Senses as method: Decentring authoritative accounts of remembering and forgetting in social memory making

This article is part of a broader project that challenges dominant readings of social interactions with the aim of decentring authoritative accounts of knowledge production in social anthropology and cognate disciplines. I examine field research examples that reveal the differential value placed on senses, emotions and memory in telling personal and community stories from the bottom up. This article draws on Haraway’s composting storying approach to pile up and turn over four moments from my participant observation on a public bus ride in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. My approach questions the production of authoritative accounts and draws attention to the multiplying and unsettling effect of a sensory frisson – a sudden strong feeling, a thrill, an interaction – in fieldwork accounts. I reflect on whether overlooking the senses amounts to a form of authoritarianism shaped by disciplinary expectations, institutional requirements and researcher ambitions in knowledge production in ethnographic research.