The Ethnopscinema: Encountering “another way of caring”

Research
By Didier Vidal-Demé
English

This project uses a multi-terrain, multicultural, and multidisciplinary approach to study the representation of care in ethnopsychiatry, using methods of inquiry and analysis drawn from ethnocinema to illuminate forces of care and mechanisms of healing as they interact with their environmental context. This double approach allows for a deeper understanding of belief, understanding, and experience, of knowledge and power, as well as an interrogation of the postures of both carer and ethnologist. In doing so, we argue for “the utility of psychoanalysis as a specialized technique for ethnological inquiry” (Devereux 1980, 354). This allows us to deploy an experimental approach to the scientific object, which we call “ethnopscinema,” and which is influenced by care, by anthropology, and by film. “Les Faiseurs de Soins,” a collection of short films, argues for the value of science, supporting estheticism and creativity and confronting the discourse of the caring Other with the cared-for Other through the camera in a way which is syncretic and multicultural. The aim here is to deconstruct care, and to understand what aspects of care translate across interactions between culture and care, or representations of these.

Key words

  • care
  • ethnopsychiatry
  • anthropology
  • culture
  • representation
  • therapeutic relation
  • enhancement of science
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