Hallucination-based Ethnography. Imaginative Knowledge and the Ecstatic Side of Fieldwork

Abstract

This auto-ethnography details the author’s encounter with a spiritual entity – an hallucination experienced by herself during her fieldwork in the Bijagó Archipelago, Guinea Bissau – in order to discuss the processes of
imaginative learning that are involved in this kind of exceptional experiences. Analysing her own vision and the processes of ritual learning through nonverbal means, she explores the relationship between images,
imagination, aesthetic practices and knowledge, and illustrates the epistemological efficacy of art-based research methods to capture the non-verbal and ephemeral dimensions of being, going beyond words.