(s):Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (June 2012), pp. 282-301Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/664920 .Accessed: 16/05/2012 02:10Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology.http://www.jstor.org282 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June20122012byTheWenner-GrenFoundationforAnthropologicalResearch.Allrightsreserved.0011-3204/2012/5303-0002$10.00.DOI:10.1086/664920Can Film Show the Invisible?The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmakingby Christian Suhr and Rane WillerslevThisarticlesuggeststhatlmcanevokehiddendimensionsofethnographicreality,notbystrivingfor ever morerealisticdepictionsapositionoftenassociatedwithobservationalcinemabutratherbyexploitingthearticialmeansthroughwhichhumanvisioncanbetranscended.Achievedparticularlythroughtheuseofmontage, suchdisruptions can multiply the perspectives from which lmic subject matter is perceived, thus conveying its invisibleand irreducible otherness. This, however, is an argument not to dismiss the realismof much ethnographic lmmaking,but rather to demonstrate how montage can and must be used to break with the mimetic dogma of the humanizedcamera. The effective image, we argue, depends crucially on maintaining a tension between a strong sense of realityanditsoccasional,andthereforeonlytheneffective,disruptionthroughmontage.The tradition of ethnographic lmmaking has throughout itshistorybeenthetargetofnumerousscornfulattacksbyan-thropologists dissatised with its incapacity for generalizationandabstracttheorymaking. Increasingly,dissatisfactionhasalsoeruptedwithinthe communityof ethnographic lm-makers. Depressed by the number of what he nds to be dullobservational lmsscreenedat current ethnographiclmfestivals,JayRubylamentsthefutureofthediscipline:TheoverwhelmingmajorityofthestudentlmsIsaw. . .employed what I regard as the overtired, outdated and highlysuspectconventionsofobservationalcinema....Arestu-dentsactivelydiscouragedfromdeviatingfromtheortho-doxy. . . . How is our eld going to advance if students havetotow[sic]thelineof onecinematicform?Whyaretheyoung sotimid? Are their mentors discouraging experi-mentation? Where are the revolutionaries bent on changingthings?(Ruby2008)From a different quarter, James Weiner (1997) points out thatwhatismostnotablylackinginethnographiclmmaking isrecognitionof theinvisibledimensions of humanlifethatcannot berecordedbyacamera. AccordingtoWeiner, thegenre of realist indigenous ethnographic lmmaking that sup-posedly makes no attempt to teach Western notions or stylesof framing, montage, [and] fast cutting (Turner 1992:7) ac-Christian Suhr is a lmmaker and PhD candidate in the Section forAnthropologyandEthnographyof Aarhus University(MoesgaardAlle 20, DK-8270Hoejbjerg, Denmark[suhr@hum.au.dk]). RaneWillerslev is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the MuseumofCulturalHistoryoftheUniversity of Oslo (St. Olavs gt. 29, P.O.Box6762, St. Olavsplass, NO-0130Oslo, Norway). Bothauthorscontributedequallytothispaper. Thispaperwassubmitted29IX09andaccepted11XI10.tually works counter toindigenous ritualistic strategies ofmaking things visible by their very concealment. For Weiner(1997:199, 201), the gaps between shots created through mon-tage along with other nonrealist cinematic manipulationswouldbeapreconditionforvisualizingindigenousnotionsofinvisibility.Inanolder andmuchdebatedarticle, KirstenHastrup(1992) argues that anthropology communicated through pho-tography and lm inevitably is stuck within visible forms andpatterns, which can only be appreciated from the na ve em-piricistnotionthattheworldiswhatitappearstobe(JayRuby,quotedinHastrup1992:17).In herview, invisible as-pects of humanrealitycanonlybeevokedthroughwordsandtextual abstraction. Hastrups caseis built aroundherown failure to photograph an Icelandic ram exhibition: Thetexture of maleness and sex had been an intense sensory ex-perience, but it wasinvisible. Therealityof thetotal socialeventhadbeentransformedintoatwo-dimensional image,asouvenir(Hastrup1992:9).Hastrupadmitsthat herphotographs, ill-focused, badlylit, lopsided featuring the backs of men and ram, could havebeen more illuminating had she been more experienced withacamera. Nevertheless, shemaintainsthatthethick,in-visible,andsecretmeaningof theevent couldnothavebeencapturedoncelluloid,buthadto becommunicated inwords(Hastrup1992:910).This,sheargues,isbecausethetwomediaoperateonquite distinct logical levels: the imageby means of its mimetic disposition is a mere simulacrum ofreality, onlycapturingfeaturesofsocial lifethatarevisible.By contrast, words are essentially formless in themselves, andmeaning, therefore, needs to be created through textual con-structionby selectionandordering. This allows words tocommunicate existential spaces of cultural experience (Has-SuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 283trup 1992:11) that are themselves invisible and therefore can-notbecapturedbyacamera.ItcomesasnosurprisethatbothWeinersandHastrupsarguments were receivedwithmuchdisapproval byvisualanthropologists (Crawford and Turton 1992:5; Faye Ginsburg,quotedinWeiner 1997:213; MacDougall 1998:71). LucienTaylorercelyarguedagainstwhathetooktobeanicon-ophobiainanthropology.Inhisview (Taylor 1996:88), an-thropologys discomfort withimages has todowithlmscapacity to exceed theory and showing anthropologists pur-chaseonthelivedexperienceof theirsubjectstoberathermore precarious than they would like to believe. In a similarvein, DavidMacDougall (1998:71) suggestedthat Hastrupquite simply was giving up on photography too easily. Ac-cordingtoMacDougall,wordsare superior in their capacityof showing us the rules of the social and cultural institutionsbywhich[people]live(1998:259), but imagesarefarsu-perior in addressing subtle issues of social agency, body prac-tice,andtheroleofthesensesandemotionsinsociallife.Inthisarticle, wewishtodrawrenewedattentiontothekey questionthat underlies muchof this debate for andagainstvisual anthropology: Canlmshowtheinvisible, orisittrappedwithinthevisiblesurfacesofthesocial world?Despitethe criticisms raised, wendthat Hastrups mainassertion that the camera is incapable of capturing the invis-iblemeaningsofsociallifeneedsrenewed consideration. Ofkeyimportanceis theattentionshedraws tothefact thatalthough lm and images taken by cameras may look similartoour ordinaryseeing, theydodiffer insignicant ways.Ethnographiclmmakersarequitecertainlyawareof thesedifferences, but their take on lmmaking has, as we shall see,largely consisted in minimizing them, so as to let the cameraimitatethehumaneye.Our periodof acceleratedtechnological innovations hassupported this development: rst, with the advent of mobilelightweightsoundrecordingand,morerecently, with digitalrecording formats and affordable handheldcamcorders,whichallowethnographiclmmakerstomakelongertakesthaneverbefore. Theshiftsfromblack-and-whitetocolorlm and more recently from 4 : 3 to 16 : 9 (widescreen) havelikewise enabled more realistic simulations of our normal eldof vision. Yet, asrealizedbyDzigaVertov(1929; CroftandRose1977)almostacenturyago, acameraisnotahumaneyebut amechanical eye, which, ratherthanacontinuousstreamof vision, providesaseriesof frameswithalimitedrange of contrast, color reproduction, depth of eld, and an-gle. Thereal wonderof cinema, weventuretosuggest, liesnotinitsinferiorimitationofthehumaneye, but rather initsmechanicalcapturingoffootage, which subsequently canbeputtogetherwithotherpiecesbywayofmontage.Ourtaskhere istoexplore how ethnographic lmmakingmayexpandourhorizonof experienceif wetakeseriouslythekeydifferencesbetweenthecameraeyeandthehumaneyeandconsidertheuseof manipulativelmicdevicesfortranscending the limitations of human vision. We argue thatit is only when we embrace its mechanical, nonhuman naturethat themediumof lmcanbecomefullycapableof con-veyingtheinvisiblethatHastruprightfullyarguesissoim-portant to anthropology, but which she mistakenly holds canbecommunicatedonlyinwords.We shall begin our inquiry by looking into ideas about theinvisibleinrealistethnographiclmmaking, then discussingtheseideas inrelationtoalternatives offeredbycinematicmontage. Our aim is not to replace realist doctrines with theradical constructivism of the Soviet and postmodernist mon-tage schools (Eisenstein 1988:145; Kiener 2008:394; Michelson1984;Minh-ha1982).Rather,we want to offer a conceptualframeworkthroughwhichtoexpandourunderstandingofhowmontageandotherdisruptivedevices can and must beused to break the mimetic dogma of the humanized camera,thusenablinganenhancedperceptionofthesocial realitiesdepictedinethnographiclms. Howeverandthisisakeypointusing lm to reveal the invisible aspects of social lifedepends crucially on maintaining a tension between a strongsenseof realityanditsoccasional, andthereforeonlytheneffective,disruptionthroughmontage.Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Pontys (2002) work on theprimordial totality of vision and Emmanuel Levinass (1969)ethics of irreducible otherness, we nally arrive at suggestionsfor how such imposed tension between realism and construc-tivism can open ethnographic lmmakings capacity for imag-iningotherplanesofseeing.TheObservational TraditionClosely associated with Taylors and MacDougalls critique ofHastrupisthedistinctivetraditionofobservationalcinema,whicharguablyhasshapedethnographiclmmakingtotheextentofbeing identical to it (Banks 1992:124; Kiener 2008:405).1As a movement, observational cinema aims to inquireintotheroleplayedbyordinarylivedtime and space in theconstitutionofsocial life. Assuch, itoperateswithinanes-sentiallyrealist cinematicparadigm, usinglmmainlyasamediumof mimesis(Stam2000:72; Taylor1996:75). Ob-servational lmmakers do not, however, see their goal in termsof a simple one-to-one correspondence with everyday reality.Clearly, it is misguided to confuse observational cinema withnaiveempiricism orscientism. In fact, observational cinemawaspartlydevelopedasareactionagainstthedetachedyonthewalllmapproachasseen, for example, in GregoryBatesonandMargaretMeadsChildhood Rivalry in Bali andNew Guinea (1952). Mimesis in observational lmmaking, asAnna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz (2009:552) assert, is not1. Even though observational cinema at present appears to be the mostinuential school of ethnographic lmmaking, it is by no means the onlyone. The historyof ethnographic lmmakingshows awiderangeofexperimentswithpoeticformsoflm editing, postmodern deconstruc-tion, and even ction lm (see, e.g., Gardner 1986; Minh-ha 1982; Rouch1967).284 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012simplyamirroring. Rather, it is aprocess of mergingtheobject of perception with the body of the perceiver. The mi-meticcameraishereusedasaphysical extensionof thecamerapersons body (Grimshawand Ravetz 2009:548;MacDougall 1998:200), thus allowing viewers intimate accesstothelmmakerssensuousengagementwiththesociallifeportrayed. Paul Henley encapsulates this virtue eloquently inhissummationofobservationalcinemaasa cinematography based on an unprivileged single camerathat offers the viewpoint, in a very literal sense, of a normalhumanparticipant inthe events portrayed. This camerashould be mobile, following subjects and events. . . . When-ever possible or appropriate, long takes should be employedin order to preserve the integrity of the events in the whole-ness in which they spontaneously occur . . . stylistically thecameraworkshouldbelow-key:theobservationalcamera-person should take particular care that neither the distinctivetemporal and spatial congurations of the events portrayednor, moregenerally, thecharacteristicsocial andculturalaestheticsof theirsubjects worldaresmotheredbydem-onstrations of technical or aesthetic virtuosity. (Henley 2004:114)As Henleypoints out, observational cinemabuilds ontheepistemologicalpremisethat deepinsight into social life en-tails transmission of sufcient material detail of the observableworldfromtheviewpointofanormalhuman participant(Henley2004:114). Thisbringsusbackagaintothecentralquestionofwhatconstitutestheinvisible.Forobservationalcinema, the invisible can be said to be that which is seen butnot usually noticed. By focusing on the most apparently triv-ial details of everyday activities, the cameraperson, along withtheaudience, comestoobservethenestgrainsofday-to-dayhumanexistence.AccordingtoMacDougall (1998:255),theseconcreteanddetailedvisiblefeatures of persons andtheirenvironmentshavelargelydisappeared as signiers ofcultureinwrittenanthropologyspreoccupationwithana-lytical abstractions: kinshipsystems, symbolicstructuresofmeaning,andintangiblepowerrelations.MacDougalls recent lm Gandhis Children (2008), abouttheeverydaylivesofboys in a childrens shelter on the out-skirts of Delhi, is a case in point. For more than three hours,viewersareinvitedtoexploreshiftingmomentsof joyanddespair as revealed in the boys facial expressions and bodilygestures. Theobservableworldthusbecomesapathwaytodeepinsights intotheemotional lives of thelmsubjects.Instead of contextualizing their lives in terms of abstract an-alytical categories, thescenesof thelmdragusintowhatLucienTaylor(1996:76)hasdescribedastheambiguityofmeaningthatisattheheartofhumanexperienceitself.Here, as in other observational lms (see, e.g., MacDougall1979; for more recent productions, see Grossman 2010; Spray2007), a sense of reality is derived from the direct connectionof the camera to the lived body of the lmmaker. The camera,inGrimshaws words, is humanizedandsubmittedtoaparticularhumanist ethicspremiseduponhumilityorre-spect, expressiveofthelmmakerssensitivitytowardstheirsubjects(Grimshaw2001:12930, 138). Consequently, theobservational lmmaker has to be cautious with any form ofcinematic effectabnormal framing, grading, extradiegeticmusic, commentary, disruptive juxtaposition of shots, and soonwhich runs the risk of disturbing the transmission of thecamerapersons lived experience of the life-world lmed(Henley2004:11516;Kiener2008:407).Byfavoringinthiswayseeingoverassertion, wholenessover parts, matter over symbolicmeaning, specicityoverabstraction (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009:539), observationalcinema proposes that the strangeness of even the most exoticpeople canbe counterbalancedbyasenseof familiarity(MacDougall 1998:245)that is, a sense of how, despite cul-tural differences, weareultimatelyall subject tothesameplane of embodiedspatial andtemporal existence. This isexactly what MacDougall (1998:252) points to when he writesthat the image transcends culture . . . by underscoring thecommonalities that cut across cultural boundaries.Inhisview,oneofthe key contributions of visual anthropology toourdisciplineatlargeisthechallengethatimagesandlmpose to abstract cultural representations, by returning our gazeto transcultural commonalities of being human (MacDougall1998:245).TheInvisibleas InvisibleWhatifwedonotbuyintoanotion ofthe invisible as thatwhich is seen but not usually noticedthat is, if the invisiblecannotbecapturedvisually,butliesbeyondvisibility?Thenit seems to follow that the long camera takes of observationalcinema, indulginginabundanceof visual detail, cannotbesufcient for evoking the invisible. While observational lm-makerstendtoavoidtheuseofmanipulativelmic devicesand disruptive montage in order to preserve the congruencybetweenthesubjectasexperiencedbythelm-makersandthe lm as experienced by the audience (Colin Young, quotedin Henley 2004:115), we nd that montage, along with otherforms of cinematic manipulation, is a precondition for evok-ingtheinvisibleinitsownright.Letusclarifywhatwemeanbythekeywordmontage.InFrench, montagerefers tothetechnical process of lmediting in the strict sense of the word. The cut from one shotto another may, among other things, convey action-reaction,makeaneffect of continuityorof timepassed, visualizeashiftofperspective, makeajumpfromthewholetoapartor vice versa, perform a ashback, show parallel simultaneousaction, or simply contrast what was seen in the rst shot withthe next. For the early American lm director D. W. Grifth(1915), montage was rst and foremost used to depict organicunityindiversity,inwhichparts act andreact oneachother, threaten each other, and enter into conict before unityis eventually restored (Deleuze 2005:31). Hence, narrative co-herenceandconsistencyaretheprimaryaimofthistype ofSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 285montage. Thompson and Bordwell (2003) also locate in Grif-ththebeginningsof thecontinuitysystem, whichaimsatpreserving narrative clarity by avoiding shifts of camera angleof more than 180 degrees, by using shot/reverse-shot to couplethe viewpoints of people within a scene and by cutting fromwide-angle shots to close-ups of the same actions taking place.Through such techniques, the idea is to maintain unbrokenconnection with each preceding [shot] (Alfred Capus, quotedinThompsonandBordwell2003:46).Whileeditinginthecontinuitystyleof muchAmericancinema isprovided to create an illusion of a smooth ow oftime, early Soviet lmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein (1928)andDzigaVertov(1929)experimentedinspeedinguplmfootage, slowing it down, making shots overlap so that actionsarerepeated, orviolentlyshorteningthereal-timedurationof events throughjump-cutting(ThompsonandBordwell2003:131). Rather thananillusionof real-time actions incontiguous spaces, what they aimed for was a new cinematicpresentationof timeandspace(Sitney1990:44). Thus, Ei-senstein emphasized how shots were to be placed not next toeachotherbutratherontopofeachother, sothat each cutconsistsinaqualitativeleap(Deleuze2005:38).What we take from Grifth and the early Soviet lmmakersis their concernwiththelmicpossibilitiesof juxtaposingshots, thus enabling visual experiences that differ fromnormalperceptioneither in the form of organic narrative wholenessorintheformofradical shocktherapy. Incontrasttothis,most ethnographic lmmakers in the observational traditionhave been preoccupied with the cinema of duration as ad-vocated by Andre Bazin (2005:39; Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009:539)that is, the ability of the camera to capture events andactions in human life in the order and pace that they actuallyoccur.In Grifth and Eisenstein, but even more so in the cinemaof Vertov, the camera was valued not for its capacity to imitatethehumaneye, butpreciselyforitsmechanical nonhumannature. For Vertov, montage referred not only to the piecingtogether of shots in the editing room, but also to the assemblyofshotsasframedandrecordedinthecamera(Aumontetal. 1997:65). Weadoptmontageinthisbroadestsenseasaproduction technique, which is evident both in lm shootingandinthesubsequentjuxtaposition of shots during editing.Whether in the camera or in the editing room, montage canbe dened as cinematic rearrangement of lived time and space.Its set goal is what Vertov referred to as Film-Truth (Petric1987:4, 8)that is, to transcend ordinary human perceptionandofferviewsonrealityof asuper-real quality, emergingfromthe juxtapositionof otherwiseincompatibleperspec-tives. Whilethehumanizedcameraprovidesfootage from aperspective,whichstandsinanindexicalrelationship to thefamiliarregimeofhumanperception,montage,ashereun-derstood, is the production of superhuman vision that pushesthe frontiers of the observable world into uncharted regions.A somewhat similar take on lms capacity to decode realityhas beenpursuedbyscholars concernedwithcinemaandglobalization. Thus, George Marcus (1994) points to our pres-ent-dayentanglementinglobal cultural processesasakindof invisibilitythat is difcult topresent withthelongun-obtrusivetakesof observational cinema. Parallelediting, hesuggests, may be a method of setting the scene objectively,soastoreecttherealityofthecontemporary global world(Marcus1994:48). Morerecently, WilmaKiener(2008:394)has echoed this argument by pointing out how editing solvesthe problem of showing whatwhile being absentis a nec-essary part of the whole. Montage, she argues (Kiener 2006:3), make[s]visible[the]social andpsychologicaleffectsoftheglobalisingandthepostcolonial world.Thus, forbothKienerandMarcus, thesimultaneityofglobalculturalpro-cesses is aformof invisibilitythat canberenderedvisiblethroughtheuseofmontage.Inasimilarvein, Dai Vaughan(1992:110)hasaddressedthe potential of montage for highlighting the constructed na-tureofall lmmaking, whichoftenremainsinvisibleinthelow-keymontagestyleofmanyethnographiclms:What are needed. . . are methods wherebythe variousstrands of the [ethnographic lm] discoursethe referentialnatureof theimages, theirdemonstrativedisposition, theconstruction of narrative continuities in time and space, thelmic and extra-lmic codingsmay be denied elision andofferedasseparabletotheviewerssecurity.Such methods could, Vaughan continues, consist in selectivejump-cutting,disagreeingvoice-overcommentaries, and ex-cessivelymanipulativeforms of gradingthat pushthere-ceived conventions to the point of parody so that, while stillfunctioning to articulate the material, they would be perceivedintheirarbitrariness. Trinh T. Minh-has lm Reassemblage(1982) applies several of these methods. Shot in a Senegalesevillage, the lmuses audio-videodesynchronizationalongwithcontinuousabrupt jump-cutsof womenbreastfeedingtheir babies, crying or laughing children, traditional dancing,and corn grinding. In this way, the lm effectively directs theattention ofviewers toward their own acts of seeing and theways inwhichethnographic lms conventionallyestablishtheir subjects. The invisible that is made visible in Minh-hasdeconstructionis effectivelyourselves as ethnographiclmviewersandthepoliticsoflookingatothers.Despite their differences, lmmakers and theoreticians suchas Vertov, Marcus, Kiener, Vaughan, andMinh-hashareacommon understanding of the invisible. Whether in the formofglobalculturalprocessesorofconcealedpowerrelations,the invisible is understoodtobe somethingthat canandshould be made visible in lmmaking by means of montage.Hereweseektotakethemontage argument to a more fun-damental level of analysis by suggesting that juxtaposition ofperspectives through montage is a key cinematic tool for evok-ingtheinvisible, without reducingit toformsof visibility.The problem with the globalization of the lmgaze, advocatedbyMarcusandKiener,isthatitmerelyenlargesthe eld ofvisibility to a global scale rather than deals with the question286 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012of invisibility in its own right (see, e.g., Furtado 1989; Gandini2003).The use of montage in the service of deconstruction, as inthelmworkofMinh-ha,carriesyet another problem. Thesupposedly concealed power relations, inherent in the objec-tifying gaze of ethnographic lmmaking, may perhaps be ren-dered visible by Minh-has complete disruption of her footage,but onlyat theexpenseof dissolvingthesocial worldpor-trayedintoobscure haze (Crawford 1992:79). To paraphrasethe lm critic Rudolf Arnheim: in order for lm to be morethana naive simulacrumof reality, it must interrupt andchallengeourconventional visual logicbut onlypartially,fornostatementcan [ultimately] be understood unless therelations betweenits elements formanorganizedwhole(Arnheim 1957:170). Successful evocation rests not with thepleasures of chaos (Arnheim 1971:3033) but with the lm-makers success in counterbalancing disruption with a generalcompositional order, hence enhancing the viewers perceptionofreality.If theinvisibleispart of social reality, thenhowcanweapproach it without merely substituting it with new forms ofvisibility? In the following, we shall explore the notion of theinvisible shared by Merleau-Ponty and Levinas as a perceptualimpossibility, whichalthoughitmaybeimaginedintellec-tuallyisnotachievablefromanyoneperspective.Thein-visiblehereisunderstoodtobeanexcessofvisibilityoraninnitetotalityofvisionthatcannotitselfbeaccessedfromany actual human perspective, but whose presence is the pre-conditionfor our possibilityof perceivinganythingwhatMerleau-Pontyrefers toas thenormandLevinasastheinnite Other.We shall suggest that bymaintainingtheinvisible as an excess or innite totality of vision, montageinlmmayenableustoimagineviewsfundamentallydif-ferentfromthosegiventousinordinaryperception.TheInvisibleinVisionOne of the most fundamental differences between the cameraeyeandthehumaneyeliesinthewaythetwoperceivethedepth and distinct identity of objects. Let us, therefore, beginby considering the rather tricky question of how human be-ings areabletoexperienceobjectsasthree-dimensional. Itmayappeartousthatwe perceive objects from the locationof our eyes: the world is centered upon the perceiver. Indeed,the long observational takes and the humanized camera styleofmuchethnographiclmmakingappeartoreproducethisegocentricexperienceofvision.Thisisalsothebasis of Ed-mundHusserls (1997) theoryof perception, inwhichthethree-dimensionalityof objects emerges out of acognitivehypothesis. The only thing we perceive, Husserl asserts, is theobjects facade. The back side of the objectits invisiblesideis not perceivedandcan, therefore, onlybeassessedcognitively by building on our previous experiences of movingaroundtheobject.However, as thephilosopher SeanKelly(2005:96) haspointed out, the basic problem with this theory of perceptionis that, insofar as thebacksideis part of theobject, andinsofaraswecanneverseethebackside ofthe object fromour present position, no experience of an object could pos-sibly present it as it really is. Thus, the real object slips awayasanimperceptiblesumofallpossibleperspectivesonit.But what if vision is not subjective, but rather an effect ofour relations withone another (Willerslev2009)that is,whatif visionexists, sotospeak, betweenusratherthanwithinus?Merleau-Ponty(2002:79)pointstoexactlythiswhenhewrites: WhenI lookat thelamponmytable, Iattribute to it not only the qualities visible from where I am,but alsothosewhichthechimney, thewalls, thetablecansee. What Merleau-Ponty suggests is that when we gaze atthefacadeofanobject, itsbacksideisalsoperceivedposi-tively.Butwhereasthefacadeisperceivedas determinate,thehiddensideoftheobjectisperceivedasindeterminate(Kelly 2005:78). That is, rather than not being perceived, thehidden side is positively perceived as absence of visibility. Thisisso, Merleau-Ponty argues, because at the same time as weperceive the focal object, we also perceive the innite web ofpossible viewpoints in which this object is situated. Thus, thechimney, the walls, and the table are all perceived as alternativeviewpoints,fromwherewecouldhaveseenwhat,fromourpresent perspective, ishiddenasthebacksideof thelamp(g.1).Hence, according to Merleau-Ponty, perceptual experienceis not, as Husserl argues, simply a presentation of sense data.Neither is it simply something that goes on within us. Instead,visual perceptionemergesasanintertwinementofourownsubjective viewpoint along with the focal object and the vastsprawling web of viewpoints that surround it and provide itssupporting context (Merleau-Ponty 1997:248). It is, sotospeak, becausevisionis everywhere that weas perspectivalbeings are able to see things from somewhere (Willerslev 2011;Willerslev and Ulturgasheva 2007:92). So, contrary to Husserl,the real three-dimensionality of objects is present in each andevery perception of them, but it is present in the sense of aninvisibleandunattainablenormthatis, theviewfromeverywhere (Deleuze 1994:37; Kelly 2005:91; Willerslev 2011:519). As Merleau-Ponty (2000:187) expresses it: The properessence . . . of the visible is to have a layer of invisibility . . .which it makes present by a certain absence. In other words,whiletheviewfromeverywhereimplies the world seen intotallyclearandunambiguousvisibilitythatis, theworldaslaidbareinabsolutetransparencyit is a view that musthideitselfinorderforthevisibleworldtoappearbeforeour eyes. As such, the view from everywhere is a view thatcannot beanobject of ourownperspectival seeingexceptnegatively,thatis,byitsabsence(Holbraad and Willerslev2007:334).We may seem to have wandered a bit far in discussing theperception of lamps, but it relates in an important way to thekey issue that interests us here, namely, the difference betweenhuman perception and lm. Criticizing Hastrup for neglectingSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 287Figure1. Alamp(ChristianSuhr).AcolorversionofthisgureisavailableintheonlineeditionofCurrentAnthropology.how closely lm resembles human perceptual experience, Tay-lor (1996:7576) emphasizes how, in particular, the long takeofobservational cinemahonorsthedurationofreal-lifein-teractionandthehomogeneityof spacebypreservingtherelationshipsbetweenobjectsrather than substituting [themwith]theabstracttime and synthetic space of montage (cf.Henley2004:114).Butisitreallythe casethat the long takeof acamerasocloselyresemblesourordinaryvision?Onemajor difference that comes to mind is the fact that the three-dimensional realitywe usuallyperceiveis depictedtwo-dimensionally in lm. MacDougall (2006:270, 274) also pointstothis fact, whendescribinghowlms construct forus athree-dimensional space basedontwo-dimensional pieces.But whereas MacDougall, in line with the observational doc-trine, emphasizes how closely this construction resembles hu-manperception, itisaconstructionnevertheless,which, inordertoachieveitsrealityeffect,hastomanipulateconsid-erablywithframe,color,contrast,focus,anddepth.288 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012Letusclarifythisbyconsideringoneofthemostfunda-mental differences betweenthetechnological mediationofvisionbythecameraandordinaryhumanvisionnamely,thedifferencebetween viewing through one rather than twoeyes.AsMerleau-Ponty showed us, the three-dimensionalityofthingsisgiventousinhumanvisionbecausewesimul-taneouslyappropriateamultiplicityof otherpossibleview-points. Merleau-Pontys claimnds furthersupport inthefact that we normally never see an object from one position.Most often, we see it as an intertwinement of two positionsthat is, throughour twoeyes. As Arnheim(1957:11) haspointed out, depth perception relies mainly on the distancebetween the two eyes, which makes for two slightly differentimages. The fusion of these two pictures into one image givesthethree-dimensional impression.ContrarytoTaylorandthe realist codex of much ethnographic lmmaking, Arnheimpointedtothisfactasanexampleofhowlmic vision rad-icallydiffersfromhumandoublevision.Hence, at the most elementarylevel, Hastrupis infactperfectlyright whenshe states that the at representation ofher camera did not reveal the same three-dimensional realitythat she had seen with her two eyes. Because of her two eyes,whosevisionbendsaroundthings, shewasliterallyabletoseeabit moreof theramexhibitionthanwhat was laterdepictedinherphotographs. Humanvisionwithitsdoubleperspective is, therefore, always already one step ahead, towardtheviewfromeverywhere,thanisthesingle(Husserlian)perspective of a camera lens. Despite current experiments in3-D, lmisstill notabletoreproducethefull humanper-ceptionofspacethatobservational lmmakers have tried toimitate. While we in ordinary double vision are able to seearound things, this is not possible with the single perspectiveof the camera lens. Whereas the three-dimensionality of thingsisnormallygiventousasaninherentfeature of our vision,lmhas toshift angle, combineperspectives, andinotherwaysmanipulatetheimageinordertogiveasenseof thethree-dimensionalfeaturesofwhattheydepict.SomeFilmExamplesIf the camera eye is fundamentally inferior to human vision,thenhowcanlmeverprovideuswithananthropologicalvisionthat challengesandenhancesordinaryseeing?Whatlm can do (and what human vision cannot do) isthroughtechniquesofmontagetojuxtaposeitstwo-dimensionalpieces and combine them into multispatial and multitemporalviewing experiences. In this way, montage offers the possibilityof breakingthe boundaries of the ethnographicallythin2-Dbydeliveringviewsofamultidimensionalthickand,if you like, super-real quality. This is what Vertov took to theextremewithhis dictumof thekino-eye,simultaneouslydocumentingandconstructingreality: acinemathat, asitsrst move, needed to break away fromthe mimetic dispositionofthecamera.Until nowwehaveviolatedthemoviecameraandforcedit tocopytheworkof our eye. Thebetterthecopy, thebettertheshootingwasthought tobe. Startingtodayweare liberating the camera and making it work in the oppositedirectionawayfromcopying.(Vertov,quotedin Roberts2000:19)Manyethnographiclmmakers have been inspired by thelmsandwritingsof Vertov. Thecinemaverite movement,developed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, is a direct trans-lationofVertovs concept of Kino Pravda, meaning lm-truth.ButratherthantheintersubjectivetruthprovidedbyRouchs livingparticipatorycamera(Rothman1997:80;Rouch2003), whichfunctionsasanextensionof thelm-makersbody,Vertov aimed at transcending the intersubjec-tive and, through montage, obtaining a new and truer vision,extending beyond the subjective viewpoint of our human eyes.In his classic lm from 1929, The Man with the Movie Camera,weseethemetropolisat dawnwithitscitizensstill asleep.Yet it turns out that the city is a roomful of eyes, in that everyobject, from the cars headlamps to the dummies in the shopwindows, growsafaceofitsownandstaresback.Bybeingpushed into this odd realm in which every object has a pres-encea being and a face of its ownwe are forced upon usavisionthatdoesnotbeginandendinthehumansubject:a vision that is already in place, waiting to inscribe us withinit.AsJamesElkins (1996:20)writes: Instead of saying I amthe one doing the looking, it seems better to say that objectsare all trying to catch my eye. Indeed, this echoes Merleau-Pontys claim that without the vast tangled network of view-pointsthatsurroundsusandweavesitself through us, therewouldbenosubjectiveviewpointintherstplace.Withinthe worldof ethnographiclmmaking, TimothyAschandNapoleonChagnonsmuch-debatedlmTheAxFight (1975) reveals a similar capacity for constructing visualexperiencescomposedofseveralpoints ofview (g. 2). Thelm is about a conict that broke out among two groups ofYanomamo Indians. It discloses and discusses the same violentevent no less than ve timeseach time from a newcinematicperspective(Acciaioli2004:141;Nichols2004).First we are presented with 11 minutes of unedited obser-vational lm footage, which covers the ght from its outbreaktotheend. Shouts andscreams increaseinvolumeas thecrowd of ghting men and women grows larger. At its peak,the ght has moved into the shadow of a pent roof. Machetesand axes glimpse in the darkness. Suddenly, the camera pansquicklytotheleft,followingamovement within the crowd.We hear the sound of a severe punch, but the camera movestoo fast, and it is impossible to see what happens. A momentlater, wearebackwiththeagitatedcrowd. Thecamerahasmoved closer. The ght has paused. A young man kneels ontheground, showinggreatsignsof pain. Weareleftinbe-wilderment.Inthenext sectionof thelm, wehearthelmmakersimmediate reactions on the sound reel. Chagnon attempts tomakesenseoftheapparentchaos. He reckons that the ghtSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 289Figure2. The AxFight (AschandChagnon1975). Acolor versionof this gureis availableintheonlineeditionof CurrentAnthropology.erupted because of the discovery of an incestuous relationshipbetweenawomanandherson. However, as thenext titlestates, Firstimpressionscanbemistaken.Nowthelmicmaterial is replayed in slow motion and with stills. In voice-over, Chagnonexplainswhoiswhoandwhatstrategiesthecombatantsemploy.Welearnthattheghtevolved becausea woman had been beaten in her garden after having deniedgivingfoodtoavisitingrelative.Thefourthsectionofthelmattemptstomakesenseoftheghtintermsof kinshipandalliancetheoryundertheheading Simplied structure of the conict in terms of mar-riage and descent. The violent event can, according to Chag-non, beviewedas anexpressionof oldhostilities betweenthreelineages. Theghtcomestoastandstill exactlyatthepointwhereoneofthelineageswouldotherwisehavebeenforcedtosplitandchoosesidesbetweentheothertwo, re-sulting in a cleavage of the village. As Bill Nichols (2004:231)has pointed out, this abstract explanation probably representsthefurthestpointonecangetfromtheindexical prolmicevent as it actually happened. It is an account of underlyingsocial structures, which are invisible to the eye of the cameraandpossiblyalsototheeyesoftheactorsthemselves.In the last section, the lm presents yet another perspectivethroughwhichtounderstandtheght.Thelmmaterialisreplayed for the third time, but now edited unchronologicallytoemphasizeanarrativestructurequitedifferentfromthatof the kinship chart and the rst unedited observational take(Nichols 2004:231). Here one starts to wonder about featuresinthefootagethathavenotbeenaddressedintheanthro-pologicalexplanation.Seeingthesteelaxesyetathirdtime,one is pushed to question where these axes might have comefromandwhat impact thesurroundingworldhas ontheviolent event. Furthermore, what leaps to the eye is how dis-ruption of the chronological development of the eventthrough montage brings together two women in an argument.While the critical role of women as initiators and participantsintheghtisentirelyabsentinChagnonsexplanation,themanipulation of the footage in the last part of the lmstronglyemphasizesit.Linda Connor and Patsy Asch (2004:176) ap-preciatethismanipulation,asitmakescleartheinadequacyof the anthropological explanation. As the lmic compressionof time unfolds hitherto unseen layers of the social interaction,the in-depth thick ethnographic description of kinship andalliancestructuresisrenderedthin. Contrary to Hastrupsargumentaboutthehierarchybetween writing and lm, thelmic in this instance grows thick and comes to encompassandtranscendtheanthropologicalexplanation.Seen in relation to one another, the ve sequences add uptoamosaicimage, aphantom-likewhole,whichenablesusto experience and compare each perspective in relation to theothers. Theinconsistencies, dissonances, andgapsbetweenthe various contradicting viewpoints force us to consider whatyet other perspectives could reveal, thus making us create newimaginaryviewpointsthat expandintoinnity. Indeed, theextensive and persistent debate (Martinez 2004; Nichols 2004;Ruby2000:129)aboutthelmisitself atestimonytohow290 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012Figure 3. Gandhis Children (MacDougall 2008). A color version of this gure is available in the online edition of Current Anthropology.difcult it is to settle in any single interpretational perspective.Intheend, thereisnolongeracameratostandinforourseeing, andsotheviewpointsprovokedarenotthefamiliarsubjective regime of ordinary perception, but beyond humanvision. Indeed, throughtheabsenceof visibility, asenseofthe event as seen from everywhere is evoked as an impossiblephantomideal(Derrida1995:244). Inthissense, TheAxFight emerges as anexcess of visionthat canonlybeap-proached through the lack of visibility, emerging through thejuxtapositionof conictingperspectives. AsMerleau-Pontyhimself expresses it: Since the total invisible is always behind,orafter, orbetweentheaspectsweseeofit, thereisaccessto it only through an experience which like it, is wholly outsideofititself(Merleau-Ponty2000:136).BothTheAxFightandTheManwiththeMovieCamerause a wide range of cinematic devices to force the viewer outof thefamiliarregimeofsubject-centeredvision. Mosteth-nographic lmmakers of the observational school are certainlymorecautiousaboutusingsuchextensive cinematic manip-ulation. Yetalsowithinthistradition, wendpowerful ap-plicationsofmontage. MacDougallslmGandhisChildren(2008) provides an illuminating example. As already pointedout, thelmclearlyinscribes itself withinthetraditionofobservationalcinema.Nonetheless, in a few highly powerfulsequences, theuseof thehumanizedcamerahailedbyob-servational lmmakers is thoroughly subverted. Fromthe out-set, thelmtwistsourperspectivethroughaseriesofshotsfrom the outside of the childrens shelter to its interior: fromthehallwayofthehousetotherooftop, throughawindowto the balconies of the houses on the other side of the streetandoutagainatthestreet,beforenally settling at the eye-level perspective of the children, wrapped in blankets in theirbunk beds, slowly awakening (g. 3). MacDougalls montagecreatessuggestiveambiguitiesbetweeninteriorandexterior,presenceandabsence, niteandinnitespace. Thesesameambiguitiescontinuethroughoutthelm. First, however, itmoves ontoexplorethechildrens lives throughseries ofobservational camera takes in which the eye-level perspectiveofthe boys takes on an almost natural feel. The relationshipbetweenimageandworldbecomesvirtually transparent: weSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 291lookthroughtheeyesofachild, asitwere, totheactualitytheypointto. Yetatcertainsubtlemomentstheillusionofexperiencing life fromthe perspective of a childbecomesacutelyclear.This happens most forcefullyinascenefeaturingaboycryingandaskingtocomehometohisfamily. Astheboycontinues to weep, the act of watching him through the pas-sive viewpoint of a camera becomes increasingly unbearablenot only for the viewer, but also for MacDougall, whose cam-era faintly starts to shake before his assistant nally steps intothesceneandcomfortsthechild. Over several jump-cuts ofthe same camera shot, our viewpoint is inescapably split apartincollisionwiththe lmmakers perspective, theeye-levelperspective of the camera andthe perspective of theboy,whosedemeanor demands that thelmmakertakeaction.After this scene, each proceeding observational eye-level takeis forced upon us as a montage of our double and impossibleperspectiveaschildrenengagedinperceivingother childrenand as adults engaged in a strange form of self-deception. Nolongercanwerelysolelyononesinglesituatedperspective.We are thrown back and forth between the various actual andvirtual viewpointsprovokedbythelm. Thiswanderingofperspectives, each of which modies and objecties the others,results in a conglomerate or excess of visionwhat Merleau-Pontydenotesastheviewfrom everywherewhich belongstonooneinparticular, but pushes us toseethroughtheactuality of all particular viewpoints offered. The long takethehallmarkof observational cinemaistransformedintothemostdisruptiveanddisconcertingofmontageeffects.Before going further, it is worth making some preliminaryconclusionsonthebasisofthemontageatworkinTheAxFight and Gandhis Children. On the one hand, it is clear thateffectivelmmontagedoesnot necessarilyhavetoinvolvefast-pace editing or use of extradiegetic material. Neither doeslm montage necessarily need to include a large range of lmangles. Ontheotherhand, itisalsoclearthatthelongob-servational takeofthehumanizedcamerabynomeansau-tomaticallyallies us withthesocial realityof lmsubjects.Quitetothecontrary, infact: itisonlywhenobservationalcinema betrays its own realist commitment that the invisibledimensions of reality are evoked. These rupturing leapsemergeinpeculiar instances wherethehumanizedcamerafailstosustaintheworldit depicts, thusrevealingthatthereality presented is much larger than what is seen. As alreadyargued, theworkof montageappearslesseffectiveinlmsrelyingsolelyonpostmoderndeconstruction(seeMinh-ha1982). Disruption cannot, so to speak, work as disruption ofitself. It must be a disruption of something rather than noth-ing. Itisexactlyintheparadoxical tensionbetweenthein-sistence on a reality out there and the inevitable failures ofrecordingthisrealitythroughasubject-centeredperspectivethat the most powerful ruptures of montage emerge. This alsoimpliesthat theeffectsof montagemaynot easilybecon-structedbeforehandthroughactsof consciousthinking, asin, forexample, thefeaturelmsofGrifthandEisenstein,but rather seem to erupt unexpectedly in contradictions thatariseinthetensionbetweentheprolmic, the shooting andtheputtingtogetherofshotsduringediting.Clearly, thereis astrongsenseof ethics involvedinthemontageof bothTheAxFight andGandhis Children. Or-dinary human perception, which tells us that vision is locatedwhere our eyes are, is so deeply shattered by the multiplicationof perspectives in these lms that we nd ourselves decenteredinaninnitetotalityofviewsthatnolongeraffordsustheillusionof ourselves as theuniquecenterof theworld. Inwhatfollows, wemoveontoexplorehowthisapproachtoethnographiclmmakingresonateswithLevinassethicsofotherness.TheInvisibleFaceof theOtherAn often reported crisis in the careers of many anthropologistsisthepointwheretheyfeel thattheanalysestheywritearewideningratherthanreducingthegapbetweenthemselvesand the people they seek to understand. As Marilyn Strathern(1988:67)pointsout:Analytical languageappearstocreateitself asincreasinglymore complex and increasingly removed from the realitiesof theworldsitattemptstodelineate, andnotleastfromthelanguages inwhichpeoplethemselvesdescribethem.. . . There is thus an inbuilt sense of articiality to the wholeanthropologicalexercisewhichprompts the apparent so-lution that what one should be doing is aiming to simplify,torestoretheclarityofdirectcomprehension.Because of its presumed capacity for evoking the immediacyof social interaction and its incapacity for abstract theoreticallanguage, ethnographic lmmaking has often been identiedas the answer to this crisis. As previously described, the ethicalpotential of lm in anthropology is often understood to restin the way it returns our gaze to the commonalities of beinghuman (Grimshaw 2001:133; MacDougall 1998:259). Film, itisargued, canshowusanunsurpassedrichnessofdetail ofsubtle bodily gestures, small nonlinguistic signs, and shiftingfacial expressions that transcendthe cultural explanationsevoked in written anthropology. With such qualities in mind,MacDougall (2006:4)describeswhathecallstheautonomyofbeing:In ction lms as well as non-ction lms, we use foundmaterialsfromthisworld. Wefashionthemintowebsofsignication,butwithinthesewebsarecaughtglimpses ofbeing more unexpectedandpowerful thananything wecould create. . . . A good lm reects the interplay of mean-ingandbeing,anditsmeaningstakeintoaccount the au-tonomyofbeing.Meaningcaneasilyoverpowerbeing.Reading the literature on observational cinema, one could belet tothinkthat suchglimpses of beingmost likelyoccurwhentheintegrityoftheeventsportrayedinlmrushesisnot subjected to meanings imposed by lmmakers. In general,Henley(2004:115) argues, lmmakers shouldresist the292 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012temptation. . . toplayeithertheteacherortheartist, i.e.subjecting the rushes to such an imposing intellectual or aes-theticagendathat membersof theaudiencecannolongerdrawtheirownconclusionsabout thesignicanceof whattheyareseeing.But is it reallytruethat lmhas suchaprivilegedaccesstoautonomousbeing?MacDougall (2006:4)alsopointstothisproblemwhenstating that lmmakersand lm viewers are always already enmeshed in preconceivedmeanings. Consequently, thereisnosuchthingasadirectandinnocentaccesstobeing. Ratherthantryingtoprotectglimpsesofbeingfromwebsofsignication,theprimarycommitment of ethnographic lmmaking must, therefore, beto unsettle and dislodge those preconceived meanings. As wehavejustargued,themarvelous thing about The Ax Fight isexactly the way it combines modernist empiricism with post-modern forms of deconstruction (Ruby 2000:130) and, in theclashbetweenotherwiseincompatible perspectives, creates aspaceforfurtherimaginationabouttherealityoftheYano-mamo andtheproductionof thelmitself. Disruptionofourcommonsensevisionis, inotherwords, apreconditionforgettingafeelforthebeingofothers.HerewetakesupportfromEmmanuel Levinas for whomethicsandothernessgointandem. According to him, theself can neither appear nor sustain itself outside of its differ-entiation from other, which is why it is always and indispen-sablyobligedtopreservethealterityof theother(Levinas1969, 1987). To the anthropologist, there is, of course, nothingnew about this insight of the selfs relational dependency ontheethical other,but it is neverthelessimportant toun-derscore, sincethedictumoflettingviewersseeforthem-selves,advocatedbymuchobservational cinema, carriesadangerofdisregardingall thatwhichcannotbeseenintheparticular instance of lming (Loizos 1992:54; Weiner 1997).For Levinas, however, theencounter withtheotheris notreducibletothatwhichisvisiblealone.Beneaththeexpres-sions on the visible face is the invisible face, which cannot bedirectly perceived, visually depicted, or represented in writing.Thisinvisiblefaceconveys,accordingtoLevinas, an excessofothernessthatwhichcannotbereduced to the same(Wyschogrod2002:191).All lmsbywayoftheircontextualizationofimagesaddmeaning, dene, and determine the otherness of others, thusmaking visible what by denition cannot be visible, reducingwhatisirreducibleandbendingittotitsownneedsandends. This, we may add, appears to be especially true for theobservational approach, which by way of its ontological pri-ority to a shared humanity (Grimshaw 2001:133; MacDougall1998:258) easily precludes the possibility of something beinginnitely other. This is not to suggest that observational cin-ema never considers the otherness of others, but that it doessointerms ofa subject-centered perspective, which only al-lowsforanothernessthatthelmmakerandtheaudiencearealreadypreparedfor. GrimshawandRavetz(2009:539)describehowobservational cinemawasexplicitlydevelopedas an aesthetics that respected things for what they were, fortheir irreducibility and singularity. Nevertheless, this ethicalcodexisbasedontheunprivilegedsubjectivelmingex-perience of a normal human participant (Henley 2004:114).It is this subject-centered epistemology that we nd problem-atic. For Levinas (1987:55), it is exactly the claim of a sharedhumanity and a generic human perception, which succumbstotheimperialismofthesame.Ifindeedtheotherisin-nitelyother,thenwecannotaccesstheotherassuch.Thiswould, in Levinasian terms, be essentially unethical since wecannot assumethat thereis aprimordial sameness behinddifference. Like Merleau-Pontys normative ideal, Levinassinvisibleotherisasurplus, aplenitudeofperspectivesthatwe can never actually take up. Hence, unlike the observationalclaim to transcultural sameness, the argument advanced hereisthatalterityitselfisprimary.Alterityisbehindall humanrelationships,andbehindalteritythereisnothing.Whereas the ethics of observational cinema demands of thelmmakertobecautiouswithmanipulative effects that dis-turb the ontological primacy of a sharedhumanidentity(Grimshaw 2001:131), Levinass notion of the invisible otherrequiresthe necessity of such disturbances, since the camerafromtheoutsethasalready reduced the others innite oth-erness.In thewordsofT. M. S. Evens (2008:xiv), We must...be prepared tooffer ourselves up . . . to othernessnottoresist but insteadtoenhancethewayinwhichwearealways already open to the other in spite of ourselves. Whatdoesthis imply? It must imply the sacrice of the most pre-cious sacred cow of observational cinema: the subject. To beethical inthis senseis not at all tomaintainadistinctiveidentityorperspective. Onthecontrary, itinvolvesndingthe unstable zone of continuous becoming, where perspectivesareallowedtotravelandcrossthethresholdofperspectivalseeing. This only happens when the illusion of the camera asanextensionofhumanvisionisbroken.Previously, wediscussedMacDougalls most recent lm,Gandhis Children. Despite the fact that MacDougall as awriteris clearlyadheringtoobservational cinema, hislmworkseems totake us ina different direction. Thus, theensembleoflmshotsinGandhisChildrenthoroughlyde-stabilizes perceptions of what is home, not-home, security,insecurity, joy, despair, childhood, and adulthood. By contin-uouslytwistingthepartial totalitiesofferedineachcamerashot, any form of subject-centered view on the life of the boysat the childrens shelter is left indeterminate. If we experienceasenseof commonalities of beinghuman, thedissonancecreated through MacDougalls montage underscores that thisexperienceislittlemorethanasurfacephenomenon. Whatwe share with the children is what we think are common-alities. Thus, the lms montage counters the ever-latent dan-ger inrealist representationof attributingsameness totheirreducibleothernessofothers. Inourview, MacDougallasalmmaker here counters the transcultural ethics, proposedinhiswrittenwork,withanethicsofinnitealterity.Theethnographiclmtraditionoffersanumberofotherexamples where the mimetic dispositionof the camera isSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 293splintered in this way by montage. One prime example is JeanRouchswidelydebatedlmLesMa tresFous(1955), whichshowsahaukaspirit-possessioncultinAccraduring Britishcolonial rule. LikeTheAxFight, thelmemergesasajux-tapositionofseveralperspectivesandcommentaries that donotatallcorrespondinaone-to-oneconcordance. A wide-spreadbut inPaul Henleys (2006:737) viewmisguidedreading of the lm is that the hauka cult is a parodic resistanceand subversion of imperial power. This interpretation ismainlyevokedbyRouchsjuxtapositionofashotfeaturinghaukaperformerscrackinganeggontheheadof astatue,presumably representing the British governor, with a shot ofthereal governor wearingawhiteplumedhelmet (Russell1999:224; Taussig1993: 242). Henley(2006:754), however,nds sufcient evidenceinthelmfootageandinethno-graphicdescriptions onspirit possessioninWest Africatoarguethat,ratherthan an example of counterhegemonic re-sistance, theculticeventisinfactafertilityritual,modeledontheNorthAfricanzarcult, whereritual participantsat-tempttoassimilatethepowerofinuential guresforreli-gious purposes. Thus, Henley (2006:743) closely evaluates thelm footage on the basis of its assumed correspondence withhistoricalrealityalongwiththeethnographicliterature.But canandshouldalmbejudgedaccordingtohowfaithfullyit corresponds tothings andeventsintheactualworld?Herewehavepursuedanalternative view on ethno-graphic lmmakinga view in which its task is not to mimicsocialrealitybutrathertotranscendourperception of it. Afaithful correspondence or delity between representation andour human perception of actuality is not only impossible butalso unwanted. Film can express social reality only by makingit alive againthroughtamperingwithits source material.Rouch understood this, which is why he orchestrated his shotsandcommentariessoastoprovokemultiple,contradictory,and dissonant readings, neither of which was allowed fully todominate. Thus, Les Ma tres Fous allows us access to the ex-cessivemysteriesof thehaukacult, exactlybyrejectinganysingle perspective as its interpretative framework. Indeed, thisisalsothe reason why Henley (2006:757) must acknowledgethatthemarvelousthingaboutLesMa tresFousistheim-possibility of xating and consuming the event in any uniformperspective.ThePlacefor FilmandtheInvisibleinAnthropologyAccordingtoHastrup(1992:21),thegeneralpurpose of an-thropologyistoexpandthesocioculturalworldswelivein.The means to this end is the creation of analytical categories.Only through such abstractions is it possible to transcend thelimitationsof establishedforms. MarilynStrathernsuggeststhat this can be done in the conjunction between deconstruc-tivefeminismandananthropologyaimedatcreatingade-quatedescription.She writes: If my aims are the syntheticaims of anadequatedescription, myanalysis must deploydeliberatectionstothatend. . . . Thequestionishowtodisplace[ourmetaphors]mosteffectively(Strathern1988:10,12).AmiriaHenare,MartinHolbraad,and Sari Wastell (2007:710) haverecentlysummarizedhowStrathernsanalyticalframeworkamountstoaquietrevolutionagainstthean-thropological axiomthat peoplemayhavedifferent world-viewsbutultimatelyinhabitthesameworld. Whatanthro-pologyshouldbeabout,theysuggest,istoupturnour ownassumptions so as to make room for imagining the possibilityof people inhabiting a multiplicity of worlds. This echoes theLevinasianclaimthat respect fortheothersalterityshouldnot be equatedwiththe mistakenviewthat all alterityisderivedfromasharedexistential ground. Ifinformantstellus that thereis suchathingas apowerpowder,thean-thropological exercise must be not about translating the ideaof a powerpowder into concepts we already know, but rather,as Holbraad (2007:204) asserts, about upturning our as-sumptionssoastomakeitpossibleforustoimaginehowpowderinthisworldactuallyispower.Our argument is in line with this understanding of the roleof anthropology. While these writers conceive of anthropologymainly as a linguistic enterprise, the montage of ethnographiclms provides us with a complementary and resourcefulmeans of making us imagine other peoples worlds. Althoughthestanceof theabove-mentionedauthorsisgroundedinthehumble. . . admissionthatourconcepts. . . must,bydenition, be inadequate to translate different ones (Henare,Holbraad, andWastell 2007:12), theworkof montagethatwe have advocated is based on the admission that our ordinaryvision must by denition be inadequate as a tool for under-standingothers. AlthoughHolbraad(2007)effectively ex-plains the importance of conceptualization for experience andthatexperiencecannotbeconceivedofasseparateorpriortoconceptualization, we may note that, despite his high-pitchedtheoretical reasoning, therealityofpowerpowderisstill hardforustoimagine. This, weargue, mayinpartbecausedbythefactthathisanalysisremainsalinguisticen-terprise and as such addresses only a narrow spectrum of ourimaginativefaculties.Indeed, asthecelebratedfMRIscansofthehumanbrainindicate, the greater part of abstract thinking is not connedtolinguisticconceptualization,butappearstobeconcernedwithmultipleformsofsensory abstractionparticularly, vi-sual abstraction (Nijland 2006:3839; Roepstorff 2008:2052).Filmisamediuminwhichwecanplaywithanddevelopsuchformsof abstraction. Aworldwherepowderispowerisformanyaninvisibleworld.Ratherthanvisualizing sucha world through theoretical reasoning or by reducing it to itsvisible manifestations, the workof montage that we havearguedfor here is a technique for evokingthat worldbymaintainingits liningof invisibility. It is onlyinthegapsbetween its visual manifestations that its magico-religious re-alitycanappear. Wecontendthat this entailsrejectingthenotion of imitating the human eye as lms duty. As we have294 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012seen,itisexactlywhenthe mimetic dogma of the camera isviolated, when the mechanical eye detaches from our subject-centeredvision,thatweintuittheinvisibleinitsownright.Ethnographic lmmaking provides knowledge of social realitynot by reecting its details photographically, but by disruptingthe taking at face value of its visible facade through montage.But althoughethnographic lmmaking discovers realityonlybytranscendingitthroughcinematicmanipulations, itshouldnotghtagainstitsafnitytorealismsohardastobecome totallyabstract. This, as wehaveargued, leads tonothingbutobscurehaze. Constructionshouldbeameansof enhancingourunderstandingof social life. Whatisim-portant is tostriketheright balancebetweenrealismandconstructivism, simplicity and complexity, resonance and dis-sonance.Theeffectiveimagemustholdthesefactors poisedintensionwitheachother, ratherthansubscribingsingle-mindedlytoanyoneof them. Onlythencanethnographiclmspushusbeyondthefrontiersofthevisibleworldintotheunchartedregionsoftheinvisible.AcknowledgmentsWewouldliketothankDavid MacDougall, Peter Crawford,Keir Martin, Ton Otto, Jakob Hgel, and the ve anonymousreviewers of Current Anthropology for providing much-neededcriticisms. Previous drafts of the article were presented at theEuropean Association of Social Anthropologists BiennialMeetinginLjubljana,August2008,andatthe TransculturalMontageconferenceatMoesgardMuseum,August2009.CommentsRebecca EmpsonDepartmentofAnthropology,UniversityCollegeLondon,14Tavi-tonStreet,LondonWC1H0BW,UnitedKingdom(r.empson@ucl.ac.uk). 31X11Thisfascinatingarticleputsforwardanewmethodforeth-nographic lmmaking. By incorporating disruptive mo-ments of montage (both the juxtaposition of frames, and thearrangementsofthingsinasingleshot),lmmakerswillbeabletopresent multipleperspectivesonasingleeventandguide the audience to different ways of seeing the world. Thesepossibilitiesarenotaffordedinwritten anthropology, whichaddress only a narrow spectrum of our imaginative faculties,nor aretheypossibleinobservational lmmakingwithitsemphasis on long shots that risk dulling the subtleties of thelivedworld.Clearly,whatisshowninlmandwriting is not all thereis toanevent, andSuhrandWillerslevarekeentondamethod by which to reveal what they call the invisible thatis known but is not always visible to us. A camera is certainlynot a person, but the mechanical nature of the medium, theysuggest, can be used to our advantage. Here, the interventionof montage enables an enhanced perception of social realities.Notethewordintervention. Puremontageleadstonothingbut an obscure haze, something which Suhr and Willerslevwarnagainst. Instead, weneedtostriketherightbalancebetweenrealismandconstructivism(similarity/difference,single/multiple, linearity/disruption). AnexcellentreviewofTimothyAschandNapoleonChagnonslmTheAxeFight(1975)illustratestheproductiveuseofdifferentinterpreta-tionsofasingleevent, challengingtheviewersreceivedin-terpretation of a lm and presenting several points of view.Twoquestionsimmediatelycometomind.First,itisnotat all clear what the invisible is that the authors argue can berevealedthroughthis technique. Is it simplyanother per-spectiveofanevent, orisitsomethingthatispartofwhatwe are seeing, something we may perceive, but is not visible?Second, howexactlycanmontage, asamethod, reveal thisin a way that observational lm cannot? If it simply amountstoshowingdifferent perspectivesof asinglelampinquicksuccession as an interlude to a story about a lamp, this is notthe same as perceiving the reason for a certain lamp existinginacertainroomataparticularmomentintime.Muchofthis confusion comes from a slippage between the terms per-ception and vision. Perception is not only based on vision.Forexample, Imayperceivethatthereissomeseriousnessto the situation, but this is not something visible to the humaneye. This comes from a host of other ways of knowing. Andmaybeknowingiswhattheauthorsmeanwhentheytalkof perceiving, apprehending, or anticipating the back side ofanobject?Perceptioninthissenseisaboutviewsfunda-mentallydifferent fromthosegiventous inordinaryper-ception.Whatexactlycanberevealed throughthis medium is notalwaysclear.Indeeditsometimesseemsasifitis confusionthat the authors wish to highlight, so that it is through con-fusionthatadifferentperceptioninitselfisachieved. Notethat theydonot stress adifferent perceptionof something(that something is never clearly dened), but a different per-ception, or way of seeing in itself. It is clear that this differentwayofseeingamountstomorethanthedepthperception[createdby] the distance betweenthe twoeyes over thecamerasone.Maybewhattheymeanhereisthatlm,as amedium, can dislodge and unhinge our commonsense vision,allowing for different kinds of perceptions. Yet it is not certainhowtheydifferentiatethisfrompostmodernformsof dis-ruptioninwriting.Anykindoflmisapolitical statement, aversionandastatement. But ratherthanemphasizethesharedhumanityandcommonalityof waysof seeing(asemphasizedinob-servational cinema), theystresstheneedfordifferenceandotherness in order to challenge our sense of vision. This is toemphasizealterityanddifferenceoversimilarityandsame-ness. Montage, they argue, can question received assumptions,along the lines arguedby Henare, Holbraad, andWastell(2007). TheproblemasIseeitisthatthemeansbywhichSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 295theyproposethiscanbeachievedisnot initself basedonany ethnographic underpinning. Montage is not a local modeof displacing, disrupting, andrevealinga different wayofviewingtheworld. Inthis sense, if wearetofollowtheirargument concerning the potential of montage for multiplic-ity, they are proposing a single method for multiple forms ofvision,somethingobservationalcinemaalreadyachieves.MartinHolbraadDepartmentofAnthropology,UniversityCollegeLondon,14Tavi-tonStreet,LondonWC1H0BW,UnitedKingdom(m.holbraad@ucl.ac.uk). 31X11As somethingof anunreconstructediconophobemyself, IndgreatmeritinthewaySuhrandWillerslevsambitiousarticlerelatessometimesratherparochial debatesaboutthepros andcons of ethnographic lmas ananthropologicalmedium to concerns that go to the heart of anthropology asanintellectual project. Their coreargument is elegant andclever: weddedtotheideals of observational cinema, theyshow that traditional defenses of ethnographic lm highlightitsabilitytoreveal thedetail ofsocial lifeasethnographersand ethnographic subjects alike experience it, which is so oftenmissedinthe processes of abstractionthat text-basedan-thropological analysisinvolves. Theassumptionhereisthatthecamerasroleistoenhancetheworkofthehumaneyesoas toreveal aspects of ethnographicexperiencethat gounnoticed. But what if the real anthropological challenge werethatofrevealing, notunnoticedaspectsoflivedexperience,but rather aspects of that experience that remain constitutivelyinvisible? Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, the authors identify theideal viewfromeverywhere,comprisingall possibleper-ceptual perspectives, astheconditionof possibilityforanyactual perception. Montage, whichexploresthetensionbe-tweenpossibleandimpossiblevantage points of perception,is thenproposedasaprimemeansforapproximatingthisvirtual ideal. So, it is precisely because it is unlike the humaneye that the camera canreveal the constitutively invisiblerealms of human experience, by creatively disrupting ordinaryperceptionsthroughmontage.Attractiveasonemayndsuchaparadoxical defenseofthecinematiceyeasagaugeof theinvisible, therearealsodifcultiesinthelogicofthiscomplexargument. In partic-ular, it is unclear how Merleau-Pontys thesis about the con-ditions of possibility of vision (perception) can be transposedonto an argument that, as it seems to me, is really about theconditions of possibility of anthropological understanding(conception). Infact, onemaywonderwhetherpartofthedifcultyherelies withthenotionof perspective,whichseemstoprovidethebridgefromperceptiontoconceptionintheauthors syllogism. Forexample, arethevariousper-spectives that one may (or may not) take upon a Danish lampin order visually to perceive it equivalent to the various per-spectivesChagnondid(or, throughmontage, didnot)takeuponaYanomamo axeght inorder anthropologicallytounderstandit? If so, inwhat sense? Indeed, arequestionsregardingthealterityinvolvedincasessuchasthelatter,astheauthorssuggest, alsorelevanttotheconundrumsofperceptionsuchastheformer?Again,howso?Without a clearer account on this score, one is tempted tosuggestthatMerleau-Pontysphilosophyofperceptionmaynot provide the best point of departure for a defense of lmicmontage as an aid to anthropological understanding. Indeed,mainlybywayoffacilitating thinking on this front, I wouldask whether Merleau-Pontys friend and admirer Levi-Straussmight not, anthropologicallyspeaking, provideamoreob-vious point of reference here. For it strikes me that the waysin which the authors sing the virtues of montage as a modalityof comprehension (as opposed to mere apprehension, or, bet-ter, as a peculiar mode of fusing the two) is remarkably similartoLevi-Strausssfamous argument about the science of theconcrete(Levi-Strauss1966).Signs,arguedLevi-Strauss, aspeculiar intermediaries between perceptions and conceptions,are the currency of a savage thought that proceeds by endlesslyrearrangingitsrawmaterialsbywayofthenoveljuxtaposi-tions of bricolage, exploiting the differences between them,soastoarriveatnovel possibilitiesofmeaning.Inaratherliteralsense,withintheeconomyoflmic footage, montagewould appear to be also a form of bricolage in just this waysimply substituting image or shot for sign would appeartotakeusstraightbacktothisfamiliaranthropologicalter-ritory. Such a transposition, arguably, would speak directly toWillreslevandSuhrs abidingconcernwithcomparingtheanalyticalindeedconceptualpossibilities of ethnographiclmwiththoseof anthropological texts. Certainly, inLevi-Strausss concern with rehabilitating savage thought from ha-bitualchargesofirrationality,andtheauthorsdesiretoseelm as a medium for sophisticated anthropological thinking,there may be parallels worth exploring. Film, myth, and ritual,then, wouldemergeasthemost pertinent triptychforan-thropological comparisoninthiscontext(cf.Le vi-Strauss1978,1981).AndrewIrvingDepartmentofAnthropologyandGranadaCentreforVisualAn-thropology,UniversityofManchester,OxfordRoad,ManchesterM139PL,UnitedKingdom(andrew.irving@manchester.ac.uk). 8XI11It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances,declaredOscarWilde. The true mystery of the world is thevisible, not the invisible: conrming how the study of surfaceappearancesisnottobeconcernedwiththe shallow, super-cial, and trivial. However, Wilde then cautioned, Those whogo beneath the surface do so at their peril (1992:3). In askingiflmcanshowtheinvisibleorremainstiedtothevisible,296 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012WillerslevandSuhrchallengeanthropologytoput itself inperil by venturing beneath the surface to elicit the invisibledimensionsofsociallife.So what might such an anthropology look like? What epis-temologicalandontologicaladjustmentsarerequired to en-gagewiththeinvisible, andwhat counts as evidence? Thepersistent relationshipbetweenvisionandevidenceissug-gestedbytheetymologyof evidenceinvidere(tosee). Butwheneverwegetunderthesurface,likeafarmerdiggingintheeld,allthatisrevealedarefurthersurfaces: the unseenand the hidden rather than invisible. To what extent, therefore,istheinvisiblebeingusedinthisarticleasametaphorforthe unseen and unknown? Or for tacit, inchoate, or nonprop-ositionalrealmsofexperience?DrawingonLevinas, WillerslevandSuhrsuggestanyat-tempttounderstandorrepresent otherness, whether in textor lm, relies upon translating the Others world into familiarcategoriestomakethemknownandrepresentablethroughethnographicwritingandlmsdigital code. This misrecog-nition, even violence, imposed on the Other willfully ignoresthe limits of human perception and can never represent themintheirentirety.Indeed,ifwecanonly observe ourselves asanobject andcannotknoworcompletelyunderstandour-selves (Kant 2006), then how can we claim to know the Other?Epistemologicalandmoralrecognition ofthe irreducible al-terityof theOthermeansmanyof theirthoughts, actions,andbehaviorsaredestinedtoremainunknownorinvisibleandmayappeartousashighlyirrational orperhapseveninsane. Nevertheless, Willerslev and Suhr argue, we must resisttheerroneous, butepistemologicallyconvenient,practiceofunderstandingtheiractionsbysimplytranslatingthemintothecategoriesofSame.As we cannot fully comprehend otherness, Levinas suggestsourprimarydutyisourethical responsibilitytowardthem.Thus, rather than reducing the Other to a murderous (lmed)object of our ownmaking and imaginationor imposingmeaningontheirhiddendimensions, weneedtorecognizethelimitsof understandingandrepresentation, atthelevelof boththehumanandmechanical eye. Fortodosoistounderstandhownitude and failure are necessary to under-standing other people and conrms our limits as unnished,mortalbeingswhoarenotgodsorevensmallgods.Itthenbecomesbothamoralandapractical question ofusing lm, as nite beings withincompleteknowledgeofourselves, other persons, and the world, to examine the nec-essaryconditionsthat makemutual perceptionandunder-standing possible. Animaginedmutuality of the worldwhich for Willerslev and Suhr concerns those dimensions ofsocial life agreed to exist beyond visionoffers a frameworkfor understanding the process whereby shared, intersubjectivemodes of perception, belief, and action emerge among groups.Sharedrealityis not thereforepregivenbyvirtueof beinghuman but is formed through an active process of interactionbetweenself andothersincludingtheanthropologist, in-formant, andaudiencewherebydifferenceismadevisibleand negotiated. As such, strangeness, diversity, and othernessare not the opposite of mutuality but the conditions that bringitintobeing.Consequently, as a eldwork science::documentary art (Davis2000) that combines practical methods and ethnographic rep-resentation, WillerslevandSuhrproposeanthropologycanuselmasastrategyforofferingglimpsesintounseenandunknownworlds. Forwhileobservationallmmakingoftenoverlookstheunseendimensionsofhumanlife, theyarguelm possesses a potentiality for revealing the invisible, not ina literal sense, but through the destabilizing effects of montagewhereby the correspondence betweenvisionandrealityismadestrange.Thus,ratherthanasystematicunderstandingoftheinvisible(whichwouldsimplytranslate the unknownintotheSame), theysuggestmontageoffersapractical ap-proachinwhichsocial lifeis denaturalizedinthewaytheRussian Formalists used poetry to take words and objects fromordinary, everydayusageandthenrecastthemthroughun-familiareyes.Crucially, WillerslevandSuhr argue, ananthropologicalapproach to visual ostranenie relies upon maintaining the ten-sionbetweenlmseffectiverepresentation of reality and itsoccasional, and therefore only then effective, disruptionthroughmontage. Likethefool inaShakespeareantragedywho interrupts the action and speaks directly to the audienceabouttruthsthatwouldotherwiseremainhidden, montageis alsoawell-worntechniquethat suspends thedominantnarrative.Indoingso,thetheoretical and documentary im-perative found in observational lmcan be productivelytransformedintoethnographicallygroundedmodesof dis-ruptiontocommunicateinvisibleandunarticulatedtruthsnotasstaticpropositionsbutasemergentinaction, raisingthepossibilitythatsomethinglikeadramamightemergefromtheotherwisesmoothsurfacesofsocial life(Turner1982:9).Jens KreinathDepartmentofAnthropology,WichitaStateUniversity,216NeffHall,1845FairmountStreet,Wichita,Kansas67260-0052,U.S.A.(jens.kreinath@wichita.edu). 8XII11The article Can Film Show the Invisible? presents a theoret-ically challenging attempt to recongure anthropological lm-makingonthebasisof montagethecompositionofvisualimages or juxtaposition of successive lm shots as a cinemato-graphic technique. Taking montage as the key technique forcinematographic production, Suhr and Willerslev stress the dif-ferencebetweenthehumaneyeandthecameraeye.Theycriticize the humanized camera eye in observational cinemafor being unable to disturb commonsense viewpoints of humanperception. Suhr and Willerslev not only call into question whattheylabel themimeticdogma,but theyalsoobject totraditionsin social anthropology that criticize visual anthro-SuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 297pologyorquestionitspotential topresentaninsidersper-spective. In proposing a theoretical framework that can showmultidimensional visual descriptions of indigenous view-points to substitute written ethnographies through visual ac-counts,SuhrandWillerslev attempt to solve the problem ofmimesis in ethnographic lmmaking by proposing a positiveanswertothequestionof thetitle. Whilearguingthat thedifferencebetweenthehumaneyeandthecameraeyeiskeyforthis breakthroughinrepresentingtheinvisible, therather tempered answer they give nally negates the proposedquestion: montageonlyconstitutesthemomentof ruptureintheperspectival vision, andthereforelmcannot show,but can only reveal or elude to, the invisible in its own right,notablythroughtheworkofmontage.The opposition Suhr and Willerslev construct between thecinema of duration (with its focus on vision, as representedby the observational cinema) and the cinema of disruption(with its use of montage, as exemplied by the cinema verite)ismorethanquestionable. Althougheventhediscontinuityanddisruptionbetween the single picture frames go beyondtheperceptionandthusremaininvisibletothehumaneye,the streaming of any lm images in a sequential order createstheimageof continuityandduration. Thespeedinguporslowing down of lm streaming can reveal further dimensionsofsocialrealityandinteraction otherwise inaccessible to thehumaneye.Stressingmontageastheonlydevice that inter-rupts thedurationinthevisual gaze, Suhr andWillerslevprimarily focus on the spatial dimension in the perspectivityof human vision, leading them to neglect the inherently tem-poral condition of human vision. In this respect, they fail toaddressvariousnotionsofsequence,tempo, and movementin the visual eld or to consider the processes of perception,cognition,andimaginationintheproduction and receptionofcinematographicdevices.Besides their boldepistemological claims andaudaciousrhetorical devicesSuhrandWillerslevemploy,somefunda-mental theoretical problems underlyingtheirargument re-mainunresolved. Oneof themainissuesistheconceptoftheinvisible.Even thoughit is described as a quality relatedtoeverythingthatisinaccessible to the three-dimensionalityof human perception, the invisible becomes an object of studyinitself, despitethatitisoutlinedasaconditionofhumanperspective. The invisible is dened in terms of different phe-nomenological traditions withtheradical otherness intheperspectivityof humanperceptiona` laLevinasorwiththeinherent sociability of human vision a` la Merleau-Ponty. Leav-ingasidethelackofattentiontotheobviousdifferencesintheir theoretical assumptions, the arguments of Suhr andWillerslev regarding the juxtaposition of perspectives as con-structed by cinematographic techniques of montage are in nowayrelatedtojargon-ladenterms, suchastheviewfromeverywhere, excess of visibility, or multispatial and multi-temporalviewingexperiences. These terms remain concep-tually vague, if not empty, when one considers the totalizingimplicationsof thelanguageusedtodescribethesuper-humanvisionorthesuper-real qualityofthecinemato-graphictechniquesofmontage.Onetraditionoflmmakingthatbesttsthistheoreticalframeworkcanbe foundinLeni Riefenstahls work. Inasimilar vein as Suhr and Willerslev, she aims to render visibleconcealedpowerrelationsthroughmontage. The manipula-tion of the lmic material through montage, which Suhr andWillerslev strongly advocate, is one of the most commonfeatures of Riefenstahls cinematographic account to make hervisual imageriesmoretemptingandpersuasive. InTriumphof the Will (1935)her powerful cinematographic account ofthe 1934 Rally of the National Socialist Party in NurnbergRiefenstahl visuallydepictspowerrelationsinawaythatisfurtherenhancedthroughhermontagetechniques, suchasjuxtaposing different perspectives fromopposite angles.Moreover, goingbeyondthenaivedogmaof mimeticrep-resentationandobservationalcamera,theexcess of visioninRiefenstahlsmontagetechniquealsoisusedtosimulateaninsidersperspectiveputtingitthroughdifferentanglesofthecameratoachieveamerelypassiveandreceptivepo-sition. When one considers this example, Suhr and Willerslevdonot seem to determine the various implications and pos-sibleconsequences of their suggestedattempt tousetech-nological devices, such as manipulation of lmmaterialthroughmontage,toeludetheinvisibleandcapturethe in-digenous perspective. In their attempt to argue how lm canshowtheinvisible, theystill adheretothemimeticdogma:the invisible is imitated through the invisible devices of mon-tage, whichotherthantheobservational cinemarequireimaginationratherthanvision.Bill NicholsDepartmentofCinema,SanFranciscoStateUniversity,1600Hol-lowayAvenue,SanFrancisco,California94132,U.S.A.(billnichols99@gmail.com).20XI11SuhrandWillerslevbroachacrucialissue:Howcanethno-graphiclmcontributetounderstandingconceptsandcat-egories that escape the eld of vision and the gaze of a camera?Theirdiscussionoscillatesbetweentwokeyqualitiesofthecinematicimage:indexicality and realism. Indexicality refersto the precision of the correspondence: a photographic image,likeangerprint andunlikeasketchorpainting, bearsanexact resemblance to what it refers to (Nichols 2010). Realism,unlike the various modernisms (expressionism, surrealism,etc.) and postmodernism (with its stress on surface, citation,and repetition) minimizes its felt presence as a style to max-imizethefelt presenceof whatit refersto. Traditional his-toriansoftencriticizehistorical lmsforfactual errors: thelm anchors itself in a historical moment with indexical butctionalizedlinksthatareincorrect. Historydidnthappenasthelmpurportsit did. Traditional anthropologists oftencriticizeethnographiclmsforconceptual failuresandsty-298 CurrentAnthropology Volume53,Number3,June2012listic excess: inadequate or incorrect concepts are grafted ontoa lmed situation(usually with voice-over), or the lm-makersstyleobscurestheindexicalityoftheimagebeneathanexpressiveshroudof thelmmakers design. Theessayurgesustobeholdwhatwehavefailedtosee: thetraceofanencounterandthemysteryofbeing(human).Thisoscillationmaybeabitofahandicap. Itbringstheessayintotheanthropological mainstream,withvitalquali-cations, but displacesit fromwhat montageachievesinabroader sense. Rather than argue for showing the invisible, itmaybemoreproductivetoask, as D. W. Grifthhimselfasked, how lms cause us to see anew, to see in the senseof comprehend or verstehen what may have been in our visualeldandyet goneunattachedtoasystemof signication.Film, as semiologists have argued since the 1960s, is a languagewithout a grammar. And as Christian Metz argued, it is prin-cipally through editing, or montage, that it achieves its statusas alanguage, thecentralityof longtakes toethnographicrealism notwithstanding (Metz 1974). A language, of course,isnotatransparentcopyofreality, indexically or otherwise.Alanguageallowsustospeakaboutreality andin doing sotoaffordothersthechancetoseeitanew. Montage, asthegoldengatewaytodiscourse,isthemeansofdoingso.Of particular signicance are two potential forms of seeinganew: thesensoryexperienceof immersiveinvolvement inwhat occurs infront of a camera, whichindexicalityandrealism can both amplify, and the representation of embodiedconduct that enacts values andbeliefs, concepts, andcate-goriestacitly.Wemay name such concepts, in voice-over, asinanessay, but morecruciallywewitness their unnamedmanifestation, their embodiment ingesture, expression,movement, rhythm, andspeech. Sweetgrass (2009), forex-ample, immerses us in the day-to-day world of sheepherdersinthehighmountainpasturesofMontana.Withnovoice-over, everyday conversation (and diatribes), and a soundtrackofremarkable,intensiedpresence,thelm is far more im-mersive and experiential than informational or conceptual. Itcontributessomethingelse, somethinglmlanguagemakespossibletoadegreewrittenlanguagedoesnot.Amongthethingsthatndembodimentishowthelm-maker conducts herself in the presence of an other. A lm notonly possesses an indexical trace of what occurred in front ofthe camera, and sound recorder, but also an indexical trace ofhowthelmmakerundertooktoencounterothers. Itisthetraceofanencounter. Filmlanguagemakesmanifestaspectsof its speaker as well as its referent, and in particular it allowsus to see, in both a conceptual and experiential sense, whatqualities this manifestationdisplays. This places us at someremove from the should vocabulary they attribute to Henley(2004), which serves to establish limits and enforce compliancewitha (anthropological) doxa. We enter a place of encounterthat they refer to as an unstable zone of continuous becoming.This is a far cry from adherence to indexical facts or to modestinterruptions of arealist stylebymontage. It is toclaimadistinctivevoicefor ethnographiclm. Thequalitytheysoclearly identify, and rightly stress, is the way in which lm, asa distinct language, opens onto a eld of discursive encounterbetweenlmmaker, subject,andviewerasrich,variable,andunstable as the act of being (human) allows.ReplyWe are grateful to the commentators for critically addressingour text. It is a thrill to receive so much high-quality feedbackandtoseethevigorousdiscussionsthat ourargument hascaused,stretchingfromwarningsof the danger that our ap-proach may substitute multiple local perspectives with a singleuniversal method(Empson)overaccusationsofananti-humanism reminiscent of the propaganda lms of Leni Rie-fenstahl (Kreinath) to arguments for even more radically free-oatingmontageasanewdistinctivevoiceofethnographiclmmaking(Nichols).Wetakeallofthesecommentariesasbeing suggestive of the acute need to rethink the broader issuesofvisual anthropology and what montage may have to offeranthropology in general. Since there is more food for thoughtthanwecanpossiblydigestwithinthewordlimit,we focusonsomeof therecurrent questions. Weapologizefor notaddressingthemall.Letusbeginwithafewclarifyingremarks about what wemeanbythe invisibleandthe potential of montageforaddressingitsomethingthat remains unclear toEmpsonandperhapstoothersaswell. Inthearticle, wediscusstheso-calledviewfromeverywhereandtheothernessoftheotheras examples of theinvisible, whichwebroadlyun-derstand as that which constitutes the background or premiseof visibility, but which must hide itself in making things andpeople visible. However, the invisible is, at least in principle,asKreinathsuggests, everythingthat isinaccessibletothethree-dimensionality of humanperception or, more pre-cisely, that whichallows us toperceivetheworldthree-dimensionally. Montages capacitytoevoketheinvisibleissummarizedbyIrvinginaperhapsclearerprosethanourown, when he writes: Rather than a systematic understandingoftheinvisible(whichwouldsimplytranslate the unknownintotheSame). . . montageoffersapractical approachinwhichsocial lifeis denaturalized[byrecastingit] throughunfamiliareyes.Still, weinsistonanotionoftheinvisibleasnotsimplytheunseen(Irving),butasthatwhichcannotbe seen. The defamiliarization of montage, therefore, cannotshow, but only evoke the invisible through the orchestrationof different perspectives, encroaching upon one another.Montage can break the visual skin of the world, so to speak,butitcannevershowtheinvisibleinitself.This stancedoes not implyaconfuseduseof thetermsvisionandunderstandingorperceptionandconcep-tionassuggestedbyEmpsonandHolbraad, butratherthecollapse of such dichotomies. As Nichols puts it, lm languageSuhrandWillerslev MontageinEthnographicFilmmaking 299makes manifest aspects of its speaker as well as its referent, andinparticular it allows us tosee inbothaconceptual andexperientialsense, whatqualitiesthismanifestationdisplays.EmpsonsuggeststheDeleuziantermthe virtual as anotherway of talking about the invisible. Just as the distinctionbetweenthe actual and the virtual in Deleuzes work does not cor-respondtoasimpledichotomybetweenwhatisperceivedasopposed to what is conceptualized, the invisible in our outlinecontains bothperceptionandconceptionwithin. Theviewfromeverywhere is neither perceivable nor entirely conceivablefromanyhumanposition,yetitisnonethelesspresent by acertain absence (Merleau-Ponty 2000:187) in any actual per-spective. While it may be outlined as a theory, its true fullnessremainsunthinkable: beyondconceptualization.Assuch,theinvisibleremains nothingbut avirtual phantasy(Caputo1997:162), asynonymfortheimpossible(Derrida1991:7).By means of montage, we may address this very gure of theimpossible,butonlybyshatteringanyattemptatreducingitto set forms of visibility.It can be feared that on the other side of such a shatteringthroughmontage, anewconstellationof ordermaybeas-sembledandnaturalizedandagainstthisbothKreinathandEmpsonwarn. Theiralert isfurtherfueledbyoures-sentially antihumanist take on vision and cinema. Kreinathevenidenties an aspiration toward Nazism, when he writesthat thetraditionof lmmakingthat best ts[our]theo-reticalframeworkcanbefoundinLeniRiefenstahls work.To obviate any misunderstandings, let us clarify that our anti-humanismsimplyimplies that wereject themythheldbyobservationalcinemathatvisionbeginsandendsintheex-perience of the human subject along with its supposition that,thanks to our shared humanity, we may get to others modesof seeing simply by making lm technology mimic embodiedmodes of being-in-the-world. This humanist ideology has re-sulted in an aesthetics that favors handheld, sync-sound cam-era and which seeks to minimize articially imposed montagesothatinthewords of Nicholstheindexicalityof theimage [is not obscured] beneath an expressive shroud of thelmmakersdesign.Contrarytothis, weholdthat thewaysinwhichothersperceivetheworldare ultimately inaccessible to us, and thisvery ssure is itself a conditionfor our engagement withotherness. As Irving eloquently summarizes it: Shared realityisnot...pregivenbyvirtueofbeinghuman but is formedthroughanactive process of interactionbetweenself andothersincludingtheanthropologist, informant, andaudi-encewhereby difference is made visible and negotiated. Assuch, strangeness, diversity, and otherness are not the oppositeofmutualitybuttheconditionsthatbringitintobeing.Toacknowledge the antihumanist premise of vision is, webelieve, a valuable advance, but it is true as suggestedbyKreinath that it makes for difculties with regard to the roleof human subjects and their intentions. In Riefenstahls lms,the subject is reduced to a merely passive and receptive po-sition(Kreinath), aplaceormediumwherethecinemato-graphic truth speaks itself, thus placing the viewer in the kindof servility that the Nazi ideology advocated for the GermanpeoplebeforetheFuhrer. ToKreinath, ourproposedalter-nativetotheimperioussubject-centeredontologyofobser-vational cinem