Water

Abstract

Taking its cue from the conclusions of Chapter 2, this chapter reverts to the autobiographical style of Chapter 1. After arguing for an anthropology of sensual experience, which must strive to transcribe passions, it links Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea to my own experience of fieldwork in an advertising agency.

Along with this experience, characterised by miscommunication and abjection (or the intrusive integrations of Chapter 2), other fields shape comparably passionate feelings—hatred in Burkina Faso and the United Kingdom; love in South Korea.

Eroticism emerges from abjection, which may develop from a lack of cultural knowledge, but it is also the true form of communication and inspiration of emotional anthropology—whether in France, in Greece, or somewhere in the sky above Asia, light as a feather.