Abstract

In this chapter I describe how I struggled to make analytical sense of my conflicting emotional experiences during and after anthropological fieldwork. The chapter provides an example of the possible empirical value of such emotional experiences. It shows how negative feelings, such as the feeling of having failed as a researcher, can also be productive. During my extensive stays with a host family in Tanzania I learned about uchawi, a type of knowledge or a skill that is used to inflict harm on others. The concept is usually translated as “witchcraft.” My findings did not resonate with common interpretations of occult phenomena. Anthropologists often attempt to make sense of such phenomena by providing an explanation from their own point of view. These researchers focus on witchcraft accusations, implicitly or explicitly ruling out the possibility that actual acts of witchcraft take place. In contrast, when I reflected on my emotional experiences, I realized that I unintentionally had become part of relations that are shaped by uchawi. This showed that uchawi is an integral part of everyday life in this research context. I therefore argue that a more vulnerable and self-reflexive approach can bring epistemologies to the foreground that are obscured by approaches in which the ethnographer remains an outsider and does not reflect on his or her own affective position.