Two eyes, two natures: Jean Rouch’s “shared ciné-anthropology” and its ontological implication

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the implications of Jean Rouch’s work—taken in its entirety—for ethnographic theory. I propose here to go outside of the category of visual anthropology with which it is usually associated, and reconnect it to the much broader area of anthropology-and-cinema where Rouch, in reality, worked. After some preliminary discussions, I first revisit Rouch’s biography and then analyze one of his early films, Yenendi: Les hommes qui font la pluie (1951), in order to identify some fundamental motifs of his work. I then comment on three essential Songhay ontological ideas (bia, hampi, and hunde) and show how these ideas directly constitute the backbone of Rouch’s major films, including fiction films such as Gard du Nord (1965). I suggest that his work was a sort of ontological anthropology avant la lettre, realized by other (i.e. cinematic) means, and it also helps us think further on the issue of “controlled equivocation.”