Residual Transcriptions: Ruth Landes and the Archive of Conjure

Abstract

AbstractThis article considers the residual transcripts generated by a female ethnographer, Ruth Landes, through her notations, poetry, scribblings and other forms of data found in the archives. I show how these residual transcriptions are clues that serve as testaments to experiential bonds—both visible and yet hidden in Afrolatinx religions. Residual transcriptions operate as living archives that pose methodological challenges to how we think about the connections between ephemerality, temporality, and material culture. I consider the unofficial transcriptions found in an archive such as marginalia and scraps of paper with scribbled reflections and more data‐driven field notes as sites from which to theorize a new approach to archival and ethnographic methods. These notations, I argue, create their own pattern of events that make one aware of the alternate temporalities that archives can produce. Drawing on Afrolatinx ritual aesthetics and practices, specifically the spiritual séance tradition, I show how residual transcriptions tell circuitous stories about unverifiable yet vital connections.