Dark Trembling: Ethnographic Notes on Secrecy and Concealment in Highland Sulawesi

Abstract

This ethnographic commentary explores the role of secrecy and concealment in a minority religious community in highland Sulawesi (Indonesia), and their place in the construction of ethnographic discourse. Discussion shows how a "culture of concealment" has emerged as a practical and realistic response to encroaching ideologies and social formations since the pre-colonial era. At the same time, the political use of secrecy takes its idioms from ritual practice, a site in which concealment may have "ontological" signficance. These dimensions of secrecy shaped the ethnographic dialogue between researcher and hosts, and highlight the need for a critical and reflexive anthropology to ground itself in the sociohistorical concerns of those whom ethnographers study. [secrecy, ritual, cultural politics, Sulawesi, reflexive ethnography]