Poetics of the Unfinished: Reimagining Ethnographic Practice with Maya Deren

Maya Deren’s engagement with Haitian Vodou (1947–1951) offers a vital case study for rethinking the embodied, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of anthropological practice. Often cast as an unrealised ethnographic project or as a detour that interrupted her film trajectory, Deren’s decision to undergo initiation and participate in possession rituals marked a methodological reorientation. Rather than the collapse of an artistic project, her shift away from conventional documentary and toward embodied participation and reflexive writing was a deliberate ethical response to the limits of extractive representation. Revisiting Deren’s experience in Haiti reveals a form of inquiry grounded in relational presence, sensory attunement, and ethical hesitation—qualities increasingly recognised as central to multimodal and sensory anthropology. Central to this reorientation is Deren’s notion of equivalence and her distinction between horizontal (narrative) and vertical (symbolic–experiential) structures, which articulate a strategy attuned to the metaphysical and affective logic of ritual. Rather than a precursor in a linear genealogy, Deren appears as a critical reference for debates on how anthropology might more fully engage lived, embodied, emergent knowledge. Her legacy suggests a practice in which aesthetic form and ethical responsibility are inseparable, and in which the researcher’s body becomes part of the field of transformative encounter.