“Sitting around the fire ashes”. An epistemology of personal acquaintance”

As the English terms meeting and encountering seem to distinguish, we usually meet or deal with lots of people in the field however, we encounter, or engage with a few with whom we embark, albeit not always willingly, in a relationship with all its risks, promises and responsibilities. I am interested in exploring those aspects of an encounter with another person that are readily, immediately and often intensively experienced yet escape analysis. These relationships that the ethnographer establishes and deepens in the field are recognised as fundamental in most anthropological projects, however, with some notable past and more recent exceptions in Australia they continue to remain marginal, especially in relation to epistemological questions.

In this paper I intend considering the singular and unpredictable character, personality, or essential individuality of the Other, as well of the self, that is crucial in knowing another person. Encounters are thus characterised by a process of personal acquaintance that demands to be lived-in through ever deepening layers of affect. It is through “the non conceptual aspects involved in any kind of communication” that are experienced, continuously negotiated, and understood before being explained that the anthropologist is invited to enter the sphere of values, practices and concepts that are at the basis of the knowledge we produce in anthropological writings