The audiovisual transaction. For an out-of-text anthropology

This article retraces the intellectual journey of ethnographic ilm and visual anthropology. In discovering the cinematographer s craft, ethnology has been able to render at least part of the intangible heritage. Cinematography and anthropology, considered here as the illegitimate ofspring of a colonial romance, are also engaged in a political venture. his text takes us from the premises of early scientiic ideologies to postmodern doubts that continue to haunt us; from the colonial civilizing mission, with its overpowering rationality, to attempts to contest the latter with exotic fantasies. hus, this contribution analyses the Great Share between modern societies (incumbent to sociology) and traditional societies (reserved for ethnology); the celebration of exoticism and the cult of diferences as an antidote to modernity s ills and the world s being restaged by and for tourism (globalized tourism). After the Independencies in the 1960s, thanks to technical advances such as 16 mm ilm and sync sound cameras, new investigations emerged asking to recommend dialogic approaches, and even a shared anthropology. In the late 1970s scientiic norms (or scientiic myths?) were rejected in favor of a new legitimation of subjectivity and the study of the political dimension of ieldwork. Visual anthropology no longer trusted the theory of representation: cinema had moved from reproducing reality to producing a reality. Looking forward, the author proposes the concept of transactional space. he «ield» no longer a pre-designated place, but rather the constant movement of exchanges glances, mutual observations that may be contradictory. he author advocates a new general anthropology which, to avoid any technological designation, he names extra-textual anthropology.