International Conference “What the invisible is. Anthropological perspectives from East Eurasia and beyond”

Overview

by Gregory Delaplace and Ippei Shimamura

It has now become commonplace for anthropologists to stress that the spirit of Modernity, in the West and beyond, is suffused with invisible beings and forces, quite permeable actually to the “magical thinking” that 19th century scholars and public figures (not least self-styled “modern magicians”) theorized in order to expel it from the realm of “rationality” (Meyer et Pels 2003; Jones 2017). Far from disenchanting minds and the world, technology has never ceased to enchant it more deeply (Gell 1992; Nova 2024); the enchantment of technology has indeed taken a new turn with the advent of artificial intelligences that pervade all our activities to the point of becoming robotized servants, colleagues, ethical advisors or not-so-imaginary friends. Meanwhile, ecological devastation gives a haunted feel to the world we are left with (Tsing et al. 2017; Morimoto 2023), when ghosts of war (Kwon 2008) or ghosts of memory (Carsten 2008) do not threaten to spring more directly from invasions and colonial situations crushing lives in Palestine and Ukraine.

Social and cultural anthropology may have something to say about the shifting presences of the invisible within human realms, seeing how much it has been concerned since its inception with the variety of beings that make up “religions”, “cultures”, “cosmologies” or “ontologies” throughout the world(s). Yet, how to reconcile invisible components of the environment perceived daily by those who navigate it (Ingold 2013), or that which becomes apparent thanks to perspectival shifts (Viveiros de Castro 2014), with the invisible that proliferate in the wake of catastrophes? How to order the ridiculously multifarious possibilities for any thing or being to become invisible as soon as it escapes (more or less momentarily) perception, or even just sight (Trower 2012)? “Otherwise, we might also conceive of social institutions such as the « nation » as an ‘invisible’ akin to magic. Once imagined, it nevertheless carries a tangible reality, manifesting in phenomena such as hate speech or deep attachment (Shimamura 2013).”

“If anthropology wishes to retain a chance to take up the challenge of speaking to human changing lives with and within the invisible, anthropologists may need to start figuring out what they mean by this term (Delaplace 2022).

This conference is a modest appeal to rethink what the invisible is. Based in the East Eurasia macro-region yet encouraging a cross-cultural perspective on the issue at hand, we invite scholars specialized in various areas to either reflect on how to approach invisible things ethnographically in their field, or to discuss how the invisible should be defined anthropologically in order to be meaningful where they work. Thinking collaboratively about the anthropology of the invisible, we intend to get a better grasp on the specific contribution our discipline may be expected to give to the understanding of the world we dwell in.

One basic proposition we wish to submit for discussion is that the invisible might be less a matter of eluding perception than exceeding culturally defined, and therefore contingent, established ways of dwelling. Apparition of the invisible, in this perspective, has to do with the not so rare occasions when the world stumbles into society, when forces overflow established structures of power, when beings break out from their ontology. To what extent does the diversity of the ways this invisible overrun is experienced in various historical situations point to a fundamental human experience, and a distinctive human ability to strike relations with beings and dimensions they cannot quite or always fully apprehend? With this conference, in a word, we wish to think ethnographically through the ways in which humans may become affected by aspects or dimensions of the world that exceed the social and cultural constructions they set up to navigate it.

“This conference is part of the ‘Eastern Eurasia Studies’ project, which has been conducted since 2022 under the ‘Global Area Studies’ program of the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU).” “Eastern Eurasia” refers to a broad regional concept that includes China and Russia, along with neighboring areas such as Mongolia and the Korean Peninsula. We take the view that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped the geopolitical landscape, creating a new structure of Western Europe versus Eastern Eurasia. In this context, Ukraine can now be seen as lying on the boundary of the “Western Europe” side. The Korean Peninsula also presents a more complex picture than the familiar Cold War–era East–West division: while North Korea aligns itself with Russia, South Korea hosts a significant number of Russian workers, revealing a more nuanced reality.

Against this backdrop, the Eastern Eurasia Research Project explores cultural conflicts, well-being, and forms of coexistence in a region dominated by the two vast states of China and Russia. With this conference, we invite participants to reflect on how people generate both well-being and conflict in relation to the “invisible,” focusing on Eastern Eurasia while also extending the discussion to other regions for a broader, comparative perspective.

Program