Abstract

The significance and value of being alone – of solitude – can be seen in the productivity of Montaigne, Proust and anthropologists inventing new representations and writing. For example, it may seem paradoxical for solitude to be viewed as an important element in the making of ethnographies, but the conviviality of fieldwork is necessarily interrupted by intervals of solitude. In this essay, writing is understood as a mode of self-formation as well as a creation or evocation of worlds, with identity not being a fixed entity but a perpetual practice of self-characterization. Solitude enables a multitude of interpretations, of perspectives well beyond initial impressions. With the writing of ethnography, a boundless unfolding ensues.